Sam’s Restaurant, a 94-year-old Italian restaurant in Brooklynwas unusually bustling. For the previous week, dozens of people had been working to turn Sam’s into a replica of an Italian-American social club during the Great Depression.
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And while this was the 59th time a film crew had come to Sam’s, this was also the biggest-budget production to do so. In fact, at 8:30 a.m. on that recent Friday, there were more people inside the restaurant’s wood-paneled dining room than there had been in a long time — perhaps since the 1930s.
The only person there with no obvious job was Louis Migliaccio, 67. Though he made it clear he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, no one seemed to need his help. So he did what he would normally do as the owner of a restaurant that now practically seems to exist to appear in movies: He went outside for a smoke.
A white-haired couple in matching puffer jackets approached; they had lived in the neighborhood for decades. The man gesticulated like a character from “The Sopranos,” clearly relishing the opportunity to socialize with his authentically Italian-American neighbor.
But Migliaccio was cautious about not mentioning the production going on inside, or that “The Bride!” would star Christian Bale and Penelope Cruz. He was being paid $85,000 for the use of his restaurant, and he considered protecting the actors’ privacy part of the deal. Just a few feet away, extras in pinstriped suits lined up. The woman wanted to know: “Are you in the movie, Louis?” “I’m the boss,” he replied coolly. “I watch.”
Only when the couple was out of earshot did she lament: “For twenty years we’ve said ‘hello’ and this and that, but they’ve never come to eat. Not once.”
Sam’s escarole pizza has its devotees, and the restaurant offers a wide variety of pastas and dishes that focus on clams, chops and chicken. There’s also Chianti and Coca-Cola in plastic bottles. Migliaccio keeps a stash of Manhattan Special, an old-school espresso soda, for himself.
All of this makes Sam’s Restaurant an outlier. There are a slew of new rustic Italian spots in the neighborhood and even more upscale brick-oven pizzerias. Celebrities like Jay-Z and Beyoncé regularly dine at Lucali, which has become so famous for both its calzones and its impossible-to-get reservations that Kendrick Lamar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper, mentioned it in a song.
Sam’s attracts star power only on shooting days. Shortly before 10:30 a.m., Maggie Gyllenhaal, the film’s director, arrived, a black baseball cap pulled up so that it covered most of her face. She absentmindedly approached Migliaccio on the sidewalk. “You’re the best,” she said before entering.
Migliaccio is well-known in the New York show business. Thank-you notes from location scouts addressed to “Mr. Louis” hang on the walls of his restaurant. And while he doesn’t remember the first location scout who discovered Sam’s, it was probably in the 1970s, perhaps a decade after his father took over from his uncle. Migliaccio started working as a waiter at Sam’s around 1990.
When his father died and he took over in 2016, the neighborhood was no longer recognizable to him. The old Italians had disappeared and rents were now among the most expensive in the city.
Not long ago, rustic details were part of the appeal of a place like Sam’s. But it was clear to Migliaccio that Brooklyn’s new inhabitants had little interest in what came before. One regular customer, however, was interested in helping Migliaccio. She scouted locations for magazine photo shoots and taught him basic lessons, like never accepting a location scout’s first offer. It was a blessing, but it led to a kind of purgatory. Appearing onscreen is now the only thing keeping Sam’s afloat.
Michael Hartel, a location manager, filmed there twice for the television show “FBI” — one scene in which a mobster meets with undercover agents and another involving an underground card game. He said everyone in his universe has worked with Migliaccio.
“Trying to find a food establishment with red vinyl booths that looks old-school is a lot harder than it used to be,” he said.
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