Ep 2363 McKenna Cassidy interviews Jonathan Capitanini | Next Generation

The wine selections, they go beyond, I think, the standard Italian restaurant selections. We try to focus on more unique, less seen varietals, and there's a huge emphasis on on education. I've been building relationships with vendors. Through different programs. We do. We do a wine Wednesday, every Wednesday. We do a little taste and do a little chat standing up. Very casual. And we found it's just super popular and approachable for the, like, twenty or something year old office workers in the area, and they get to try something new and and learn something. We're doing wine dinners. We've always done wine dinners, but what we've been trying to do more and more is figure out how to produce wine dinners that attract kind of a younger demographic. So one thing we've tried is is to do kind of pairing dinners, but more casualized. So one that we just had that you actually attended was the the pizza and wine night. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. This is the next generation with me, Mackenzie. For the next episode, I invite you to explore with me what young adults are up to in the Italian wine scene. Let's feast on our discussion of Italian wine and culture. Grab a glass with us. Changing. Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm Makenna. Your hostess for the Italian wine podcast next generation. I'm so excited for our conversation today. I'm joined by Jonathan Capitanini. We're both Here in Chicago. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you for having me, Mckenna. Appreciate it. For all the listeners, Jonathan is the president and head dishwasher at Italian village restaurants. It's the oldest Italian restaurant in Chicago. They have a wine cellar of over fifteen thousand bottles, a highly respected food program and an amazing experience to be had at the restaurant. So Today, we're gonna get to talk and learn about the history of this restaurant, and then also Jonathan himself, who has recently come into leadership and ownership of the restaurant, and, the legacy that he is kind of building here as the next generation in this prestigious location and the story that it's written over the past decades. So we're so excited to hear more about this. I know food blanket looks at everything, but you are the business expert to Jonathan, and, we're good to know you as a person a little bit too. So you would be so kind just to kick us off, introduce yourself, share your age, where you grew up, and then we'll kinda go in the direction of that family history. Sure. Yeah. So Jonathan Capitanini, I'm a fourth generation owner operator of Italian Village restaurants. I grew up on the north side of Chicago, spent some time in Atlanta, and then kinda recently came back into the business during the pandemic of twenty twenty. I am twenty eight years old right now, and my sister and I, she's thirty We both kind of are are taking on the business from our third generation, our mother, and and uncles. So now we've been in the business for about four or five years and, kinda really taken the reins fully. Oh, that's amazing. And so, and when in the past year did you and your sister take over? It really probably was maybe a year and a half or two years ago that our mom, I would say, consciously started to step back from day to day operations. Okay. And felt, you know, we had built a team, strong enough that she would feel comfortable, letting us go and fly. But we started to get more deeply involved in COVID times, obviously, with the Okay. With the pandemic shut down our business completely. We're located in downtown Chicago in the heart of the loop. So the densest area, and it was impacted, I would say, the greatest. You know, there's not much space here. And then so we couldn't really do too much outside dining. And all the office buildings around us are still kind of struggling to find their footing. So we got very involved in pretty much rebuilding the business from the ground up because as everyone probably experienced in the industry, your revenue pretty much went to zero. And So slowly but surely we've been renovating the the old building that we have over a hundred year old building and, you know, meticulously maintaining the dining room of our historic, the village restaurant, which is the original in the trio of concepts we have here at seventy one West Monroe. So that's kind of how we got involved first and and more recently last two years, I'd say, is is when our generational transition happened. Okay. Understood. So take us back ten of you said this building's a hundred years old. Like, Where did it come from? Why is it sure? And then when did it become a restaurant? Sure. So building, I think, approximately, was built in the eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties, shortly after the Chicago fire. So probably a hundred and thirty or so years old, give or take. And the story of the building, I mean, I guess it starts with really the story of the restaurant, which starts with the story of my great grandfather. And and that story, of course, starts in in Italy and Tuscany. So my great grandfather, he grew up in the nineteen tens, nineteen twenties, in a small town, Pescha. It's a town between Florence and Luca. He was part of a a pretty large family, and he pretty much didn't see any opportunity there. It was a time of just post World War one struggling with some political instability and economic turmoil. It was the rise of fascism. And in nineteen twenty four, that was kind of when he decided to finally move to America and and take that chance after he saw the violence and some intimidation tactics that were used to seize power. So he pretty much just ventured out on his own. He was twenty four years old, and he came to America. He was on his way to, you know, through New York and Alice Island all the way, taking probably the transcontinental railroad to San Francisco. He stopped in Chicago as all trains do. And his, he had an uncle there that promised that he could get him a job. So he started as a dishwasher. And somehow within two years, he raised to the ranks of a chef that was managing multiple different restaurants, you know, Italian restaurants. And so he went from dish washing, cooking, you know, all through the brigade up to head chef running one restaurant. Then all of a sudden, he was kind of getting circulated around a couple restaurants in the area. And a year after that, in nineteen twenty seven, he signed a lease to do his own thing. So he opened the village in September of nineteen twenty seven, almost ninety eight years prior to today. So yeah. And they was at that. So okay. And the restaurant he was working in was not the Italian village, but not the Italian village. Reopen it. Okay. And he called it the village? Yes. He called it the village. I think, you know, it was it was probably called Italian village at some point. And over the years, there's kind of a oral history of, like, what happened with it. We think it was Italian village, and then we heard that in World War two, there was kind of some anti Italian sentiments, in America. And so he dropped the word Italian, and he just wanted to call it the village because he didn't want it to feel overly Italian. And and kind of interestingly enough at the time, like, and throughout, like, his time being there in the nineteen twenties thirties, forties fifties, you know, Italian food wasn't such a big popular cuisine as it is today. It was more immigrant food, and it was casual. It was you know, mostly macaroni and spaghetti, and it was usually part of a menu that had a lot of other things. Like, we have old historic menus that have it's mostly omelettes, sandwiches, relishes, things that are not really particularly Italian that sound very American, steaks, chops. And then there was like a section that was Italian specialties. So they were trying to appeal to as many people as possible and and our you know, great grandfather. We used to hear stories about him of, like, he really wanted to integrate himself into America and everything from, you know, I don't conduct business in Italian. I I just speak English here to you know, always having sandwiches on the menu to this day because he thought that that was like American and approachable. And so that's kind of, yeah, a little bit about who he was. So talk to me about the aesthetic. This is the second floor of the restaurant or or the third if you were to go zero one two. And Yeah. I'm gonna do a lay of the land. So it is three different concepts, three different floors that all have separate kitchen, separate dining rooms. I mean, we've kind of squeezed in a fourth of sorts. So the original is the village. It's actually located on the second floor of the building. So you come on in and you end up having to go up twenty seven steps and no elevator available. And there's No windows or anything. Just really a tucked away dining room and you get in there and it opens up and it starts to appear in front of you as literally a Italian village that could be in the foothills of Tusc getting somewhere. The walls are covered with murals and kind of three d elements show, you know, houses and and different hill and and mountain lines. There's literal light bulbs that have been plastered into these murals that eliminate the windows and the houses and the stars and the sky, and the dining room itself, there's basically like a Piazza area in the middle of the town, and then they're around it, are these different, booths that comprise the different buildings in a town. So they all have their different names. There's, you know, the post office, the horse stable, the castle, the prison, the tavern, the opera house, all sorts of things, the convent, and in that, you also have a door that literally is against a wall that says Casa Capitanini. So our house, our family's house. And, I mean, truly there's no dining room like it. All these little nooks and crannies, there's about fifteen or so of them, you know, they comprise the town and people you know, vie and fight over trying to get into one of those little booths because it feels like your own own little private space and you still get to see all the action outside, but it's a level of privacy and space that doesn't really exist in the dining rooms of today. Mhmm. Today, they're so exposed, but here Yeah. I was in the restaurant briefly two days ago, and a gentleman was checking in for a reservation. And at the same time, he was giving his name. He said, and I need the same booth for next Friday at one PM for the same amount of people. And he was very precise about desire, the same place. Yeah. They're like numbers. Of course. Of course. And he wasn't being it was it was a it's not like he had been going there for decades necessarily. It was a modern use, but needing that specific space. So he clearly maybe it was the post office that he he needed. There are regulars. They, you know, pretty much they have their name assigned to the booth at this point. And you even have a a guest that request his photo to be displayed in the boot when he attends that we put up and and bring down. So it's it's like a second home for some of them, and and I think that that is exactly what we try to go for here. You know, it's a level of hospitality that is familial and home like The dining room kind of also provides that by its design. So that dining room, anyways, is is the original. That's ninety eight years old this September. And that is the largest by far. It's about, you know, two hundred and fifty seats give or take. And it is the most popular, you know, huge tradition of people coming downtown for any theater or events that are here and holiday season as well. It's really a Chicago institution that's a part of so many people's lives here in the city. Moving on to kind of the other two concepts. So on the main floor, as soon as you enter on the left side of the building, you have the Vivre dining room in concept. So this was actually the second iteration of that space, but it's always been our finest dining concept, a high end Italian contemporary menu. And it was brought into the building by the third generation, my mother, and our uncles. And what they were trying to do at that time was, in the nineteen nineties. It was a prior to the nineteen nineties, rather, it was the Florntine Room, which was the second generation's version of a high end Italian restaurant. And so they kind of saw that that was in transition and you know, people were they were trying to basically bring in a new demographic, a new generation of guests, and they took this kind of old stale feeling dining room to them, which was, you know, had the double table class and everything was very like white and shiny, you know, Tuxedoed servers and a lot of, like, pretty much completely table side service everything, which now we would like wish we could have and bring back, but back in the day, it was like just things don't happen like that anymore. They change that into Vivore, which, you know, obviously means to live and it was a, flashy, energetic, total different version of fine dining Italian instead of it being kind of more stiff and formal it was still very high end and daring colorful, energetic kind of, type of cuisine and style of service, and the dining room reflected that as well. So it's a very beautiful space designed by Jordan Moser, who you know, was inspired by the shapes of pasta and textures of pasta. So the wall, like, every square inch of it is decorated and done by hand, by artisans that you worked with. There's several, you know, blown glass features in the lighting, lots of copper and metal worked in Mosaic floors. The balls are, you know, all different shapes and and textures and curves. And it's a really beautiful space that similarly has has a warm and inviting field, but looks nothing like an Italian village at all. And so that's what we offer on the first floor. Now that concept right now, we're just doing private dining as we kinda come out of COVID still and wait for the area around us to recover a little bit more, but that's an important concept to us and and we're excited to figure out how to bring it back. In the next couple years. Lastly, and probably most excitingly is is our little baby, the fourth generation's baby. We reconcepted our basement location, which prior to that from nineteen fifty five until twenty twenty was La Quintina. Which is a wine cellar, obviously. And this concept had kind of been a little stale for a while, and COVID gave us an opportunity to inject new life into it and and kind of do a new vision. So our fourth generation, Giovanni, my sister, and I decided to basically do a full renovation of the space and try to design a restaurant that we felt in this historic building and with those two other concepts just footsteps away that it felt like it had always been there because what we never wanted to do was, you know, stamp out the history and the and the character of the space. And so it's honestly harder to design in a way that you are retaining these character elements and trying to make sure that you don't lose what makes this building and the space are special. So we kind of meticulously pulled stuff away and reintroduced things. Everything from the old historic wood paneling in the bar and the actual bar itself, which we kind of like maintained and protected and and built around it as we had to redo plumbing, electric, you know, ceiling, all that sort of stuff. Wood paneling, we reinstalled in certain areas. We incorporated a mural that was done in a style that was aged and felt like it had always been there. It tells the story of of our family through kind of pictures that we have as well as our long term employees in the space. So it has this level of of feeling like it's always been there. As you see people kind of transition through life in this mural. And we expose certain areas of like the brick work in the building that tell its own store, you know, you see the bricks and the plaster playing around and moving in different directions and you can see the patches and the changes of of what the space maybe was used for. Along the last hundred and thirty years. So that is so to and bar so to. It is our more, I would say, inventive international Italian, but for us, it's it's like Comfort Italian. It's the evolution of Italian American and in our eyes. It is something where we don't have to necessarily beholden to the history of the other two spaces. And we can kind of cook Italian food how I think Americans are now seeing it as this cuisine that's the backbone of so much and and can kind of absorb influences from various other cuisines. So what we do in Soto is you can have a pasta that is is a pasta and has Italian, you know, heritage and backbone but has influences from Asian or Scandinavian or other European countries and it still feels authentically, I think Italian and you're eating in a space that is Italian. So examples of that, we have a delicious black garlic, papardelle pasta. You know, it's infused with white wine, a black garlic, and a little bit of truffle and some pine nuts and scallion on there. And it eats, like, this hybrid between, obviously, more of a, like, a soy noodle dish, but also just very much a pasta. You know, we're not talking about, like, yaki soba noodles or any other so, you know, it we're talking about, like, a Pappardelle pasta. So things like that that chef Steve Mendez, the chef there is bringing to life in the space are inspired by what he has experienced cooking and what he enjoys cooking. He brings a lot of like barbecue and smoked preparations as well, probably his favorite. Yeah. He has this this tortellini filled with smoked sweet potato and a little bit of like roasted broiled beets and kielbasa. So it's it's almost like a Polish or or a Scandinavian thing with some dill mascarpone. But it is in a tortellini. And so it's like you've got a little bit of an Italian touch to it. We have also some just playful stuff. So things like house potato chips with Calabrian chili ranch or our Kataray Pepepe Aracini balls. So things that are really great bar foods. And and that's kind of what we're also trying to do with with this space is is attract a different customer, one that is interested in going to a place for a regular kind of comfort meal instead of necessarily a big occasion. With bar so to and and so to, we built it for really ourselves in a way of, like, where do we as as twenty and and thirty year olds wanna hang out? And we felt like While the village is great, it's a place that a lot of people were brought to by their grandparents or their parents when they were kids. Yeah. Because it's such a beautiful kind of almost Disney world like space and there's so much history and and a story and a show in a way that it's that place where you bring your family on special occasions when your grandparents bring you as a kid. And so we kind of felt like that wasn't really the place that you wanna go to when you're in your twenties and you wanna drink and you wanna enjoy yourself with your friends. And so that's where the idea for Barcelona came really was like where do we wanna hang out? Where would we feel comfortable bringing in inviting our friends And that's why Barsono is what it is, which is a lot darker, a lot louder, and a lot more adventurous in terms of the the menu, both beverage and food. Yeah. I think you have a Parmesan infused espresso Martinez Exactly. Doesn't want that to kick off the meal with the black garlic pasta. And I love the disco balls and the neons. The whole vibe is electric down there. It's awesome. Yeah. So it's a really fun place where, you know, the cocktails are as delicious as they are gorgeous and the wine selections. They go beyond, I think, the standard Italian restaurant selections. We try to focus on more unique, less seen varietals, and there's a huge emphasis on on education. I've been building relationships with vendors through different programs. We do. We do a wine Wednesday, every Wednesday. Where we invite a vendor or we pour ourselves, you know, samples of wine. Yep. You've been there, McKenna. Thank you very much. So and and it's a great opportunity, very casual where we pretty much put you guys front center as soon as anyone comes in the bar and we do a little taste and do a little chat standing up. Very casual. Nothing, you know, where you're seated with ten glasses and and all that. And we found that's just super popular and approachable for the, like, twenty or something year old office workers in the area. They love to come by, do a little taste. We also offer discounts up by the glass and by the bottle of what we're pouring that day, and they get to try something new and and learn something. So that's one initiative that we have going down there in the wine world. The other stuff, we're doing wine dinners. We've always done wine dinners, but what we've been trying to do more and more is figure out how to produce wine dinners that attract kind of a younger demographic. We've have a great following for our wine dinners, but they are five course tasting menus with, you know, five different pours, and it's gonna last three and a half hours, and it's a hundred and fifty, you know, plus dollars at least And what we've found is that just it doesn't attract a younger guest. Most of I would say our average guest to those events is probably fifty, sixty, seventy years old, somewhere in that range. And so one thing we've tried is is to do kind of pairing dinners, but more casualized. So one that we just had that you had actually attended was the pizza and wine night. This was great. Yeah. So and for that, what we did was just four or five different pizzas paired with pours at a much cheaper price Yeah. What we're trying to do with the pizza and wine pairing night is is get in that younger demographic. And, you know, I mean, you could probably speak to him for yourself whether you enjoy it. No. So this was really awesome. We started with a Vermentino with a white clam pizza. It was Pogile Tosauro by Mary Lee Saligre. It was, like, delicious together. This nice fresh burst of of peach and sailing in the wine, and giving with that the white claim pizza was awesome. And then we had Elena Valk beyond the cloud which is a chardonnay Pino Blanc blend from Alto adige that is rare for someone like me to drink on the regular. It's like ninety bucks. Like, I'm not opening it on a Tuesday. It the inventories are really slim. It's super nice that Jared, your awesome wine director has inventory of it. And, we got to enjoy that. We got to enjoy also to Arrita, which is known for their chianti and then Montisoli as well. So, like, some really nice. And it was paced out in the way where, like, four slices of pizza especially the last being duck confit pizza with the Supertuscan from Torita was outstanding and you felt full, but then you also had time to enjoy everything. Mhmm. I thought it was an awesome concept. I haven't seen anyone doing it, and it was the perfect it was priced appropriately. It was the perfect thing to attract even some of my friends as well. So, yeah, looking for continued stuff like that. Yeah. And we're I think what's interesting is we we find that our guests that also attend the more formal wine dinners also show up for these wine dinners. They also did. And they love it. Like, it's for some of them, it's their favorite. And and I think that that's, like, an interesting thing we're trying to think through and figure out because you know, as a twenty something year old, usually you don't wanna hang out where, like, the sixty something year olds are hanging out. You know, there's, like, a little bit of, like, are we in the right place? Is this, like, really trendy or fun? So we're trying to figure that out. It's, like, you know, do we is that are they combined? Are they, you know, how do we almost speak in code to get to a younger demographic almost exclusively without, like, excluding anyone? Sure. Sure. Sure. Because I think that we're still from a service perspective, we're trying to figure out, you know, you experienced it. How do you do service when you have totally different generations and totally different expectations, for how that goes? Where you may have been okay with us having communal pizzas and and putting a piece of pizza on your plate and or whatever. You know, there are probably some people there that are eating pizza with the fork and knife and kind of want it to be served by the serving utensil and course out as a five course dinner. And that's not necessarily what young people want to experience. So navigating that fine line of not being, you know, exclusionary to guests, but still delivering an experience that is kind of approachable for both generations is something that we're still kind of playing with as we develop and and rerun this type of event. This is good. I get my question is like, what is your hope here? Like, is it because to engage the next generation in the restaurant, like, Barso and so to rock. And you've seen the excitement from the next gen. Is it because the demographic of Chicago is now much more youthful around you? Is this, like, the legacy plan for fifty years from now. Now we'll have the new, you know, the next generation has been part of a team's village for these decades. Like, what's the goal in engaging the next gen? Like, what is the value add there? I mean, for us, it's it is our survival very plainly. Like, you know, you can't, like, if your guests are dying, you're not gonna have very many of them left, if you just wait and and twiddle your thumbs. So for us, like, again, a combination of, like, we're the fourth generation, we're taking over the business. And I think we wanna see more people like us in there because right now in in the past couple decades, it's been a lot of people like our parents generation. And I think that's, just natural. Like, as an operator, you have more fun when you're, like, with people that are your peers that are not necessarily your parents or your grandparents, even. And so I think that that's very important for us to have more fun on a day to day basis of, like, just basically hanging out with our friends and think that that's hospitality and its greatest is you can kind of feel that way. And there's, of course, like, cross age, you know, friendships that you have still, but there's something about, like, taking care of and and having a dining room full of people that are, you know, your age and are allows us to have more fun, I think, with the menu as well. And and with services, we can do things that, you know, our, you know, expectations being different. We can do things that are a little bit more adventurous. Yeah. And you see that with with the wines, You see that with the cocktails and the food and so to. So we've kinda carved out our little space in the building that that is for more experimental purposes. And it is having the effect that we want, which is kinda bringing in those those returning guests of of our age. But it's very much like our survival as a business. We've been here for almost a hundred years, and you can't rest on your laurels. And the village will, oh, I think, always be an icon as as long as it lives. And a place that people wanna bring their families to and and experience with their kids, but we need more than that. There's different cycles and cyclicality in our business. We need a place that people wanna go to in January and February when it's cold outside and it's not the holidays. And and for us, I think that that really is the basement bar in Chicago. That's where you wanna be. So cozy warm, not necessarily a holiday experience, but just a day to day experience. Yeah. This is awesome. My last question is, like, you were talking before, like, your hobby is, like, managing this business, which I think is awesome. You have this passion that's very clear at least to me about, like, where business and hospitality, like, meet each other and what, like, the truest form of both of those things can be in making a project successful. Like, what excites you about that and, like, keeps you so motivated about, like, the linkage between, like, vitality and business, do you think? I guess the, like, the question is, like, is hospitality business? Is it, like, what is it? I don't know. Like, I think that I'm interested in the business side of my perspective is in my experiences or more business oriented, but At the end of the day, we are providing an experience and that experience ought to be hospitable. Otherwise, no one would would come back. And I guess the business side to me is ends to the means, you know, like, or is it means to the ends? Maybe maybe I got that one. You know, it's it needs to happen because you need to have a business that is financially, you know, strong, and you need to know what you can and can't do in providing that experience to your guests and then taking care of your employees. But it's the way like, you have to be a steward of resources and a good financial mind in order to deliver a hospitality experience in order to take care of your guests and and your employees. To me, that's like the as a as an owner, that's like my biggest responsibility because I'm a firm believer in doing only what you can do. And as an owner, the things that only I can do are take care of of those things. It's very hard to delegate some of those more financial business oriented decisions, you can, but a lot of people don't feel comfortable with making those calls, especially if it's not their own. So as an owner, I think it's a huge responsibility to be mindful of the business side of your restaurant because that it is what allows you to do what you do and with your guests and what your team does with your guests. So I guess that's my perspective on that. Thank you. That's awesome. Okay. Are you ready for the rapid fire questions? Sure. Okay. What's your preference? Basement or rooftop for afternoon of Haritivo? Oh, well, we just opened a basement bar. I yes. One bias. Unfortunately, I think I'd have to say rooftop. If we're if we're about to approach Summer in Chicago, it's definitely your shop. In Chicago. Yeah. Calls from rooftop. Okay. What's your preference to, like, hang out? Again, unbiased from the location of your restaurant, River North or Chicago Loop. Yeah. You're a lot of biased questions you're asking. I mean, to me, honestly, like, hate to be a hater. Usually I'm not, but I just don't like River North. I don't know why. I never really have. It doesn't represent, like, the Chicago I grew up in, so I have to say the loop. I'm very excited about what's going on here. And I think all the history and heritage of the surrounding buildings. In a concise way, like, one sentence, what's your favorite, like, business problem to solve? I'd say, like, getting the right person may be in the right role and just the unlock that that has and huge impact it can have on your on your business. Who's your, like, support system in your life? Like, family, friends, like, how you can't all you can't be who you are about yourself. You're like pretty amazing. So it's like, how how do you do this? I mean, I'd have to say my my future wife, Sarah, you know, she's an incredible soul and and as somebody that who supports and and partners with me on on everything and is the first person I wanna talk to about anything I'm going through. So definitely her. That's awesome. Cheers to that. Well, thank you so much. This has been like a really rich conversation. I think we got to talk about the history of the restaurant and what's happening new and now for the next gen. Your vision is really exciting, and I can't wait to watch it go down. So thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners before we part today? I mean, just that we have an incredible wine cellar on-site, I think we didn't touch too too much on it. But we but I think Mackenzie mentioned we have, over thirteen hundred different labels, over fifteen thousand bottles. I mean, it's hay day. It was it was over thirty thousand bottles just a couple decades ago. We still have just incredibly deep verticals from some of the Italian wineries that we were bringing stuff in in the seventies and eighties from. Jared, our our awesome beverage director in San Muier, like, we'll take care of you. So definitely a place to check out a nice hundred page wine list for you. So It is so much fun to read. Getting the Jared consultation. It it's awesome. And all of those amazing unique foods you mentioned as well, like, there is any time you wind that we'll pair perfectly with those, which is And and it's affordable because we've been buying since the beginning of time, it feels like, we're not trying to triple and and quadruple the prices, you know. Things are are what we paid for them, basically. So that's my final plug. I love that. No. That was that was a beautiful, yeah, definite, perfect tie in. Well, thank you so much. Congrats to you and Sarah as well, if I may say. And Thank you for your expertise and time, Jonathan. It was awesome. Yeah. Pleasure talking to you. Take care. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks so much for being here with me today. Remember to catch our episodes weekly on the Italian wine podcast. Available everywhere you get your pods. Salud Day.