Osteria Danny Serves Up Italy’s Delicious & Diverse Bounty
Danny and Patti Petrosino embody the diverse, delicious and inclusive spirit of Italy in America. Like the best Italian-American dishes, the pair introduce the intuitive culinary genius and flavor of Italy to the creative zeal and bounty of America, and create a lip-smacking and distinct confection that is at home in both places, but entirely in and of itself.
Together, they’ve been shaping palates in the United States and Italy for more than three decades, and since 2016 the Capital Region has been soaking up their unique blend of homey hospitality and gastronomic excellence at Osteria Danny.
“Patti and I set up Osteria Danny in our own way, and it reflects who we are and what we stand for,” Danny tells Edible. “All of the people who work here are real in every sense, our food is real, and it changes with the seasons, what looks good and what I feel like cooking. Everything is unscripted.”
Striking a pose, indeed, feels like the one thing you maybe couldn’t get away with at Danny’s, where the rock ‘n’ roll is cranked up, the wine is flowing, the vibe is convivial, and food is spectacular, if at once on and off trend.
On trend in that the pair think small, local and personal when it comes to their food sources (and well, everything else).
“I look for what’s good, but I also look for what’s privately owned because I don’t want to have a problem and not be able to call the owner of the company and get them on the phone,” Danny explains. “It’s how I approach everything. Some of our staff members we’ve known for 30 years. Some of them have never worked in a restaurant. But they’re all personalities, and they love what they do; they think of it as a service of hospitality, not just a job, and our customers, many of whom have become like family, respond to that.”
His people-first approach paid off in an unexpected way during the COVID-19 crisis, when sales overall for restaurants were down $240 billion in 2020, and more than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments were closed.
“During the pandemic, the supply chain was completely disrupted, but because I’ve been working with farmers and smaller distributors and purveyors, I was able to get what I needed,” he notes. He also got an order from his longtime contact at BelGioioso Cheese for 35 to 40 dinners for two months during the height of the pandemic.
“They were putting the finishing touches on a cheese plant in Glenville, and they were flying in workers from Wisconsin to finalize everything,” he explains. (The $25 million, 100,000-square-foot cheese manufacturing plant is adding dozens of jobs to the region and helps localize the chain of distribution.)
The community of Osteria lovers also responded, ordering takeout and keeping the kitchen humming when they weren’t fully shut down.
But Danny also doesn’t shy away from controversy. He is definitely off trend when it comes to veal. For the uninitiated, veal comes from young calves, often raised in crates. He sources his from purveyors who raise their young cattle naturally, without crates.
“I do what I want to do,” he says. “I do a lot of veal, and many restaurants just don’t offer it, but we love it, and it always sells very well.”
The “I do what I want to do,” may read Sid Vicious on the page, but in practice, it feels refreshing, even delightful, amid an increasingly siloed off, aggressively politicized world.
In 2018, Danny was the sole American invited to be an honored guest chef at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, an international university founded by the Slow Food organization and based in Pollenzo, Italy. (Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization founded in 1989 to honor local food culture and traditions.)
Danny spent his time there cooking for the students and university staff but also exploring all areas of science, culture, politics, economics and ecology, in relation to food, and exchanging ideas and recipes with the 24 other chefs from around the world enrolled in the program.
The summer in Pollenzo at once broadened and solidified his approach to global Italian-American cuisine.
“My dad was 100% Italian, from Salerno, the youngest of eight kids and the only one born here,” Danny says. “My mom was Irish. Patti’s father is the only member of the family who came to America. Most of her extended family is still in Sicily, and when we go there, we’ll sit down to dinner with 30 people.”
Together, Danny and Patti—who runs and guides the front of the house with the same rigor and warmth with which Danny runs the back—bring in every region of Italy, with its distinct regional cuisine, to Osteria Danny.
“We change the menu constantly, and depending on the season, you may see one section of Italy featured more prominently,” he explains. “In the summer, it’s all about the local produce and fish, so there’s a Southern Italian and Sicilian influence. In the fall, we feature a lot of classics from Northern Italy, and they often have a German influence.”
Reading Osteria Danny’s menu is like opening a treasure trove of Boot classics, reimagined for upstate New York’s seasons.
There’s bucatini with broccoli rabe and Italian sausage, lamb chops with fingerling potatoes, veal Parm, baked crusted cod with corn risotto.
And if you ask nicely, he may even make you something off menu.
We did, and he and Patti agreed to share their recipes for lasagna. Danny’s is from his mother. Patti’s is one her mother made. Both are stunning.
