Restaurateur Alberto Baudo has a short commute to work.
Fabbrica, his modern Italian eatery with an espresso bar and bakery, opens today in the base of the luxury condo on the Williamsburg waterfront where he bought a two-bedroom a couple of years ago.
He said the restaurant will serve a need in the neighborhood, which now boasts thousands of new residents.
“I wanted to fill a void we were all experiencing,” Baudo said. “Developers built beautiful towers, but there is no infrastructure — no good restaurants or coffee houses on the waterfront. It was a desert.”
Fabbrica is open daily from 6:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. in the Edge, a young celebrity-friendly condo at 40 North Sixth St., whose residents include “Gossip Girl” star Ed Westwick.
Baudo said the name, which means “factory” in Italian, pays homage to the factories and warehouses that are part of the waterfront’s history.
The 110-seat, 3,000-square-foot restaurant just steps from the East River survived Sandy, although Baudo didn’t leave anything to chance. He piled up 200 sandbags outside the space, but the building was spared.
Baudo’s other restaurant, Acqua at Peck Slip, did not fare as well, even though it was far from the water in Park Slope. Open for seven years, Acqua was completely destroyed during the storm.
“Perhaps it was destiny. Acqua means water,” he said. “Its fate was in the destiny of its name.”
Baudo is applying for a city loan — the maximum is $25,000 — to help business owners who suffered during the storm.
While he hopes to rebuild Acqua, he is focusing on Fabbrica, whose executive chef, Simone Bonelli, worked previously at Osteria Francescana in Modena, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Italy.
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SIGHTINGS: Tom Hanks dining with Elie Wiesel at the Friars Club, next to former Mayor David Dinkins, who was at a table with Danny Aiello, George Kalinsky, the legendary Madison Square Garden official photographer, and Broadway producer Irv Welzer . . . shock jock Howard Stern, NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer and their wives dining at Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton on Saturday night.