The opening almost two years ago of Fasano Restaurant (above), which immediately became one of New York’s finest and certainly most glamorous Italian restaurants, begs the question of why it took so long. Starting in São Paulo in 1902, the Fasano Group  joined with José Auriemo of  JHSF, one of Brazil’s leading developers, which allowed the Fasano brand to expand further into Brazil and internationally, with hotels in Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro, Angra dos Reis and Salvador, along with several other Italian restaurants with other names.
        Today the Fasano Group is headed by Rogério (“Gero”) Fasano, whose grandfather, Vittorio, opened the family’s first restaurant and bakery in Sāo Paolo and whose father, Fabrizio, refashioned the restaurant in the 1950s (left; since closed). There were many obstacles along the way, but today the company operates 28 restaurants, 10 hotels and employs 1,500 people worldwide.
        I sat down with Gero over plates of beef tartare with white truffles at the New York Fasano Restaurant, designed by Isay Weinfeld, after Gero took over the former Four Seasons restaurant in a Park Avenue skyscraper. I was particularly interested in why he opened such a lavish restaurant in a failed space at a time when New York’s food media seem to have largely lost interest in the fine dining segment.     

As the child of a wealthy family, your main interests were la dolce vita, punk rock and getting into the movie business.  (You invented a watch whose hands only showed PM hours.) But when your father went bankrupt you returned to Brazil to help load trucks with the closed restaurant’s furnishings for sale. Were you miserable or challenged?

It definitely was challenging, but it led to a lot of opportunity and both personal and professional growth. When I reopened Fasano at the age of 20—which belonged to my grandfather and was sold by my father in 1968—I had a great challenge of reviving and reimagining a brand that was previously well known in a certain way from the past. When Fasano was sold, the brand was part of the negotiation. At the time, the buyers were a giant Italian company that bought it for the property, with no plans to continue the restaurant, impressive ballroom or brand identity. So, when I went back to negotiate and solely purchase the “Fasano” branding, the CEO responded that since they were a public company on the stock exchange, they couldn't give anything away for free but was authorized to sell it back. I explained we were not in a good financial situation, and he said he could sell it back to me for the price of an ice cream. And there you have it! 

Where did your knowledge of food and service come from once you decided to go into the restaurant business?

I learned a lot about the business from my grandparents. I lived with them for two years during my childhood, and that’s where my curiosity about my past really came from. I was born in Brazil, but it was during those years I really connected to my Italian roots. Both my grandparents and my father were Italian, and that really ignited my love for Italy, leading me to spend months at a time there when I was younger. Today, I try to go to Italy at least three times a year.
     My grandfather had six restaurants in São Paulo; following the closing of his restaurants, I followed my intuition and opened my own. There really isn’t a playbook to become a restaurateur. It’s challenging, and also completely fulfilling. 

How did the New York restaurant come about?

Following the closure of the Four Seasons, the owner of the building, Steven Roth, was looking for a new restaurant to occupy that space. He traveled the world and came to visit me in São Paulo. After this trip, he told me: The restaurant is yours! I started crying, I was so happy and I remember him saying, “Don’t cry, you deserve it!”

The corridor between the two dining rooms at Fasano, NY.

Were you concerned that luxurious Italian restaurants had become passé in the eyes of the media, after Covid and the multi million-dollar Del Posto closed? 

I wasn’t concerned about this; in fact, I firmly believed—and continue to this day—that there was an opportunity to bring our Italian heritage and hospitality to the Italian restaurant scene in NYC. I still see the desire for fine dining, perhaps in a more simple way, but there’s appetite for having that memorable experience.  

Do you believe that Italian fine dining is dying in New York or across the USA?

Not at all. I see the opposite, not only based on the feedback we receive from our guests, but with other great NYC restaurants, such as Marea and Casa Lever.

Are your guests fazed by the prices?

Our clientele understands the different standards of our restaurant. I suppose some people feel discontent when they don’t get what they pay for, but we consistently strive for the highest standard so our guests don’t feel that way.

How would you distinguish Fasano in terms of food and service from the numerous trattorias in Manhattan and the other boroughs?

We specialize in Northern Italian cuisine. Since I entered the restaurant industry over three decades ago, we’ve had an acute focus on both gastronomy and service. We approach the experience at our restaurant as “understated luxury,” emphasizing quality and attention to detail. My family is originally from Milan and first opened a restaurant in Brazil over 120 years ago. That heritage is steeped in what we do every day, to this day. Additionally, I also always dreamed about taking our know-how to the hotel world, and in 2004, I opened my first hotel in São Paulo.
     Italian cuisine tends to “travel badly” because, while it is simple, it is also very sophisticated and takes on different forms. We do everything we can to make authentic Northern Italian cuisine, using the most current techniques and concepts to make it as light as possible. An example is that garlic is not used in northern Italy, and we don't use it in our kitchens! We also do not use truffle oil; it doesn't authentically reflect the flavor of truffle and can taste chemical-like.

You said you tried to serve the Italian boiled dinner called bollito misto, but couldn’t sell a single one. What did that tell you?

It was a bit surprising, but it appears that the bollito misto is just not as accepted yet in NYC as it is in São Paulo, which is the biggest Italian city after Rome in population. Also, I believe that many of Brazil’s immigrants mostly came from Northern Italy, and that fact may have impacted the dish’s popularity there. 

Fasano, San Salvador

Do you feel the economy here and in Europe and South America is strong enough to sustain this kind of posh restaurant and hotel? How about Asia and the Middle East? 

Certainly in South America, our hotels and restaurants are received with great enthusiasm. For now, Asia and the Middle East are not part of the expansion plans. 

Have you and your partners decided to expand still further?

Yes, we’re incredibly excited about the group’s future. Our partnership with JHSF, which is one of the biggest, most prestigious real estate companies in Brazil, has allowed us to carry our philosophy to other cities in the world. Our next project is a hotel in Miami, set to open by the end of next year, and one in London, in 2025.

You’ve had some health scares. How has that changed your attitude toward life within the very arduous restaurant
business? 

Yes, absolutely. It’s impossible not to change after two liver transplants! I was very lucky; it had so much of an impact on me that I even changed my name from Rogério to Gero. I felt reborn. I really focus on taking care of myself, and that includes rest. I used to only sleep a few hours a night and go to bed at 5 a.m.; now, I wake up at 7 a.m. It’s like what David Bowie said: I learned that mornings do exist.

                                                     Fasano with the season's white truffles.

       “Well, the first incident had to do with a girl in the high school, a sophomore, I think, so she would have been about fifteen. And the word was that she had gotten pregnant and was going to have to leave the school. Now, believe me, this was not the first instance of such an occurrence at Sacred Heart, just as it isn’t in any other school in the world. Girls get in trouble, the family doesn’t know what to do, conferences are held with the priests for guidance, and the girl usually leaves school to have the baby. Sometimes she comes back. 
         “We had a lot of wealthy parents at Sacred Heart, so most of these girls were well taken care of, medically and every other way. But what made this instance different was that something about it was being kept very secret and the girl left campus very quickly.  And she was never spoken about. There seemed some shame attached to the incident.”
         “Did you ask what was going on?”
         “Several times,” said Joseph. “At first I just knew she was gone—she’d been in my English class, very good student—and the word was, yes, Celia had unfortunately gotten pregnant and had to leave school. More often than not in these cases, the name of the boy who got her pregnant was known. Not always a kid from the school, and sometimes an older guy from somewhere else. But this time, any discussion about Celia would be cut off with a shrug that, well, you know these things happen and the parents want to keep everything and everyone in the dark.
         “I suppose I was being naïve, Katie. I knew some of the priests were probably gay, though it was never a subject for discussion among us.  One or two left the priesthood, but they usually did so to marry a woman in the area or back in the States.”
         Katie interrupted, cautiously. “Well, assuming you were all trying to keep a vow of celibacy, did that subject come up?”
       “Oh, a great deal!” said Joseph. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how difficult celibacy is to keep. Fact is, we all considered it unnatural, this idea that by shunning marriage or women we were more completely devoted to Christ. We talked about it all the time, and everybody—myself included—needed to talk about it with each other, as well as to our confessors, who must have heard so many stories and such suffering under the vow that they rarely expressed much concern for transgressions as mortal sins. And you know the worst part of it, Katie? We never had any real human contact beyond quickly hugging a kid or his parents. The warm touch of another human being was lost to us.”
        As a young Catholic girl Katie had endured the same pangs of doubt and guilt about celibacy through puberty, high school and even into college, where she herself had determined that her sexuality was both natural and part of being a woman in the twentieth century.  In her own experience she knew of at least two girls who’d dropped out of high school to have babies out of wedlock.
         “So, did you find out what happened to Celia?” she asked.
         Joseph rubbed his temples and said, “Yes, yes, I did.”
         He went quiet, and Katie showed the palms of her hands to say, “So? What was it?”
         Joseph said slowly, grimacing, “She got pregnant by one of the priests.”
         Katie shook her head and said, “Oh, Christ.”
         “Yeah, well, Christ had nothing to do with it. His name was Father Raul Jimenez—I shouldn’t even dignify him by calling him ‘Father’—and, as the story went, Celia seduced him, he succumbed to temptation and she got pregnant.  Sent her away somewhere. Never returned to school.”
         “How old did you say she was?”
         “Fifteen.”
         “And they said she seduced him?”
         “That’s what we were told. Of course, there was never any actual investigation of what happened, and most of us didn’t believe a word of it. Worst of all, Jimenez never lost a beat. Kept teaching in the high school. No reprimand, no being sent off to repent, not even a three-day retreat. Like nothing happened.”
         Katie was more sickened than horrified. The idea of a pedophile priest was not something entirely new to her, and she’d heard of some being passed from parish to parish or school to school. Such instances were never spoken about among church members and no reason for a priest’s transfer was ever given, on the assumption that he was simply keeping to his vow of obedience, to be sent wherever he was needed by his superiors. 
         “And that’s why you left the Church?” Katie asked her old friend.
         Joseph sighed and said, “I wish I had. But, no, I accepted the incident as a rancid little story made up to protect Jimenez, and I accepted it as a moral burden I had to bear. I couldn’t prove anything different from the official story line, so I kept my mouth shut and went on with my work.”
         “What was Jimenez like after that?”
         “Just the same. Not a bit different than before. I still saw him with the students, giving them all a hug, patting them on the butt, even giving them a little kiss on the forehead. Like nothing’d happened.”
         Joseph shook his head. “But a lot more did happen. And every time a girl, or sometimes a young boy, left the school without reason, I began to have suspicions of what was going on under my nose—and the noses of all the other good priests and administrators—but everything seemed to be clamped down. The Philippines is overwhelmingly Catholic, you know.
         “There was this Franciscan priest named Hendricks, worked in Naval, who was said to have young boys over to his residence and order them to take baths with him.  Then he’d molest them in bed. No one said anything.
         “After two or three years of this, there were a couple of instances when certain priests would leave the community about the same time as the girl or boy did. They seemed to be tied in together, and it was beyond anyone’s comprehension that, if there had been a sexual incident, it couldn’t possibly be the fault of the student.”
         “You never discussed this with your colleagues?” asked Katie.
         “I knew enough not to bother to pose such questions with the superiors or the administrators, who would simply say that each incident was a sad story and had been handled as discreetly as possible. They refused to point fingers and told us all to pray for both parties.”
         “And the priests within the community?”
         “Yeah, after one too many such incidents we did speak about it to each other, tentatively at first, then with some strong concerns that the priests we were living with and teaching with might be pedophiles and rapists.  If they were only gay, nobody gave a rat’s ass. Those priests had to deal with their sins by themselves. But if they were preying on children, that was becoming an issue many of us needed to contend with.”
         “So what’d you do?”
         “As a community? Nothing. But then one day about six months ago, I went into the gym to get something and heard sounds in the locker room.”
         “What kind of sounds?”
         “Moaning, crying, one adult voice, one a young person’s. I heard the young one say, ‘Father, I don’t want to do this,’ and the older one whispering, ‘Ssshhh, it’s all right, my son, it is nothing wrong.’”
         “What’d you do?”
         “ I walked in quietly, turned the corner, and there was a priest, a guy named Father Ryan, with a fourteen-year-old student, a boy, on his lap, trying to unzip the boys’ pants.”
         Katie’s eyes rolled. “Oh, My God! So what happened?”
         “Ryan—his first name was Francis, who’d been the priest who showed me the ropes when I first arrived at the school—stood up quickly, turned the boy, whose name was Miguel, away from my sight and said, ‘Joseph, can I help you with something?’ I glared at him but didn’t want to make a scene in front of the boy, so I just said, ‘Miguel, come with me. I need you to help me with something.’ He ran to me, then right out the door, fumbling with putting his shirt back in his pants, and I shoo-ed him away. Then I turned back to Ryan and demanded to know what was going on.  And, Katie, he just looked at me and said, flat out, ‘I was just helping Miguel get into his tennis uniform, that’s all.’ Then he raised his voice and said, ‘What the hell do you think I was doing?’”
         Joseph shook his head violently, as if to get the image of that moment out of his head.
         “So what’d you say to him?” asked Katie.
         “Katie, I just said, ‘Francis, you disgust me,’ and turned on my heels and walked out. I was shaking as much from anger as from a kind of terror, as if I was at a crisis point in my life and would have to beg help from God to figure out what to do.”
         “You mean you didn’t go to your superiors? Even go to the police?”
         Joseph snickered and said, “Honestly, Katie, what had I really seen? I knew what was going on but had not a shred of evidence of anything improper.”
         “What about speaking to Miguel?”
         “Yeah, I thought of that and I found him a little while later in an empty classroom, crying on his desk. I asked him what was the matter and he said, ‘Nothing.’ I asked him if Father Ryan had hurt him in some way, he just shook his head.  And when I tried to press him on it and tell him I might be able to help, he screamed at me—‘Let me alone, let me alone!’—and ran out the door.”