Anthony Vitolo stood, smiling, in a white double-breasted chef’s coat, in front of a booth at the “Taste of Italy” event during the South Beach Wine and Food Festival in February. Food Network star Alex Guarnaschelli and celebrity Italian butcher Dario Cecchini, the event co-hosts, generated more buzz during the evening taste-around of South Florida pizza and pasta joints—but Vitolo was the only person present who’d recently been splashed across global print and digital publications that anointed him as “one of Taylor Swift’s favorite chefs.”
It’s a testament to Vitolo’s down-to-earth, laid-back nature that he yielded the spotlight at the food festival event, proudly handing out bowls of his polpette — red sauce-drenched meatballs — and cans of his Vitolo beer, which bear the logo of his new namesake restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, 30 miles up I-95 from Miami.
Vitolo, the restaurant he opened late in 2023, is not the celebrity-magnet spot that sparked a media frenzy for Vitolo, the chef. That would be Emilio’s Ballato, the restaurant his father Emilio opened in 1985 on Houston St. in Manhattan, and which has for decades attracted A-list pop stars and celebrities, U.S. Presidents, Manhattan power brokers, and fans of expertly executed Italian and Italian-American food. (The restaurant is now co-owned by his parents, and he and his brothers Emilio Jr. and Mario.) Vitolo literally grew up in the restaurant—as he explains in the Q&A below—and has served as its executive chef for 13 years.
A few days after trying Vitolo’s polpette in Miami, I visited his eponymous restaurant inside Conrad Fort Lauderdal Beach Hotel. Vitolo features three separate dining areas: a window-lined room with a lengthy open kitchen; an outdoor terrace to take advantage of the tropical weather; and a supper club-like lounge and dining room with moody lighting and art deco design elements.
My family and I sat in the latter of these areas and ordered a sampling of appetizers—baked clams, fried calamari, mozzarella en carrozza—and pasta dishes including spicy paccheria alla vodka and shrimp scampi. All familiar items for lovers of Italian and Italian-American cuisine, and all executed wonderfully, from the flavors to the minimalist-chic presentation. I’ve dined up and down Fort Lauderdale Beach while visiting, and I’ve rarely had a culinary experience come close, and never before for Italian food.
After dinner, I saw Vitolo in the open kitchen and re-introduced myself. He introduced me to his wife and two young daughters—a third was on the way and has since been born. The restaurant, then just a few months old, was already buzzing, and it was clear that Vitolo and his business partner, Rob Crosoli, had made a wise choice in bringing this upscale vision of Italian cuisine to the beach.
But I still had so many questions for Vitolo—from how he splits his time between the two restaurants, to why he chose Fort Lauderdale over Miami, to how Emilio’s Ballato accommodates Taylor Swift and other celebs. So I tracked him down by phone recently, as he was heading to service at Emilio’s. Our edited conversation is below.
You’ve been traveling back and forth between NYC and Fort Lauderdale for a while now. How is that going?
Yeah, back and forth, juggling family life in New York and the Florida life, but it's finally slowing down a little bit. You'll probably think I'm crazy—I was doing Monday through Thursday at Ballato’s, and then Friday through Sunday at Vitolo. Now, I'm able to take a step back, because my staff in Florida is amazing. They have everything down pat. But during busy season, obviously, I'm going to spend more time in Florida—in November and December, I'll be mostly in Florida.
Right.
This is our first real season since we've been open. Last year, we opened up in November, but we really didn't get a full season. So I'm really excited to see a real busy season in Florida.
It was busy when I visited in February!
Everyone loves Italian food in Florida, it seems. [Laughs]
So even though it was a short season, you were encouraged by the results?
Oh, yeah. We already have all our regulars, and I'm getting a lot of customers from New York as well. We had a lot of repeat customers from the area during down season. That's what keeps us alive.
Can we back it up for a minute and discuss how Vitolo came to be in the first place?
Honestly, I came down, I saw the spot, and I felt that the area needed an Italian restaurant. There's Martorano’s [Café Martorano, a popular upscale Italian restaurant located in a strip mall a few miles from the beach], but on the [beach], there's no real Italian food. I did my research, and I didn't want to go to Miami, where it's overcrowded with restaurants and tourists that come once, and then they never come back. And, you know, it's all about the hype [in Miami]. I wanted to create a restaurant in that area where I have my regular customers.
Plus, it's not like your regulars are only locals. You have local regulars, and then you have seasonal regulars, snowbirds who spend winters in South Florida, right?
Exactly, exactly.
What about the space at Vitolo? Did you design it, or did you inherit the restaurant space?
So the space already had beautiful bones. We just did cosmetic work. The kitchen was a full build-out, but the other rooms we just put our touches on.
Let’s talk about Emilio’s Ballato. It’s a family business, right?
Yes. It's me, my two brothers, my mother, and my father. My father was born near Naples, Italy, in the Campania region. His family came here when he was about seven years old. They were poor, or whatever, and he always loved to cook. His job was to cook. My father was born with polio. Back then, it was a big disease where he was quarantined in the beginning of his life. His family would go searching for food in the fields. When he got out of the hospital, he would be in the kitchen with his mother, learning from her, and learning from my grandmother.
Then they came to America, and my father worked in bakeries. Ferrara’s Bakery in Little Italy is part of my family as well. He worked there as a pastry chef.
The restaurant Ballato’s has been there since 1956. A guy named John Ballato started it. Ever since then, it's been crazy, because the restaurant always had famous people coming in. It wasn't always crazy busy, but it always had famous people. Back in the day, Andy Warhol used to come in. And then, over the years, it developed into one of these places where, if you're in the know, you know. A lot of our regulars over the years wanted to keep it a hidden secret, but now with social media and everything blowing up, it just got crazy.
Yeah, especially once Taylor Swift comes in—
Exactly! So, I learned to become a chef from my father. My bus stop was across the street, so anytime we spent together would be in the restaurant. When I say I grew up in the restaurant, I literally grew up in the restaurant. So I learned hands-on from him, ever since I was a little kid. For about 13 years, I've been the executive chef there.
Wow.
I had every job in the restaurant business. My father's very old school, so he believes that nothing is given to you. You have to earn it. That meant opening clams all night; making fresh pasta all day; rolling and cutting raviolis by hand all day; making the focaccia. Every single thing in the restaurant business, he made me do. At first, he didn't put me in the kitchen. He was like, “You got to earn your way to the kitchen. You got to earn your spot. So just stay downstairs and make raviolis all night, for 12-14, hours a day.” And I did it, and I had a passion and a love for the food. I just wanted to keep learning and evolving, and from his teaching, I evolved as a chef, putting different ingredients together and putting my own spin on a couple of dishes, like the veal Antonio (a 16-ounce veal chop that’s breaded, fried, and topped with vodka sauce, prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, and peas).
What were some of your favorite dishes when you were growing up that influenced you as a chef?
My uncle has a tomato farm in Italy that supplies our restaurants with tomatoes. Ever since I was a little kid, my father's side of the family would be in the kitchen trying to see who's the better cook. [Saying things] like, “Your father can't cook. I'm better than him.” And everyone would cook their dishes. But one dish, a simple dish that kind of evolved, is simple spaghetti pomodoro. Simplicity. That's one dish where good tomatoes, olive oil, and pasta is done the right way, with the best ingredients. Growing up, that's what he taught me. If you have the best ingredients, and you don't complicate it too much, you'll have a great outcome.
What are your philosophies about hospitality?
I want people to feel like they're in our home. At Ballato’s, I do the same thing. Vitolo is more upscale, with attention to detail in the service. With the veal Antonio, they're going to cut it and they're going to serve it for you. In Ballato’s, we have three, four servers, and the space is small—it’s kind of like they drop the plate and, you know, you got it yourself.
What else can you say about the service at Vitolo?
Everyone from servers to food runners to bartenders took extensive training on my menu. Everyone needed to know every single dish and every ingredient that went into that dish. They did a wonderful job of bringing it to reality. It's a great experience where, if you get up, they're going to take your napkin, they're going to fold your napkin, and it's something that I always wanted to do. I always wanted a restaurant where the hospitality is really upscale. And I think we created that in Vitolo.
Emilio’s Ballato is more casual and intimate. How did it become such a hot spot over the past few years?
I believe it was maybe 15 or 20 years ago. It was an article in The New York Times where it said that Ballato's is “like Rao’s, but you can get in.” After that article came out, business started booming. And you know, it changed, but all our regulars still come to us, and we try to take care of all our regulars that have been coming to us for 20-plus years.
How does your father handle the notoriety?
He’s just rolled with it. He’s happy.
Does the team have a certain protocol if a big VIP celebrity is coming in?
Honestly? Like I said, you're basically in our home at Ballato. We don't really cater to anyone. They literally just come in or, sometimes, they'll contact me or my brothers, and they'll give us a heads up that they are coming. We'll do our best, like, if there's a table, we'll sit them down. A couple of stars have to come through the back way because of paparazzi and stuff like that, but most of them are just fine with being around regular people. And we have the back room just in case.
Do you have any other projects or ideas for other restaurants in the works?
No, this is enough to keep us busy for right now, but obviously in the future, there might be a couple more.
Vitolo, Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach, 551 N Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd. Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304, 954-414-5127, @vitoloitalian, vitoloitalian.com | Emilio's Ballato, 55 E Houston St, New York, NY 10012, 212-274-8881, @emiliosballato, ballatos.com
