A Night At... Chez Vito

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Label: Vito

Chez Vito, 36 E. 60th St., has been called “the most romantic restaurant in New York,” and it well might be, if swooning violin music, candle-lit elegance, opera singers and a host who resembles Charles Boyer is what makes for romance.

A Neopolitan, Vito Pisa’s beginnings in the restaurant business were unromantic enough—food buyer for the Italian Navy at the age of 19; travel agent; floor-walker at Franklin Simon; manager of a chain restaurant in Detroit; head of the Princeton ROTC kitchens and adviser to the U.S. Navy’s educational programs.

Vito’s first New York nite club was Le Perroquet on upper Second Ave., where he experimented with entertainment and introduced a young pianist just out of the Navy named Hugh Shannon. At his second, in the Hotel Meurice, he expanded to include music of Cy Coleman, Norene Tate, et al, by which time he was ready for grand opera.

Among the entertainers at the new CHEZ VITO was a beautiful operatic singer, Leyna Gabrielle, who worked there for $40 a week. After quitting the club several times for better jobs, La Gabrielle returned to CHEZ VITO and this time, to see she didn’t leave again, Pisa married her. Signorina Pisa continues to sing there but is also important in picking other singers and considering the exceptionally fine voices—always two male and two female—there apparently is no professional jealousy. The routine of having the singers sit informally at a table has been extensively copied else-where, but nowhere is it done so well.

A couple of seasons back, Pisa opened a new CHEZ VITO Up in Westchester County to which patrons of the E. 60th St. place can get the same quality programs and excellent restaurant service during the warm weather.

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