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Silvano Marchetto, Owner of Glitzy Greenwich Village Trattoria, Dies at 77
Da Silvano was a celebrity hangout, drawing boldface names like Madonna, Barry Diller and Yoko Ono. It was often referred to as the downtown Elaine’s.
Silvano Marchetto, an Italian-born restaurateur whose Greenwich Village trattoria, Da Silvano, became a star-studded canteen and a Page Six fixture over four decades, died on June 4 in Florence, Italy. He was 77.
His daughter, Leyla Marchetto, said the cause was heart failure.
Akin to a downtown Elaine’s, Da Silvano, which opened in 1975, was one of New York’s reigning haunts for the art, fashion, media and film crowds. And Mr. Marchetto, a hard-living Tuscan who parked his Ferrari ornamentally outside his establishment, was its rustic host and mascot.
He wore Hawaiian shirts and yellow pants, and his wrists were covered in silver bracelets and jewelry. After he fired waiters in fits of passion, he soon missed them, sending emissaries to lure them back. And when everyone from Rihanna to Barry Diller to Patti Smith frequented his restaurant, he greeted them with a friendly growl as he nursed a glass of wine.
Before social media democratized the public’s access to the lives of celebrities, tabloids like The New York Post and The Daily News relied on Da Silvano as a source of juicy gossip. The patio tables beneath its yellow awning were coveted seating for those who wanted to be seen, and the pictures snapped by the paparazzi posted up along the sidewalk notified New Yorkers about how their favorite celebrities dated, argued, wheedled and canoodled.
“Page Six covered us so much, people asked if I owned The New York Post,” Mr. Marchetto (pronounced MARK-et-oh) once said. “But it was good for Da Silvano, whatever they wrote.”
Mr. Marchetto’s roster of regulars included Calvin Klein, Anna Wintour, Lindsay Lohan, Joan Didion, Madonna, Yoko Ono, Harvey Weinstein, Susan Sontag, Lou Reed, Salman Rushdie, Stephanie Seymour and Larry Gagosian.
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