Marisa and Tony May, frame from a YouTube video by Leonardo Martelli
Farewell to Tony May, ambassador of Italian cuisine in the United States, patron of 6 Italian-American restaurants that have made the culinary history of New York
Born as Antonio Magliuolo 84 years ago in Torre del Greco (Naples), he is died after a short illness in his New York home. The news of the disappearance, Adnkronos learns, was given by the family: he leaves his daughter Marisa, married to Leonardo Metalli, journalist of Tg1, who, like Marisa May, followed in her father’s footsteps by holding up the banner of Italian cuisine in the ‘Grande Apple’.
Tony May was the owner of the legendary restaurant “San Domenico”, a temple of class and refinement. Standard-bearer of the best gastronomic tradition of the Belpaese (“it is causing a revolution: the Italians overtake the French in the world of haute cuisine”, wrote “The Economist” of him), the “San Domenico” at 240 Central Park South, between Seventh Avenue and Broadway Avenue, a few steps from Time Warner and Lincoln Center, has seen among its customers celebrities such as Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Sylver Stallone, Sophia Loren, Sharon Stone, Harrison Ford, Demi Moore, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Luciano Pavarotti, but also financiers, industrialists, artists and politicians.
Born on 6 December 1937, the first of eight children of Ciro, a navy captain, Antonio Magliuolo left the province of Naples at a very young age to land in America in search of fortune. And within a little over a decade of his apprenticeship as an anonymous emigrant he became the king of the table. In Manhattan he was hired as a waiter at the “Rainbow Room”, one of the Rockefeller Center restaurants: in 1964 he became maitre of the dining room and in 1968 director of the restaurant. Ten years passed and he took over the property, transforming the rooms on the 65th floor of the skyscraper into a restaurant combined with a night club that hosts the greatest jazz musicians.
While still in the “Rainbow Room”, in 1979 he founded the Italian Restaurateurs Group at the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce. In 1986 he opened a second restaurant, the “Palio”, and two years later the “San Domenico”, considered the flag of the Tony May Group, the flagship restaurant, collecting praise for twenty years. In 1997 Tony May opened two other restaurants in the Twin Towers: the “Gemelli” and the “Pasta Break” for customers in the financial district of Manhattan.
On 11 September 2001, both “Gemelli” and “Pasta Break” were destroyed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Tony May and daughter Marisa went to great lengths to help feed the rescuers and help his displaced employees. A new “Pasta Break” opened a year later at the E-Walk complex in Times Square. In addition to his five restaurants, he has also founded two cooking schools. For his work in favor of Italian cuisine abroad, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro granted Tony May the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
In 2008 the “San Domenico” closed its doors in Central Park South and the following year Tony May, with his daughter Marisa, opened “SD26 Restaurant & Wine Bar”, a three-level restaurant in Madison Square Park North that features contemporary Italian cuisine. Awarded many times by both American and Italian institutions for his talent and his commitment to culinary entrepreneurship (in 1985 he received the Caterina de ‘Medici International Award), Tony May is the author of a successful book entitled “Italian Cuisine: Basic Cooking Techniques “, also used as a manual in cooking schools. The brief illness that struck him caught Tony May as he was about to open a new restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
In his restaurants there are often cooks who came fromItalian Culinary Institute for Foreigners in Castiglione d’Asti, located inside a medieval Piedmontese castle, founded by Tony May himself in 1991. In 2006 he finally created the Italian Culinary Foundation, with the aim of coordinating programs with cooking schools all over the world, bringing chefs and produced by Italy in the USA and in other foreign countries, providing students and teachers with practical learning experiences that emphasize the origin, history, techniques and products that make up authentic Italian cuisine. Among the objectives are also scholarship programs that give students and teachers the opportunity to study Italian cuisine, wine and the culture of the table.
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