July 12, 2006
DiCaprio lends celebrity/mob cred to Ferdinando's
Ferdinando's Focacceria, an oft-overlooked, cramped, century-old Sicilian restaurant on the edge of Red Hook is getting a little bit of celebrity cred today as Leonardo DiCaprio is on the premises shooting scenes for Martin Scorsese's "The Departed."
 The Warner Bros. film involves two Boston cops gone undercover in the Irish mob, according to the Internet Movie Database. Not only is it the wrong city, but the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhood has more of an Italian mob connection. Locals still talk about how the Feds used to live in their cars one block over on President Street, keeping tabs on the gangsters.
"The Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York" devotes a section to Ferdinando's. An excerpt:In 1904 Ferdinando's Focacceria opened in a Union Street storefront just three blocks from the waterfront, specializing in the little sandwiches that were sold by street vendors in the open-air markets of Sicily. For decades, the restaurant served up this Sicilian comfort food even as Red Hook began to decline along with the local shipping industry. Despite the intrusion of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1950s, a devastating blow to the neighborhood that isolated the shops from their customers, Ferdinando's remained in business.
Today, Frank Buffa, only the fourth owner of the focacceria, tends the place he inherited from his father-in-law. A little old country, a little New York, Ferdinando's is a beautifully preserved gem, with its vintage tile floor, pressed-tin ceiling and marble-topped tables. Ferdinando's Focacceria is located at 151 Union St., map.
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July 12, 2006 03:30 PM in Foodology, History, Out of Manhattan
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