Gino

The Italian Cuisine.

Gino of Capri
March 30, 1945–May 29, 2010
Italian

Alternate Names:

Gino’s

Ownership:

Michael Miele & Sal Doria (1985–2010)

Mario Laviano (1985–2006)

Gino A. Circiello (1945–1985)

Guy Avventuriero & Emilio Torre (1945–1980)

Executive Chef:

Michael Miele (?–2010) [Worked as a chef at Gino from 1967.]

Location:

780 Lexington Avenue (between 60th and 61st Streets)

Literature:

Gay Talese, A Writer’s Life (2006):

“The daily menu at Gino features most of the same choices offered by its opening-night chef in 1945, and the restaurant clings to an unchanging policy of no reservations, no credit cards, and no waiters wearing earrings… Unchanging as well is Gino’s decor, its preference for artificial flowers, and its tomato red wallpaper pattern, which exhibits several rows of jumping zebras dodging hundreds of flying arrows.”

Film:

The Missing Ingredient (2015): Documentary about struggling Second Avenue restaurant Pescatore, which installs Gino’s famous zebra wallpaper in an attempt to find the “missing ingredient” to success. (See trailer on YouTube).

Mighty Aphrodite (1995): Married couple Lenny (Woody Allen) and Amanda (Helena Bonham-Carter) discuss adoption over a meal with friends at Gino.

Publications:

Kirschner, Marilyn. “Year of the Zebra: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once!” LookOnline. Blog, August 3, 2024 (illustrated).

Mitzewich, John. “Rigatoni al Secreto (Rigatoni with Secret Sauce).” Allrecipes.com, December 8, 2023. [Features a version of Gino’s Secret Sauce recipe.]

Martin, Hannah. “The Upper East Side Origin Story of Scalamandré’s Most Iconic Wallpaper.” Architectural Digest, January 27, 2021 (illustrated).

Brown, Marley. “What Makes a New York Institution? This New Doc Might Have the Answer.” Vanity Fair, October 7, 2016. [Features a trailer for the documentary, The Missing Ingredient.]

Bellino Zwicke, Daniel. Segreto Italiano: Secret Italian Recipes & Favorite Dishes. New York: Broadway Fifth Press, 2014. [Features Gino’s Secret Sauce.]

Moss, Jeremiah. “Last Meal at Gino.” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. Blog, June 1, 2010 (illustrated).

Rosario, Frank. “Upper East Side Fans Bid Tearful ‘Ciao’ to Gino’s.” New York Post, May 30, 2010 (illustrated).

“Scenes from the Last Night at Gino.” Lost City. Blog, May 29, 2010 (illustrated).

Talese, Gay. “Basta.” New Yorker, May 24, 2010.

Barron, James. “Gino’s Makes It Official: May 29 Is the End.” New York Times, May 17, 2010. [Appeared in print on May 18 as “Doors Are Closing on the Gino’s Zebra,” p. A24.]

Barron, James. “Bracing for the End, Maybe, of Gino’s.” New York Times, April 19, 2010.

Darling, Reggie. “We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming…” Reggie Darling: The View from Darlington House. Blog, January 11, 2010.

Moss, Jeremiah. “Gino.” Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. Blog, January 4, 2010 (illustrated).

Fox, Nick. “The Zebras May Disappear.” New York Times, February 19, 2009.

Martin, Douglas. “Gino A. Circiello, Restaurateur, Is Dead at 89.” New York Times, December 5, 2001: A26.

Haden-Guest, Anthony. “That’s Italian!” New York Times Magazine, Home Design supplement, Part II (Spring 2000): 36, 39-40 (illustrated).

Story, Richard David. “Zebras and Pinstripes: That Red Wallpaper and the Neapolitan Menu Still Keep Them Coming to Gino.” New York 23, 50 (December 24-31, 1990): 54 (illustrated, photo of co-owner Mario Laviano).

Burros, Marian. “Restaurant Scenes: Dining with Noise or Dining in Peace.” New York Times, January 9, 1985: C1. [Regarding the restaurant’s seating capacity of 74 people, Circiello says: “Sometimes, when we are really pushed, there are 125. I’ve seen people eat with their dishes in their laps. It has become like a club. It’s like family.”]

Haden-Guest, Anthony. “Saturday at Gino’s.” New York 10, 18 (May 2, 1977): 89.

Canaday, John. “The Last Word in Restaurants from Canaday.” New York Times, August 6, 1976: C1, C13. [Canaday signs off from his brief stint as the New York Times restaurant critic with a list of his favorite restaurants, including Gino’s, Chalet Suisse, La Caravelle, and Maxwell’s Plum.]

Canaday, John. “Restaurant That’s Italian but Feels Exactly Like New York.” New York Times, January 18, 1974: 39. [This was art critic Canaday’s first restaurant review for the Times.]

“The room is one long box papered with a pattern of leaping zebras pursued by arrows against a red background. That makes no sense that I can figure out, but my fear that it might one day be changed is apparently groundless, since the motif has now appeared on a Gino match-pack. True to Pavlov, my mouth waters whenever I pick one up.”

Notable Guests:

Fred Allen (Comedian)

Woody Allen (Actor & Filmmaker)

Jan Cushing Amory (Socialite): “I have memories of Gino’s dating back to when my son John…was 2, and he used to try to paint the zebras with his crayons.” (1)

Michael Batterberry (Food Journalist)

Daniel Bellino Zwicke (Writer)

Tony Bennett (Singer)

Michael Bloomberg (Former Mayor of New York City)

Christie Brinkley (Model)

Igor Cassini (Gossip Columnist)

Oleg Cassini (Fashion Designer)

Consuelo Crespi (Model)

Joe DiMaggio (Baseball Player)

Ben Gazzara (Actor & Director)

Rudy Giuliani (Former Mayor of New York City)

Ernest Hemingway (Writer)

Irving Kaufman (Singer)

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Former First Lady of the United States)

Ed Koch (Politician)

Jerry Lauren (Businessman): “It’s unpretentious, although several people are there constantly. I don’t want to drop any names, but I bump into Mike Wallace there… I’ve even seen Gregory Peck in there… As long as they’re alive, they’re there.” (2)

Ralph Lauren (Fashion Designer & Businessman)

Sophia Loren (Actress)

Louis J. Lefkowitz (Former Attorney General of New York)

Marilyn Monroe (Actress & Model)

Robert Morgenthau (Former Manhattan District Attorney)

Gregory Peck (Actor)

I. M. Pei (Architect)

Brooke Shields (Actress)

Frank Sinatra (Singer)

Barbra Streisand (Singer & Actress)

Ed Sullivan (Television Host): Came in for lunch four days a week and, according to co-owner Laviano, ordered, “Grilled chicken and salad. Grilled chicken and salad. He was a simple man.” (3)

Gay Talese (Writer): According to Talese, Gino was “one of the few restaurants of which it could be said there’s not a bad table… There’s probably no such thing as a good table, either.” (4)

Renata Tebaldi (Opera Singer)

Mike Wallace (Journalist & Game Show Host)

Gordon White, Baron White of Hull (Businessman)

Irene Worth (Actress)

Notes:

Featuring 314 prancing zebras, Gino’s famous wallpaper was originally designed by Circiello’s friend Valentino Crescenzi. (5) “Inexplicable” (6) though the decor choice may have seemed, various explanations provided by Circiello included his love of hunting (7) and that he and his co-owners “didn’t want the usual view of Mount Vesuvius.” (8) When the wallpaper was destroyed by a kitchen fire in 1973, the wife of Gino’s financial backer Franco Scalamandré, Flora, set to work restoring the iconic design, and “crafted her own copy of the original, and so began Scalamandré’s spin on the dashing print.” (9) Flora’s version was notable for the “missing stripe” on the hindquarters of the smaller zebras, a mistake which has since been corrected in more recent versions of the print, but featured on the walls of Gino until the restaurant’s closure. The wallpaper appears in Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) (pictured in Janet Brown Interiors and Vogue), and the zebras still proudly feature on the Scalamandré website, and can be purchased as wallcovering, fabric, pillows, slippers, and more.

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Daniel Krieger Photography has featured some photographs of Gino over the years, including this print of a Gino’s waiter standing outside the restaurant, currently for sale on the photographer’s website. Scalamandré’s website features another print, “Looking in on the Action,” with a view into Gino’s through the window, no longer for sale.

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The Gino’s space is now a cupcake shop called Sprinkles. Though the owners of Gino’s were said to have taken the zebra wallpaper with them for a potential reincarnation of the restaurant, as of 2013 Sprinkles had installed a patch of the iconic wallpaper next to the register. (10)

(1) Quoted in Haden-Guest, 2000: 39.
(2) ibid.: 39.
(3) Story, 1990: 54.
(4) Barron, April 19, 2010.
(5) ibid.
(6) Canaday, 1974: 39.
(7) Martin, 2021.
(8) Haden-Guest, 1977: 89.
(9) “The Story of How Scalamandré’s Prancing Zebras Earned Their Stripes.” The House of Scalamandré. Accessed January 21, 2025.
(10) Matsumoto, Nancy. “Restaurant Gino Lives on in Cupcakeland.” Nancy Matsumoto. Blog, April 30, 2013.

Cover photo: “The Iconic Zebras.” The House of Scalamandré. Accessed January 17, 2025.