Amunì: A real Sicilian experience in Bay Ridge
Chef Vincent Dardanello of Amunì in Bay Ridge grew up in the predominantly Italian American community of West Caldwell, New Jersey. His extended family of Sicilian descent was so large that they practically constituted an enclave unto themselves. On any given Sunday, as many as 40 relatives would pass through for Sunday lunch at Dardanello’s grandparent’s house.
It was this experience, more than anything else, that inspired Dardanello to attend culinary school after a year of college. After graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America, he earned a scholarship to study in northern Italy at the Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners in the Piedmont region. The scholarship was for a year; he stayed for five, the latter four in a local restaurant owned by a couple from Naples who had migrated north in the ’70s. So, Dardanello had the dual experiences of being trained in a classical Italian manner while also working extensively in Neapolitan cuisine, both buttressed by a childhood and adolescence immersed in authentic Sicilian fare.
Back in America in the early aughts, Dardanello worked at an array of Mom & Pop Italian restaurants, soon becoming disillusioned with the red sauce circuit. “It’s delicious food, comfort food, don’t get me wrong,” Dardanello said. “It just wasn’t the food that I grew up eating or studying and preparing in Italy.”
After a transition into corporate restaurants that brought Dardanello around much of the United States, he returned to the New York area and opened, with a partner, a chain of burger joints, a trend at the time that proved prosperous but left Dardanello fried (yes, pun intended!) after a decade of pushing out uninspiring food.