Victor and Roland Gotti: fine dining legends

Nation's Restaurant News, May 22, 1995 by Alan Liddle

Victor and Roland Gotti are the first to acknowledge that insightful mentors and famous boosters were instrumental in their rise to prominence.

But the years have shown that it was the brothers' determination not to squander such help, ambition, risk taking and hard work that eventually earned them a place in fine-dining history as the craftsmen behind Ernie's restaurant.

Founded by Ernie Carlesso as Il Trovatore Cafe in San Francisco's Jackson Square in 1934, the restaurant was renamed Ernie's five years later Carlesso sold a portion of the family-style Italian restaurant to immigrant employee Ambrose Gotti, who took control of the business following Carlesso's death in 1946.

Ambrose Gotti retired in mid-1947 and sold the restaurant to his sons, Victor and Roland. It was under the Gotti brothers' management that Ernie's jettisoned its red checker tablecloths, went Continental and emerged during the 1950s as an internationally renowned celebrity haunt and gathering place for gourmands.

Ernie's - an inductee into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame - remains a standout in its 47th year under the Gottis' stewardship and reports annual sales of about $2.5 million and a per-person average of $65.

"In a funny way we on the East Coast are glad they are on the West Coast," veteran restaurateur and New-York-based consultant Joe Baum of B.E. Rock Corp. says of the Gottis. "Their sense of hospitality and service has always been traditional but expressed in the most personal terms. They are first-class hosts."

Ella Brennan of Commander's Palace in New Orleans, among other restaurants, describes the Gottis as "delightfully charming people who know their craft" and "put a lot of style into their restaurant."

"Some of the great meals of my life were at Ernie's," says former National Restaurant Association president Ted Balestreri, who co-owns the Sardine Factory restaurant in Monterey, Calif.

Gracious service, foods influenced by classic French cuisine and the Gotti family commitment to Ernie's makes it a Rolls-Royce of restaurants," Balestreri says.

Neither of the brothers had management experience in their first days as owners when Roland tended bar and Victor worked the dining room.

Among their earliest tutors was public-relations specialist Frank DiMarco, who convinced them to redesign the restaurant around the unique mahogany-and-stained-glass back bar. Also helpful were bon vivant Lucius Beebe, owner of the Virginia City, Calif., Territorial Enterprise newspaper, and wine authority Alexis Lichine.

Beebe was a "real gourmand who had traveled all over the world," Roland Gotti says. "He saw what we were trying to do and led us in that direction."

Victor Gotti, 72, says in 1951 Beebe advised the brothers to pay more attention to wine and to read a book on the subject by Lichine, who just happened to visit the restaurant shortly thereafter

"I ran upstairs and got his book and brought it down for him to sign, and he became our wine buyer," Gotti explains.

Lichine's European connections aided Victor Gotti in the mid-'50s when he made the first of several tours of wineries and restaurants on the continent.

Benefiting from DiMarco's maketing magic and magazine articles about Ernie's, Victor Gotti found himself the guest of honor at a luncheon at Maxim's, a Parisian dining landmark. He says one of the prominent restaurateurs in attendance marveled aloud, "It could only happen in America that a young man could get so much attention."

It was that trip that prompted the Gottis to move Ernie's toward French cuisine

Much of the attention heaped on the brothers stemmed from a Hollywood connection that not only fueled celebrity visits and patronage by well-heeled star gazers but also helped win Ernie's a place in popular culture. Ernie's was featured in the films "The High and The Mighty," "Days of Wine and Roses" and Vertigo," the Alfred Hitchcock mystery that included the brothers in scenes filmed before mock-ups of their restaurant.

The Gottis' Tinsel Town ties began with Ernie Gann, a writer who became an Ernie's regular after learning that his request for a favorite brand of rum had set Victor on a journey to three different liquor stores. Gann penned two references to Ernie's into the screenplay for "The High and the Mighty" - a suspenseful 1951 movie about trouble on an airliner starring John Wayne - providing what Victor calls "our first big plug."

Two popular Ernies - radio crooner Tennessee Ernie Ford and television comedy king Ernie Kovacs - both made on-air references to Ernie's and sought ashtrays as mementos. And restaurant visits from the likes of Ted Kennedy, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe and the king of Belgium primed the PR pump.

"In 1965, when I started it was like a movie set. You'd see Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra ...You name them; they were here," Ernie's general manager Terry Fischer quips.

But it was the Gottis' willingness to gamble that gave them the time to learn the restaurant business and survive until their public-relations ships came in.