From the outside, they were just restaurants. But to those in the life, the mob restaurants of America were landmarks of power, business, and betrayal. They were where deals were made, where tribute was paid, and where, on certain nights, the bill came due in blood. Across Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, and New York, these dining rooms became the stages for some of organized crime’s most brazen and infamous hits.
In Chicago, the tradition of violence ran deep, stretching back to Al Capone’s era. One such place was Mama Luna’s, a pizza parlor that became the scene of a ruthless New York-style execution in 1975. The victim was Anthony Rettinger, a bookmaker who made a fatal miscalculation. Operating in Chicago meant a bookmaker did not work alone; he was expected to pay a street tax to the local mob, which in return provided the services a bookie could not survive without.
Bookmakers needed financing to cover their bets when they found themselves in a hole, and they needed enforcers to collect from gamblers who bet money they did not have and then refused to pay when they lost. Rettinger refused to pay his share. The local mob hired a hitman named Harry Aleman, who walked into Mama Luna’s without hesitation. With an associate beside him, he shot Rettinger dead in full view of the customers, then simply walked out the door.
It was the kind of brazen hit designed to send a message. Another Chicago establishment, Horwath’s, saw a different sort of ending. Charles “Chucky” English ran gambling operations and jukebox rackets on the West Side. His career was winding down, and he was reportedly trying to go straight.
But as he left the restaurant one day, someone shot him right between the eyes in the parking lot. The killer got away, and the police never caught whoever was responsible. The murder received little attention, overshadowed by a spate of mob-style killings then sweeping Chicago. In Newark, New Jersey, the Palace Chop House earned its place in infamy during the early years of organized crime.
It was there that Dutch Schultz, the notorious German-American bootlegger and mobster, met his end. Schultz had become a liability. He was embroiled in serious trouble and had begun pushing for a hit on New York’s crusading prosecutor, Thomas Dewey. The leadership of the underworld, headed by figures like Lucky Luciano, wanted no part of the massive heat that killing Dewey would bring down on them.
Schultz was seen as a loose cannon. While he was dining at the Palace Chop House, gunmen entered and shot him and three of his associates. Schultz survived briefly, dying later that day. The powerful men who ordered his death did so not out of loyalty to the law, but out of cold calculation for their own survival.
Philadelphia had its own infamous night at a restaurant called Dante & Luigi’s. On Halloween night in 1989, a masked man carrying a trick-or-treat bag walked into the establishment. He approached a table where Nicky Scarfo Jr. , the son of Philadelphia mob boss Nicky Scarfo Sr.
, was dining. From the bag, he pulled a machine gun and fired point-blank. Scarfo Jr. fell forward, landing in his plate of spaghetti and clams.
Miraculously, he survived. The hit was widely attributed to mob rival Joey Merlino, an allegation that has never been proven but has followed him ever since. According to the story that circulated, when Nicky Scarfo Sr. learned what had happened, he was furious and supposedly put a $500,000 contract out on Merlino.
Those who know that life doubt the number, since the mob typically does not pay its soldiers to do business that is simply expected of them. But the fury and desire for retaliation were real. In Brooklyn’s Coney Island, the Nuova Villa Tammaro was the site of one of the most legendary killings in American mob history. It was there in 1931 that Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria was assassinated.
Masseria was one of the most powerful gangsters of his era, described by one detective as bigger than Al Capone. This was before Cosa Nostra in America was formally organized, before Luciano restructured it into the Five Families and created the Commission. Three men entered the restaurant and shot Masseria multiple times in the back and neck. He fell across the table, still holding a deck of cards, with cards scattered across the floor.
Whether the cards were part of an actual game or placed in his hands to send a message remains uncertain. The killing was widely believed to have been orchestrated by Lucky Luciano, who was reshaping the underworld. The restaurant’s owner was so shaken that he insisted on having his fingerprints taken by investigators, desperate to prove he had no connection to the crime. His fear was justified; about a year later, he was shot and killed.
Back in Manhattan, Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy became the scene of the assassination of Joey Gallo. On his birthday, Gallo was dining with his wife, daughter, and a few friends when a gunman entered and opened fire on the table. The shooter hit Gallo, who managed to run outside and give chase before collapsing and dying in the street. The hit was widely interpreted as retaliation for the attempted assassination of Joe Colombo, which had occurred earlier that day during an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally.
The shooting at the rally, which several mob figures witnessed, had sent shockwaves through the underworld. There are many claims about who was responsible for Gallo’s death, but one thing is certain: the movie The Irishman was wrong in its depiction. Frank Sheeran was not there that night and did not kill Joey Gallo, a fact that has been debunked both by law enforcement and on the street. Umberto’s is gone now, replaced by a restaurant called Da Gennaro.
Rao’s, the famous and notoriously exclusive Manhattan restaurant, has a quieter but no less violent story. It is famous for its food, its roster of celebrity patrons, and its refusal to accept credit cards, operating strictly on cash with reservations that are famously difficult to obtain. Mob figures have long dined there. One regular was Louis Barone, a connected man.
One night, another patron, a man named Albert Sir Kelly, was loudly heckling a Broadway performer’s rendition of Don’t Rain on My Parade. The noise wore on Barone’s nerves. He pulled out a . 38-caliber revolver and shot Sir Kelly in the back, right in front of everyone.
Sir Kelly survived, and Barone went to prison for a few years. Roughly seven years later, a suitcase full of bones mysteriously appeared outside Rao’s. Whether it belonged to Sir Kelly is a matter of conjecture, but the implication was not lost on anyone. The restaurant was also the inspiration for the character Johnny Roast Beef in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, a tribute to the mob atmosphere that defined the place.
The most famous mob restaurant of them all is Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. On December 16, 1986, Gambino family boss Paul Castellano arrived at Sparks for a meeting with his chauffeur and bodyguard, Tommy Bilotti. As they stepped out of the car, men in white trench coats approached and opened fire, killing both of them on the street. Across the way, in a car watching it all, sat John Gotti and his underboss, Sammy Gravano, who had orchestrated the hit.
Castellano was dead, and Gotti took over as boss of the Gambino family. He would run it for several years before his own legal troubles caught up with him, landing him in prison, where he died in 2002. Sparks Steak House remains open today, a historical landmark of a violent era. The murder was even said to have boosted the restaurant’s business, though it never needed the help.
These restaurants were places of business, family, and food. But for the men who ran the underworld, they were also places where disputes were settled, power was consolidated, and, too often, someone’s final meal was served.