What Does DiNiro Like To Eat?

March 11th, 2007 by ArLynn

The first time I realized La Bella Winnetka was a celebrity joint, I wasn’t actually at LaBella. I was next door at J.P. McCarthy’s pizza joint on Chestnut Avenue in Winnetka. Horatio and Beauregard were agog at the big black Hummer double parked on the street. Me? I ogled the bodyguard. Or car-guard. What DO you call the guy who guards the Hummer while the rest of the party dines? Besides Oh Damn Look AtThose Muscles He Makes Me Melt?

I dared the boys to approach bodyguard. They reported back that he had said “you don’t need to know. “ Heads of state? Mobsters? Quel surprise! The next morning I read in the Tribune that Martin Scorsese and Robert DiNiro grabbing a quick plate of Osso Buco or maybe the Chicken Vesuvio. La Bella Winnetka is the IT restaurant of the North Shore.

On the last day of February, the restaurant caught on fire. The Winnetka Fire Deparment is extraordinarily punctually and aggressive: The fire was put out within an hour with fire trucks called in from ten neighboring communities.

Georgio and Marianne Gigiolio have what can be best described as a love-hate relationship with the North Shore. Yes, oh yes, there are zoning issues: they want to put up a tent and serve food and the village of Winnetka wants something so silly and arcane as a license. But the tent, originally billed as a temporary prop for weddings and summer parties, is now a permanent fixture. All right–you can’t eat outside when it’s minus seven, but that’s only because the wait staff has to run back to the restaurant for orders.

The Gigiolo family is ALL about the North Shore. Daughter Cecilia graduated with a degree in education and promptly took a job at Skokie-Washburne Middle School. She is the faculty sponsor for a village resolution honoring Martin Luther King. The family drives their two-seater convertible at the Fourth of July parade. Their son Nicholas is known for wearing a buttercream yellow suit at eighth grade graduation while the rest of the males were dressed in dark suits or navy blue suit coats.

The restaurant hopes to open in a month, but not before what promises to be a bruising battle with their landlord Winnetka Il, LLC from Park Ridge. There had been a leaky roof, the repairs were being made, the village had held meetings about what needed to be done. The restaurant is a shell of its former self—we wish the Gigolios all the best of luck in their reopening.