Industry Insiders: Giacomino Drago, LA’s Sicilian Scion

Giacomino Drago, youngest member of a Los Angeles culinary dynasty and the man behind Via Alloro, speaks about growing up in a Sicilian kitchen, tending to his restaurants like babies, and the difficulties of dating complicated, beautiful women.

Favorite Hangs: As soon as I hit one place, I think, why did I go here? What can I tell you, Skybar? Skybar isn’t a bar, it’s a scene.

Point of Origin: I come from a family of eight. Six brothers and two sisters. I’m number seven. Five are in the US now. Being younger, I was always in the kitchen, my hands helping. We couldn’t just stand around, we had to help. Cooking at my house was always 8, 10, 12, 16 people. In my house in Sicily, everything comes from mom and dad’s farm. And I came here at 15, and started working for my oldest brother at Celestino.

There are four Drago men operating Italian restaurants across the city. Any fraternal competition? We don’t show it! No, no, we’re together. There isn’t a restaurant that doesn’t have two brothers involved, so we work together. And I think that’s been our success. It’s easy to open a restaurant, but it’s hard to run it.

What makes a Drago Italian restaurant different? Wow. When you’re talking Italian restaurants, they have history behind them. You can’t wake up and say, “Instead of using basil I’m going to use arugula, because I want to be creative.” It doesn’t go like that. We have dishes no one can change, and you’ll find them at all Italian restaurants. But then we’re talking about quality. You order a fettuccine Bolognese, you need a quality pasta. We have quality.

Any others match your quality? I love Angelini. I love the simplicity and the variety that you don’t find in many other Italian restaurants. You find liver there, oxtail, tripe.

When you don’t want Italian? I love Greek food, it reminds me of my home, like my mom cooked. I go to Taverna Tony. I love Thai food. I go to Café Talesai.

What’s a typical day for you? Oh my god ... I better get up early in the morning. From there, I see which baby needs me more, and I go there. Give it what it needs, and when then that’s resolved, you go to the next. And go to the main house—mine has been Il Pastaio.

What’s up with Via Alloro? We’re gonna open the restaurant in the first week of January, but we’ll try to have it open for private parties over the holidays. Everything brand new. Architect from Italy, everything was made in Italy. It’s a wine bar and lounge, with a big patio, right at the corner of Canon and Dayton in Beverly Hills. We’re gonna use a lot more seafood, like whole fishes. We’ll have some steak too. I think there are a lot of Italian restaurants in Beverly Hills, and I think this will be a great addition. This one has a great bar to hang out. We have an Enomatic: you come to the bar, buy a card, and there’s a selection of say, 60 wines, from $1.50 an ounce to $30 an ounce. You can educate yourself. Some wines you can’t open by the bottle because they may be $800. But here, you can have the opportunity to try an ounce. It’s named after Via Allora, a small little street in Sicily where my great-grandfather was born, my grandfather, then my father, then us ... my mom and dad still live there. An alloro is a bay leaf tree.

Any nerves about opening during a recession? I want to be positive. I think people ... you know, there are always ups and downs. Yes, there is a little tension. A little bit different than a year or two ago. But a lot of things are happening right now, with the election ... I’m trying to be positive.

Is LA a good restaurant town? The Angeleno craving is very different from in other cities. People request a lot more vegetables, a lot more fish. They’re more health-conscious than if you were in New York. And in LA, a chef is in paradise. Any fish you want, and produce from any part of the world. And that’s the beauty. Whereas in Italy, not so much. It’s more of a seasonal thing. Here you can these all year long. My menus have variety. When people come back from Italy and say, “I love this more!” I say of course, because here you have more variety.

Industry Icons: One my favorite restaurateurs, that I always follow, he’s getting pretty old: Sirio Maccioni. He’s an Italian, old school, and he has opened one of the most successful French restaurants in the country, Le Cirque in New York. I’ve always loved his style. I mean, it’s not my favorite cuisine, but I admire what he has done.

So what’s your favorite restaurant? My god, my favorite restaurant? You want me to tell you? It’s in Las Vegas. It’s Bartolotta. It’s at the Wynn. It’s a seafood restaurant. He’s so simple, but he has the best quality. The best product. He gets stuff from all over Italy, things I don’t have access to because I’d have to charge an arm and a leg. They have the budget.

So you enjoy fine dining? I like Le Cirque! Those places, for me, I love to go. But those are like special occasion places. I love it, it’s like ... like going out with a girl, she is so beautiful, so interesting, but a little bit complicated. If the next day she says, “Are we going out again?” I say yes, but let’s wait a week. I can’t take it. Versus going someplace simpler, it’s like going out with a beautiful girl with good character. She calls the next day, you say, “No problem, let’s go!”

Photo: Steven Perilloux