NOTES ON CAMPANARO: The first-floor kitchen doesn’t have the kind of flash one expects. (
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PAL JOEY: Campanaro on the spiral staircase of his duplex; on the wall behind him are some of his favorite clips, including a photo of him looking contemplatively at a meatball slider and an etching by one of Little Owl’s less affluent regulars. (
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NOTES ON CAMPANARO: Campanaro’s bedroom is a modest affair, but he does have a great mirrored dresser, a skylight and doors leading out to the roof deck where he does his summer grilling. (
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It’s a cloudless spring day, and Joey Campanaro — the chef behind the Little Owl and its extremely popular meatball sliders — has decided to make steak for lunch.
Campanaro’s duplex penthouse on 13th Street in Greenwich Village doesn’t have a particularly grand kitchen — there aren’t the flashy pots and pans or fancy electrical devices you might see in the kitchen of a great chef. There is only a modest coffee maker on the counter.
“I never use the kitchen,” he says. There’s little reason to, given that Campanaro’s Little Owl isn’t far away on Bedford and Grove in the West Village, and he recently opened the separate Little Owl: the Venue, an event space on Greenwich Avenue. (Electrolux donated $27,000 worth of equipment for the space, he says.) Market Table, the Carmine Street restaurant he opened in 2007, a year after opening Little Owl, is also nearby.
But today, he’s decided to cook on the grill on his private roof deck and serve it to his guests on the deck’s teak dining set.
So, after setting out four inviting steaks (two aged, two fresh), a heap of shrimp, green Fresno peppers and various seasonings and oils next to the grill, Campanaro lights the fire, begins sucking down Marlboros and waits for the coals to get hot.
“I’ve been here 2½ years,” Campanaro says of his 900-square-foot, one-bedroom rental, which boasts an additional 400 square feet of outdoor space.
Campanaro found the place through Bruno Ricciotti, a South Philly childhood buddy who happened to be a real estate broker. (Campanaro recently returned to Philadelphia to open the Village Belle restaurant with his brother, Lou.) The chef had been living in the East Village and Alphabet City since 2006 (after returning from a stint in Los Angeles), but was growing tired of those areas.
“Too many crackheads,” Campanaro says with typical bluntness.
And his current apartment is not only close to the Little Owl, but it’s also close to a lot of other eateries he likes.
“My third-favorite restaurant is around the corner,” Campanaro says. “Gotham Bar and Grill. I go there every Sunday.”
What are the other two?
“Well,” Campanaro says, considering this, “I shouldn’t say [Gotham is] my third-favorite. One of my three favorites.”
The Little Owl, of course, is his top one. Market Table is another favorite. If he’s allowed four, he’ll throw in the Harrison (where he was once the chef). And then there’s friend (and former boss) Jonathan Waxman’s restaurant, Barbuto.
But proximity almost feels beside the point when you consider how excellent a pad he found.
“I knew immediately because of the outside,” Campanaro says.
But the rest of the apartment is pretty nice, too.
The first floor is decorated simply; probably the biggest thing in the living room is the flat-screen television.
“One of my first times on TV was for a cooking competition called ‘Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast,’” Campanaro says. “First prize was $10,000.”
After he won the competition, he bought the flat-screen and used the rest of the prize money to throw his first big party in the apartment.
On the wall adjoining the TV is a framed Peter Lik print, and just off to the side is a working fireplace. Next to the living-room couches is an old bookcase that Campanaro laid on its side and turned into a (slightly wobbly) bar. (When guests come over, he likes secretly swaying the bookcase from side to side, perhaps to make guests feel drunker than they really are.) On top of the bar is an amber jug resembling a watering can called a “porron” filled with Argentine liqueur.
Then there’s the spiral staircase — “one of my favorite things about the apartment,” he says — next to a wall of framed photos of some of Campanaro’s best press clippings. Among the pictures is a photo of him staring thoughtfully, Rodin-like, at a meatball slider, and a drawing of the Little Owl done by a street artist named Joe Forte. (Forte lives in his van on MacDougal Street, and Campanaro occasionally gives him free food.)
Upstairs is Campanaro’s bedroom, with a covered skylight and doors that lead out to the roof deck.
“I love having the sun on my face when I wake up,” Campanaro says.
The dressers are mirrored (“Great for sex,” the single Campanaro, 39, says with a mischievous thrust of the waist), and on top of them are miniature gold and silver owls and framed photos of his mother and grandmother. There’s also a photo of Campanaro taken when he was an exchange student from Penn State in Italy, with a cigarette dangling from his lip.
Outside the bedroom is, of course, the roof deck. Aside from the patio furniture, Campanaro has also put up a hammock.
Less than an hour into The Post’s visit — before he has even put the steaks on the grill — Campanaro gets several uninvited visitors: about half a dozen firefighters, checking out an anonymous tip that smoke was coming from the roof.
Campanaro looks slightly stunned. (He later tells us that this has never happened before.)
“Just cooking some steak,” he says, with a smile, keeping his cool.
For a moment, the firefighters look disoriented — as if they had expected a big blaze. When they notice a reporter and photographer standing near the grill, they suddenly become curious about whose apartment they barged in on.
One of Campanaro’s guests tells the firefighters that the host is a celebrated chef.
“What shows is he on?” one of the firefighters asks.
Satisfied that the only thing going on is some midday grilling, the firefighters depart.
“OK,” says the lead fireman, as he eyes the uncooked steaks and shrimp next to the grill. “Have a good lunch.”
The firefighters look disappointed they haven’t been invited to sit down.
Joey Campanaro’s favorite things
* The flat-screen TV
* The fireplace
* The Peter Lik print
* The porron
* The wall of photos and clippings
* The minibar
* The hammock
* The furniture and grill on his roof deck
* The mini gold (right)and silver owl statues
* The framed family photos