Ciao, Valentino

Photo by Ted Soqui

C o v e r S t o r y

Ciao, Valentino

The godfather of Italian restaurants will shutter his Santa Monica landmark after 47 years

By Richard Foss

Ask Piero Selvaggio about whom he considers his competition, and you get an imperious answer. “I don’t have any competition. Everyone who has an Italian restaurant today does what they do because of what we did. When Valentino leaves there is going to be no fine dining Italian-style.” That would be outrageous coming from anybody else, but from Selvaggio it’s a defensible statement. The book “How Italian Food Conquered the World,” a survey of Italian cuisine from 1900 onward, covers Selvaggio and his Santa Monica restaurant with a full six pages — more than anybody else. Valentino took Italian cuisine and made it hip, then introduced techniques and ingredients that nobody in America had heard of. The restaurant championed Italian wine when stores had taken it off

the shelves and restaurants had removed it from their menus. Valentino became a landmark celebrated in books, TV shows, and even pop songs by L.A. artists. It was a shock to gourmets near and far when Selvaggio announced that the restaurant will shutter permanently in December, after 47 years in business. Valentino was the dream of Selvaggio and a partner named Gianni who had worked in other restaurants. In 1972 they decided to open one even though they had little capital. The space they chose was then a German beer bar called Zum Ritter. “At that time this was a dead spot, with auto body shops around it and a red light motel across the street. The owners were two mechanics who had no idea what they were doing, and my partner stopped in for a beer just after they realized what a mistake they had made. They told Gianni they were desperate to sell, and he called

me. I looked at it and told him that this was the most depressing place in the world. He said, ‘With you or without you, I’m going to do it,’ so we did. The rent was cheap, $350 a month, the parking lot was an extra $75. We repainted it ourselves, decorated it with cheap paintings and furnished it with chairs and tables we got from our parents’ houses… It was one of those fairy tales. We named it Valentino after the movie star, but also because it’s elegant, catchy, and Italian.” Selvaggio is harsh about the food they first served, but it was a little better than anything offered elsewhere. “All Gianni knew how to cook was Neapolitan Frank Sinatra food, baked clams with tons of crumbs, pasta with spicy tomato sauce everywhere. We twisted it a little bit, but not enough to make a difference.” Valentino almost went broke during the

first month, and was saved by a brief but positive review in the LA Times. From then on they soared, largely propelled by Selvaggio’s charming demeanor at the front of the house and the good wine selection. They may have been the best in Los Angeles, but at the time that was a very low bar. Then came two fateful meetings, one with a gourmet who told Selvaggio bluntly that the food was no good, and shortly afterward another conversation with an Italian journalist who offered to host Selvaggio if he came to Milan. At the time, Selvaggio was ready to learn about real Italian food, and that trip became famous in restaurant lore. As he put it, “It changed my life. I ate in fine restaurants in Italy and I decided, I want to be as good as you people. I found a really good chef, and when he came the aromatics of the kitchen changed. There