Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster
Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster.
The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester. And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him.
So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself.
But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here.)
Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking.
At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay.
Gang Land News's Jerry Capeci broke the news about Peter Pasta's mob status, reporting:
Today, like the battered and bruised Bonanno crime family that once propped him up, Pellegrino, 45, is just another... unemployed grunt looking for a job. Worse, last year, not long after his once booming restaurant, Peter Pasta’s Café on Main Street in Babylon shuttered, his father died. Oh, and the rest of his blood family, the Pellegrinos, have disowned him. His mob family, the Bonannos, have falsely labeled him “a rat,” with all its obvious nasty ramifications and ugly possibilities hanging over his head.
Wait, it gets worse: Fox TV has been re-running the “Kitchen Nightmares” episode he did with bad-boy British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay in 2007 “that makes me look like a jerkoff and some kind of an animal, and worse,” moans Pellegrino. “It’s a real-life nightmare. It just ran again, on Friday or Saturday,” he said. ...
The son of a Genovese family bookmaker, Pellegrino ignored his father’s advice to stay away from “the life.” Instead of seeking a legitimate life, said Pellegrino, he gravitated to the rival Bonanno family and in the 1980s hooked up with then-capo Salvatore Vitale.
A March 3, 2003, FBI report obtained by Gang Land describes Peter Pasta as a “recently made member of the Bonanno family” under capo Jerome Asaro. But Pellegrino, who has never been arrested, as well as law enforcement officials, say that the longtime mob associate was never inducted into the crime family.
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| Gordon gives a pep talk. Peter is ready for action..... |
The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester. And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him.
So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself.
Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking.
At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay.
Gang Land News's Jerry Capeci broke the news about Peter Pasta's mob status, reporting:
Today, like the battered and bruised Bonanno crime family that once propped him up, Pellegrino, 45, is just another... unemployed grunt looking for a job. Worse, last year, not long after his once booming restaurant, Peter Pasta’s Café on Main Street in Babylon shuttered, his father died. Oh, and the rest of his blood family, the Pellegrinos, have disowned him. His mob family, the Bonannos, have falsely labeled him “a rat,” with all its obvious nasty ramifications and ugly possibilities hanging over his head.
Wait, it gets worse: Fox TV has been re-running the “Kitchen Nightmares” episode he did with bad-boy British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay in 2007 “that makes me look like a jerkoff and some kind of an animal, and worse,” moans Pellegrino. “It’s a real-life nightmare. It just ran again, on Friday or Saturday,” he said. ...
The son of a Genovese family bookmaker, Pellegrino ignored his father’s advice to stay away from “the life.” Instead of seeking a legitimate life, said Pellegrino, he gravitated to the rival Bonanno family and in the 1980s hooked up with then-capo Salvatore Vitale.
A March 3, 2003, FBI report obtained by Gang Land describes Peter Pasta as a “recently made member of the Bonanno family” under capo Jerome Asaro. But Pellegrino, who has never been arrested, as well as law enforcement officials, say that the longtime mob associate was never inducted into the crime family.
We first meet Peter Pasta (although that name is never spoken on the show) in Season One, episode eight, according to the BBC.
However, the episode marked the U.S. debut of Kitchen Nightmares
.
As per the show's basic formula, super chef Gordon Ramsay visits a failing restaurant, orders lunch and/or dinner, picks the food apart, sniffing it, holding it up to his face to eyeball it closely. Occasionally, he will even taste the food, more often than not wearing a quizzical expression as if he hasn't the faintest idea what he is eating. (Ramsay is Scottish by birth, was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and initially aspired to be a professional footballer (or soccer player, as it is called in the US.)
.As per the show's basic formula, super chef Gordon Ramsay visits a failing restaurant, orders lunch and/or dinner, picks the food apart, sniffing it, holding it up to his face to eyeball it closely. Occasionally, he will even taste the food, more often than not wearing a quizzical expression as if he hasn't the faintest idea what he is eating. (Ramsay is Scottish by birth, was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and initially aspired to be a professional footballer (or soccer player, as it is called in the US.)
After tasting some food, he's also been known to run into the men's room and retch. He doesn't eat as you or I would.
He'll march into the kitchen and degrade everyone following a particularly bad dining experience. All of them are bad, pretty much. (The restaurant, after all, is failing -- if the food was superb they wouldn't need Ramsay in the first place. This has always baffled me, how so many of the owners of the eateries who sought Ramsay to save their failing business simply are so deluded, they don't understand their food sucks.)
He'll march into the kitchen and degrade everyone following a particularly bad dining experience. All of them are bad, pretty much. (The restaurant, after all, is failing -- if the food was superb they wouldn't need Ramsay in the first place. This has always baffled me, how so many of the owners of the eateries who sought Ramsay to save their failing business simply are so deluded, they don't understand their food sucks.)
God help anyone who attempts to mount a defensive. Ramsay will capably cut them off at the knees. (Or kick them in the balls.)
He then proceeds to fix the restaurant of the week using various measures, including tightening up or simply executing a completely new menu. In the Peter's episode, for example, offering family-style dining was Ramsay's solution.
Ramsay will change a restaurant's entire concept; he will gut a restaurant or a staff member at the drop of a dime, seemingly relishing associated confrontations.
On one episode he gleefully watches an elderly lady-owner weep bitterly as various crappy decor tidbits and knick-knacks that once inhabited her garish eatery burned to cinders in the parking lot.
Ramsay had piled them up and set them afire. I believe he laughed as she cried.
Like a blond embodiment of the Thunder God Thor, wielding a ladle in place of a mallet, Ramsay pounds tables, abruptly closes a restaurant in mid-service when necessary, and almost always screams his throat raw and his fair skin pinkish.
Generally, Ramsay attempts to use obvious and usually effective methods to turn the failing restaurants around. He attempts to differentiate eateries sinking under competition's weight.
Filled with sarcasm and vitriol, Ramsay hammers the notion that fresh food is the only option (restaurateurs using any frozen fare are in serious trouble, and the trouble only grows exponentially if they don't 'fess up at once).
He will whip up a dish of anything at a moment's notice, more like a magician than a chef.
Ultimately Ramsay walks the blindfolded owners and staffers into a newly renovated restaurant (the makeover is done in one dramatic night), the footage capturing their delirious excitement. Many owners can be seen weeping -- usually with relief. Some even appear ready to drop to their knees and offer Ramsay their first-born child.
A few chef-owners even went on to commit suicide as well.
In episode two, at Dillons, we view the celebrated chef in truly rare form. A fellow Englishman working as the general manager initially sought to win over Ramsay with a smile and a wink. Ramsay immediately puts him on the defensive. ("Dillons is an Indian restaurant?" Ramsay asks the forever befuddled GM. "Doesn't sound like an Indian," Ramsay continues.)
He then proceeds to fix the restaurant of the week using various measures, including tightening up or simply executing a completely new menu. In the Peter's episode, for example, offering family-style dining was Ramsay's solution.
Ramsay will change a restaurant's entire concept; he will gut a restaurant or a staff member at the drop of a dime, seemingly relishing associated confrontations.
On one episode he gleefully watches an elderly lady-owner weep bitterly as various crappy decor tidbits and knick-knacks that once inhabited her garish eatery burned to cinders in the parking lot.
Ramsay had piled them up and set them afire. I believe he laughed as she cried.
Like a blond embodiment of the Thunder God Thor, wielding a ladle in place of a mallet, Ramsay pounds tables, abruptly closes a restaurant in mid-service when necessary, and almost always screams his throat raw and his fair skin pinkish.
Generally, Ramsay attempts to use obvious and usually effective methods to turn the failing restaurants around. He attempts to differentiate eateries sinking under competition's weight.
Filled with sarcasm and vitriol, Ramsay hammers the notion that fresh food is the only option (restaurateurs using any frozen fare are in serious trouble, and the trouble only grows exponentially if they don't 'fess up at once).
He will whip up a dish of anything at a moment's notice, more like a magician than a chef.
Ultimately Ramsay walks the blindfolded owners and staffers into a newly renovated restaurant (the makeover is done in one dramatic night), the footage capturing their delirious excitement. Many owners can be seen weeping -- usually with relief. Some even appear ready to drop to their knees and offer Ramsay their first-born child.
A few chef-owners even went on to commit suicide as well.
In episode two, at Dillons, we view the celebrated chef in truly rare form. A fellow Englishman working as the general manager initially sought to win over Ramsay with a smile and a wink. Ramsay immediately puts him on the defensive. ("Dillons is an Indian restaurant?" Ramsay asks the forever befuddled GM. "Doesn't sound like an Indian," Ramsay continues.)
The GM would be unemployed by show's end.)
The best part is when Ramsay investigates the kitchen, only to discover a foreboding looking staircase that led to a sub kitchen where the true horrors awaited. Cockroaches, flies, and rats were freely flying and crawling about, Ramsy screaming in horror, shaking vermin from his hair and then sinking his fingers into the mounds and mounds of rotting fruit and spoiled chopped meat.
"Do we need a death in the restaurant to wake you people up!!" he cries at the top of his lungs.
"IT'S ROTTEN!! YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED!!!!"
Enraged, he corners Martin, the GM, and in clear words eviscerated the man (and the owner!). "You're taking advantage of a weak rich man," Ramsay tells Martin, who ducks all responsibility.
Ramsay is somewhat subdued in the Peter Pasta episode.
In Peter’s Italian Restaurant, we learn that Tina Pellegrino, sister to Peter Pasta, took over the family-owned upscale eatery a few years prior to Gordon's visit in 2008 (the recession, which by then was really starting to gain steam, extinguished most of the resurrected Kitchen Nightmares restaurants, Peter's apparently among them).
It was already on the verge of closing when Gordin arrived and "dined," spitting out what little shreds of food he'd tasted. The salad was necrotic, the stuffed clams cold and vile tasting, the lobster ravioli likened to baby food. (A chef soon admits on camera: "Whaddya expect? It's from Restaurant Depot." That is a real store where it seems some restaurants apparently purchase the frozen food touted on their menus.)
Our hearts went out to Tina, a hard-working, beautiful Italian woman struggling to run a restaurant -- and control her overbearing, insufferable thieving brother.
Peter wore expensive suits, drove a flashy Mercedes convertible, was possessed of unnaturally white teeth, and acted like he owned the place (which he probably did). He'd boss the staffers around while liberally quoting from The Godfather. One waitress cried for being criticized harshly (something about a bottle of wine, though I must confess I was with Peter on that one, she was too sensitive). Peter did this and a lot more, including slipping his well-manicured hand into the till. He gave meals "on the arm" to diners who could easily afford to pay the bill.
Gordon, as usual, immediately saw through him and identified him as one of the key problems with the restaurant. Peter eventually sees the light and seemingly changes overnight -- just like the restaurant makeover. But people aren't fine dining establishments. Well, at least the viewers got their usual happy ending. (I think the racketeer in Peter had kicked in. He conned Ramsay into thinking he'd seen the light, all the while knowing intuitively that the quickest way to both expedite Ramsay's exit and save face as per his sister and the staff was to pretend to reform completely.)
A couple of a-typical things happened during this episode, however. (See clip below, for the one we describe next.)
A "bill collector" shows up during filming, quietly slipping inside through the front door while Ramsay is delivering one of his obligatory rousing speeches: "Tonight is a really crucial, critical night..."
The "vendor" or whoever he is -- who Ramsay repeatedly tells "Get out of the way" and "Go away" -- is seeking cash he is allegedly owed.
Just as Ramsay himself appears ready to smack the guy across the face, Peter whips his jacket off and the discussion quickly moves outside onto the sidewalk. To Ramsay's "Oh, shit" bewilderment we watch the discussion swiftly evolve into a potential murder scene. The restaurant staff restrains an enraged Peter while the corpulent sweaty vendor tucks himself behind his Caddy's front wheel and drives off, Peter still howling at him.
(Peter uses many more colorful words in the unedited clip above than I was previously aware of -- as they beeped out all the profanity on the version I'd originally watched. This and all the Kitchen Nightmares episodes are now available on Hulu, which you can access via the Amazon Fire TV Stick, among other devices. (I love the Roku device and know of a certain free channel that provides tons of video entertainment...)
Later on in the episode, another "vendor" showed up in the evening and we almost see a repeat of the first visit, with Peter slowly and steadily walking toward the man, who backs up a few steps. However, Tina gets between the men and talked to this "vendor" off camera. He soberly walked off after yelling, loud enough for the camera, that nobody respected Peter anymore. (Puzo was correct about the strength of Italian women.)
I here postulate that these vendors were not vendors and that the collections had nothing to do with the restaurant but rather with Peter himself.
We, later on, came across a website and read:
"[Peter's] was featured as the premiere of the U.S. version of Kitchen Nightmares w/Chef Gordon Ramsay on Sept. 19, 2007, on FOX. This sketchy 'cash only' Italian restaurant has since closed." Someone left a humorous comment: "That's odd since when did mob fronts ever have to make money?"
As for what happened to Pellegrino, why he was kicked out of the mob and his own family hates him, it seems the trouble started with his brother-in-law, Lawrence Raino, a Genovese associate, who took out a restraining order against Peter Pasta -- the two had fought over something.
Raino made "hundreds" of copies of the order and distributed them in "clubs in all the five boroughs," Pellegrino told Capeci.
Raino also spread the word that Peter was a rat, which effectively ended Peter's career in the mob -- and could have future ramifications far worse than a ruined career. (Though Raino doesn't seem very intelligent for a Genovese associate... distributing a restraining order?)
A self-proclaimed brokester, Peter Pasta is currently unemployed and looking for work. So he told Capeci.
The best part is when Ramsay investigates the kitchen, only to discover a foreboding looking staircase that led to a sub kitchen where the true horrors awaited. Cockroaches, flies, and rats were freely flying and crawling about, Ramsy screaming in horror, shaking vermin from his hair and then sinking his fingers into the mounds and mounds of rotting fruit and spoiled chopped meat.
"Do we need a death in the restaurant to wake you people up!!" he cries at the top of his lungs.
"IT'S ROTTEN!! YOU SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED!!!!"
Enraged, he corners Martin, the GM, and in clear words eviscerated the man (and the owner!). "You're taking advantage of a weak rich man," Ramsay tells Martin, who ducks all responsibility.
Ramsay is somewhat subdued in the Peter Pasta episode.
In Peter’s Italian Restaurant, we learn that Tina Pellegrino, sister to Peter Pasta, took over the family-owned upscale eatery a few years prior to Gordon's visit in 2008 (the recession, which by then was really starting to gain steam, extinguished most of the resurrected Kitchen Nightmares restaurants, Peter's apparently among them).
It was already on the verge of closing when Gordin arrived and "dined," spitting out what little shreds of food he'd tasted. The salad was necrotic, the stuffed clams cold and vile tasting, the lobster ravioli likened to baby food. (A chef soon admits on camera: "Whaddya expect? It's from Restaurant Depot." That is a real store where it seems some restaurants apparently purchase the frozen food touted on their menus.)
Our hearts went out to Tina, a hard-working, beautiful Italian woman struggling to run a restaurant -- and control her overbearing, insufferable thieving brother.
Peter wore expensive suits, drove a flashy Mercedes convertible, was possessed of unnaturally white teeth, and acted like he owned the place (which he probably did). He'd boss the staffers around while liberally quoting from The Godfather. One waitress cried for being criticized harshly (something about a bottle of wine, though I must confess I was with Peter on that one, she was too sensitive). Peter did this and a lot more, including slipping his well-manicured hand into the till. He gave meals "on the arm" to diners who could easily afford to pay the bill.
Gordon, as usual, immediately saw through him and identified him as one of the key problems with the restaurant. Peter eventually sees the light and seemingly changes overnight -- just like the restaurant makeover. But people aren't fine dining establishments. Well, at least the viewers got their usual happy ending. (I think the racketeer in Peter had kicked in. He conned Ramsay into thinking he'd seen the light, all the while knowing intuitively that the quickest way to both expedite Ramsay's exit and save face as per his sister and the staff was to pretend to reform completely.)
A couple of a-typical things happened during this episode, however. (See clip below, for the one we describe next.)
A "bill collector" shows up during filming, quietly slipping inside through the front door while Ramsay is delivering one of his obligatory rousing speeches: "Tonight is a really crucial, critical night..."
The "vendor" or whoever he is -- who Ramsay repeatedly tells "Get out of the way" and "Go away" -- is seeking cash he is allegedly owed.
Just as Ramsay himself appears ready to smack the guy across the face, Peter whips his jacket off and the discussion quickly moves outside onto the sidewalk. To Ramsay's "Oh, shit" bewilderment we watch the discussion swiftly evolve into a potential murder scene. The restaurant staff restrains an enraged Peter while the corpulent sweaty vendor tucks himself behind his Caddy's front wheel and drives off, Peter still howling at him.
(Peter uses many more colorful words in the unedited clip above than I was previously aware of -- as they beeped out all the profanity on the version I'd originally watched. This and all the Kitchen Nightmares episodes are now available on Hulu, which you can access via the Amazon Fire TV Stick, among other devices. (I love the Roku device and know of a certain free channel that provides tons of video entertainment...)
Later on in the episode, another "vendor" showed up in the evening and we almost see a repeat of the first visit, with Peter slowly and steadily walking toward the man, who backs up a few steps. However, Tina gets between the men and talked to this "vendor" off camera. He soberly walked off after yelling, loud enough for the camera, that nobody respected Peter anymore. (Puzo was correct about the strength of Italian women.)
I here postulate that these vendors were not vendors and that the collections had nothing to do with the restaurant but rather with Peter himself.
We, later on, came across a website and read:
"[Peter's] was featured as the premiere of the U.S. version of Kitchen Nightmares w/Chef Gordon Ramsay on Sept. 19, 2007, on FOX. This sketchy 'cash only' Italian restaurant has since closed." Someone left a humorous comment: "That's odd since when did mob fronts ever have to make money?"
As for what happened to Pellegrino, why he was kicked out of the mob and his own family hates him, it seems the trouble started with his brother-in-law, Lawrence Raino, a Genovese associate, who took out a restraining order against Peter Pasta -- the two had fought over something.
Raino made "hundreds" of copies of the order and distributed them in "clubs in all the five boroughs," Pellegrino told Capeci.
Raino also spread the word that Peter was a rat, which effectively ended Peter's career in the mob -- and could have future ramifications far worse than a ruined career. (Though Raino doesn't seem very intelligent for a Genovese associate... distributing a restraining order?)
A self-proclaimed brokester, Peter Pasta is currently unemployed and looking for work. So he told Capeci.