Barbetta

 On Saturday, November 14, 1964, Joan Freedman, a college friend, invited me to join her and her parents for dinner at the Barbetta restaurant at 321 West 46th Street in Manhattan.  

Many years later I returned to Barbetta with my ex-wife Bonita.

More recently I again, this time with my wife Cristina, had dinner at Barbetta before attending a Broadway show.

During all three of my trips to this restaurant, I was impressed by the image a woman who acted as a forceful manager.  It turned out to be Laura Maioglio, the owner of a restaurant that was opened by her father in 1906.

Laura, the second-generation New York City restaurateur whose Barbetta became a theater district mainstay and, with its European-style grand décor and rich Piedmont-region cuisine, one of the city’s first upscale Italian restaurants, died on January 17th at her home in Manhattan. She was 93 years old.

The restaurant is expected to remain open to the public only through February 27th.  Laura had no children to continue her family's legacy.

After the death of her father in 1962, Laura took over Barbetta and directed its chiefly male staff.  Few female restaurateurs have remained so intimately involved for as long as she did.

“She was as strong as a nail, the toughest woman I ever met in my life,” Leopold Frokic, a former sommelier at Barbetta, said of Ms. Maioglio. “Imagine a woman managing 50 men, immigrants from countries where the woman doesn’t tell them what to do. None of those men could take her for a ride.”

Laura was born and raised in New York. She attended the Brearley School and graduated from Bryn Mawr College magna cum laude with a degree in Art History.

Throughout her life, Laura continued to frequent her family home in Piemonte, spending extended periods in Europe and Italy, including a year studying at the University of Florence. Her long sojourns in Italy, particularly in Piemonte, have provided her with first-hand knowledge of Italian food and wine, especially that of her native region, Piemonte.