Frankies Platelist

July 6, 2010 — -- For Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, sustainability has a new meaning - their culinary careers have come full circle.

Having grown up together, they returned to their childhood neighborhoods in 2003 to start something that, at the time, was new and fresh. Today, with several restaurants in New York City and another location opening in Portland, Oregon in 2011, a new cookbook, "The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Kitchen Manual," an Austrian-inspired cafe and a butcher shop set to open this summer, the Franks are clearly unstoppable.

Castronovo and Falcinelli have taken the old-world culinary values of their Italian heritage and applied them to their cuisine. The result is an updated Italian fare based on the natural, organic ingredients that keep their clientele clamoring for more.

"The ingredients we're using are the best ingredients and the people love it," Falcinelli said. "[We make] ingredient-driven, season-driven dishes. I think that's why people come back to Frankie's three or four times a week," he said.

But the secret to their success, they say, has a lot more to do with community and staying true to their roots.Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli grew up in the same Italian neighborhood in Queens Village, New York.

Their first and second-generation Italian immigrant families made up part of the vast community, an environment where, as Falcinelli puts it, "every day was Sunday." Castronovo agreed, and he described how as a child running in and out of the home, it was common to see "grandma stirring the pot or mom stirring the pot and making a sauce in it," he said.

Falcinelli said that their early tastes developed as a result of their homes and the community they grew up in. "The home food was the home food, and it had the mom and grandma touches," he said. "And then the street was other peoples' grandmothers' food."

"You had the Italian feel," Castronovo agreed. "Whether we ate at home or from the deli, it was all good. And we use those food memories to draw back on," he said. "It educated your palate as a kid."

Although their combined success has grown exponentially since their union in 2003, the Franks took very different paths to where they are today.

Falcinelli began working in a German deli. He said his philosophy was simple. "The first thing you realized working in the business, so to speak, is you get to eat whenever you want and anything you want," he said. "So you picked the places of the stuff you want to eat and you work there."

Falcinelli later went on to attend culinary school at the Culinary Institute of America.

Castronovo began his career in cuisine at an Italian gourmet store while he was in high school. As he grew older, a friend who was a pastry chef showed him the culinary life, and he liked what he saw. "One of the things that chefs could do go was to go to different cities, and experience different cultures and work around the world. That was very intriguing to me," he said, adding that he knew he wanted the freedom to move from place to place. "I wanted to meet a lot of people… and I love to cook. So it kind of fell into place really young, before I was even finished with high school," he said.

From there, he garnered an apprenticeship at the prestigious Russian Tea Room in New York, an experience he said, "was a pretty good education for me." For three years, he worked each of the kitchens' stations, before heading to France where he worked under chef Jean Fleury and Paul Bocuse at a 3-star Michelin restaurant.

Castronovo found work in France, and despite the trying time - long hours, no pay, unable to speak the language - he persevered. "Even doing stuff like scrubbing pots, it didn't matter, because it was all for a cause. The cause is to be happy doing what you're doing," he said. Fleury later recommended him to join Chef David Bouley's team in New York, which would eventually be voted the best restaurant in the world for several years.

By this time, he decided the work experience and tutelage he'd already had provided experience beyond what he believed a classroom education could provide. He said being in the kitchens he'd been in had given him confidence. He recalls thinking, "I can cook with some of the best cooks in the world, I don't need to go to school to learn how to cook."

As a result, Castronovo did not attend culinary school.

Castronovo opened his own small tavern in Soho with a friend (who would later become his chef at Frankies and Prime Meats). It wasn't long before he returned to Europe and moved to Germany. "I worked there for 5 years, and I had my wife, and we had a baby, and I was like am I going to stay here?" he said, and he recalled thinking, "The life is great but I'm never going to get a chance to open up my own restaurant."

Castronovo and his family returned to New York, but starting a restaurant proved to be more difficult than he'd imagined. "I think it's like that for most industries, it's so competitive," he said. "It's like as soon as you leave, you lose your place in the line, and you've got to go to the back of the line." With a family to provide for, he took a job with a high-end events and catering company. Of the position, Castronovo said, "It was really hard and it wasn't very rewarding in a sense because people just wanted a lot of food," he said. "They're not really looking for the food to be good."

Castronovo remained in New York, working a few jobs as executive chef in restaurants before he ran into Falcinelli.

Meanwhile, Falcinelli had graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and went to work at the G City Hotel. He also went on to work in France. Later, he returned to the States and worked with top chefs, including Charlie Palmer and David Burke, in a string of top-rated restaurants.

"Once you get in a wave, like what happened with Frank, once you get in a wave of good houses, you just, you could work forever doing that," Falcinelli said.

Falcinelli became the executive chef at Moomba, a New York celebrity hangout and hotspot of the '90's.

"Moomba was amazing," he said, and it was so amazing that he moved with the restaurant to its Los Angeles location a few years later. During the late-90's, he said, Clinton was president and it seemed the money was everywhere. "Everybody was spending, " he said, "So it was one part a great place to hang and five parts people having a lot of money and feeling good about things."

All was well until the attacks on September 11, 2001 brought everything to a screeching halt. "It pretty much knocked the business out of business, because people weren't celebrating and - especially in Los Angeles - [people] weren't celebrating," he said. Falcinelli said the lion's share of the business - studio parties and premieres-were canceled. "It really put us out of business and put me out of work," he said, but added that it was also an opportunity for him to reflect.

"[It] let me figure out what I wanted to do, and that was get back to New York," he said. During that time, he said, he began to conceptualize the restaurant that would later become Frankies.

A chance run-in reunited the two Franks in 2003. According to Falcinelli, "Frank Castronovo came out of nowhere and all the pieces just came into play all at the same time," he said.

Falcinelli said, "We were both fed up with the restaurant system. It was post 9/11, New York was depressed, all the restaurant spaces were horrible… the real estate was expensive," he said. Instead, they decided they should reexamine their roots. "We were like let's reclaim the Italian title, reclaim what is basically our heritage-style food, and let's take it out of Manhattan because, we can't compete here anyway," Falcinelli said. Castronovo agreed, "It wasn't friendly for guys with a lot of skills that didn't have a lot of money, so Brooklyn was the new frontier."

The move to Brooklyn ended up being a good one. Frankies 457 Spuntino opened in 2004, and it's helped to pave the way for establishing Brooklyn as an international culinary destination.

"We wanted an off Broadway show, but this is like the perfect off Broadway show: we have the perfect landlords, the perfect space, … all these resources," Falcinelli said.

Both say the decision to begin their entrepreneurialism in New York, rather than L.A. or Europe, was a simple one.

According to Falcinelli, "When your family invests 100 years in a city… you're part of this thing… So I wanted to get back into the city, and it took two years to kind of meld into what this is, for me at least. But when I met Frank again and got the location, it was like all these things came together and it became this—of course It would be successful," he said.

"It became very clear," Castronovo agreed.

"Our histories are rich here, so we might as well continue to build on that," Falcinelli said. "It's very easy... because you realize that these people are your family and friends. I mean the city as a community, it's great to have a city that's 6-8 million people that you can tap into and be accepted," he said.

"Accepted" may be an understatement: the success of the first restaurant spawned the opening of the second in 2006. The cafes followed, as did a cookbook, an Austrian-themed restaurant, Prime Meats, and an upcoming new location on the west coast. Despite their success, the Franks insist making money was never the goal. They say they know better that that in this business.

"It's a tight ecosystem," Falcinelli said. "This is a business where if you want to be involved, and take care of people, this is the business you want to be in. If you want to make money, you need to be in something else," he said.

Of their success, Castronovo said, "We're directing, we're going somewhere. We have the vision and everybody that jumps on with us and joins on, sees our vision and sees where we're going."

"They get behind you," Falcinelli agreed.

"They get behind you and the momentum starts rolling," Castronovo said.