A new cocktail lounge will feature its own in-house “Soprano” – as Michael Imperioli, the star of the famed mob show, launches an upscale speakeasy on the Upper West Side, Side DIsh has learned.
Imperioli, best known for playing Tony Soprano’s troubled nephew Christopher Moltisanti — opened Scarlet, at 468 Amsterdam Ave., on Tuesday.
The cozy 500 square-foot space, which will seat around 40 people, will be no “Bada Bing!”, but it will be a family affair. Imperioli is teaming up with his wife, Victoria, who has leaned on her background as an interior and theatrical set designer to create an Art Deco-style bar that harkens back to 1920s Paris or New York.
Imperioli told Side Dish he loves the mood and the atmosphere that Victoria created and that he hopes to be involved in live music like DJing, as well booking talent for “the jazz and more lounge stuff.”
“We will be part of finding these acts and artists and musicians, events and spoken word stuff,” the Emmy award-winning actor said in a telephone interview while on a break from filming “American Horror Stories,” an FX and Hulu series, in New Jersey.
Imperioli – who grew up in Mount Vernon and got his acting break as the stammering bartender Spider in another mob classic, “GoodFellas” – has plenty of experience slinging drinks.
Victoria, his spouse of 27 years, owned the Chelsea bar Ciel Rouge when the struggling actor was just starting out and they met at a bar by the Chelsea Hotel, where he was living. They continued to operate the hot spot during “The Soprano’s” run from 1999 to 2007.
“We’d have Sopranos after-parties there and lots of actors came,” Imperioli said, adding that musicians also dropped by, from the Pixies to Madonna.
Oasis did a photo shoot there, Imperioli recalled.
“Sometimes I’d wait tables there when friends came. Once a group of acting students from NYU came in. They recognized me from ‘The Soprano’s.’ They asked if acting was a very hard business since I was still waiting tables even though I was in a hit show. I told them yes,” he said with a laugh.
The timing of his decision to once again open a cocktail lounge is noteworthy, Imperioli said, because he recently found out that his great-grandfather Raphael Segno ran a speakeasy in Mount Vernon in the 1920s after immigrating to the US from Naples at the turn of the last century.
“He was 19 when he came to America, with $12 in his pocket,” said Imperioli, who only learned about his great-grandfather’s exploits while filming an episode for the PBS series, “Finding Your Roots.”
While he can’t say much before the new season airs next month, Imperioli did reveal that the bar was known as Segno’s — which his entrepreneurial ancestor turned it into a speakeasy when prohibition hit, making his own spirits, like flavored vodka.
In this latest venture, the pair were recruited by veteran restaurateur Jeremy Wladis, who will serve up small plates that include lollipop lamb chops au jus with basil pistou and foie gras torchon with vanilla infused honey, pomegranate glaze and brioche toast.
The cocktails, from Matt Burkhardt, feature the The White Lotus, a cheeky reference to Imperioli’s star turn in the second season of the critically-acclaimed HBO series by the same name. The drink is a clarified punch of Don Q Cristal Rum, pineapple, yuzu, coconut sugar and Champagne.
“Scarlet will be a higher end cocktail lounge built for people on the Upper West Side,” said Wladis, who runs neighborhood eateries like Good Enough to Eat — which turns into Telio’s at night — along with Nina’s Great Burrito Bar, and Harvest Kitchen.
The Imperiolis, who live in the Upper West Side neighborhood, are regulars at his eateries, and they became friends. Wladis knew Victoria was an interior and set designer, and asked if she’d be interested in creating the speakeasy.
“She did everything,” he said, “including making the furniture.”
Wladis also owns the Post Pub, The Washington Post’s former watering hole in DC, and a pizza joint in Charlotte, NC.
“It will be different from all my neighborhood places,” Wladis said. “You can come in jeans, shorts, or a tuxedo.”
Added Victoria Imperioli: “I hope that Scarlet can be the oasis where a weary traveler can reconnect with his or her senses and the timeless now.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
