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Photo Courtesy of Greg Powers
Mike Isabella, executive chef of Graffiato in Washington DC, opens up new location in downtown Richmond.
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Photo Courtesy of Greg Powers
Mike Isabella demonstrates the passion and joy he brings to the table.
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Photo Courtesy of Tim Hill
One of the new dishes Isabella will be bringing to his Richmond restaurant is the Frutti di Mar which features octopus, shrimp, scallops, Pepperdew peppers, celery and artichoke.
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Photo Courtesy of Tim Hill
The cauliflower agnolotti is prepared with almonds, brown butter and caperberries.
If you’re a River City foodie or just a fan of reality television’s popular cooking competitions, then you may be eagerly counting down the days until the opening of Mike Isabella’s Graffiato Restaurant, located in the former Popkin Tavern space. If you remember Isabella from season six of Bravo’s Top Chef, you might have recognized some of that craziness. And, I mean that in the nicest possible way. Isabella is a colorful character…literally. “I’m tatted,” he says. “I have lots of art on my body.”
Isabella has demonstrated his ability to produce a self-proclaimed “crazy, good” dining experience (I borrowed that phrase from the Jersey-born chef’s first cookbook, Mike Isabella’s Crazy Good Italian Cookbook), and the D.C. Graffiato is one of the hottest restaurants in the nation’s capital.
Even the name Graffiato pays homage to Isabella’s love of skin art. “The word means scratched,” he says. “It was the original form of graffiti…before the days of spray paint cans.”
Of his first appearance on Top Chef, Isabella admits, “I was young. I didn’t perform the way I wanted to.” But, he says, the producer recognized his talent and invited him back for season eight – the All-Star Season. “I went back to win…to be the best,” he says. And, he made it all the way to the final episode, finishing as runner up to chef Richard Blais.
Isabella says of his two seasons on the show, which catapulted him to culinary stardom,
“Top Chef didn’t change me, but it changed the way people thought about me as a chef. It was a fun time.”
He also says the grueling competitions which continued week after week, challenged him more than anything had ever challenged him in his life and also made him a stronger business person. The restaurant business is indeed a business. Besides creating magic in the kitchen, Isabella successfully operates Graffiato, as well as two other D.C. eateries, a Greek restaurant called Kapnos and a 20-seat classic Italian sandwich shop that’s simply named G.
Of his expansion into our city, he says, “I thought Richmond would be a perfect place. There are a lot of great restaurants and I want to be a part of that.” The local Graffiato, which is slated to open in late spring or early summer, will be located on West Broad Street in the space formerly occupied by Popkin’s Tavern. “About 50 percent of the menu will be identical to what we’re doing (in D.C.),” Isabella says. And you can be assured that here you’ll enjoy what he describes as “classic Italian flavors, with a twist, prepared Jersey style.”
Most things won’t change, but there will be some differences. “I want to see what the people in Richmond enjoy, so I’ve been going to a lot of the restaurants,” he explains.
“Graffiato is not simply going to be a restaurant with my name on it,’’ Isabella promises. “I’m going to be down here a lot.” And while he will be bringing one of his chefs to the area for starters, he’s looking for Richmonders to become a vital part of his team. “This is Richmond, I want that feel. I want that vibe. I want that love. I want to keep everything as local as possible.”
One thing that Isabella is bringing with him is the open-kitchen feel. “Guests want to be part of the experience. All of my restaurants have open kitchens,” he says. “In Richmond, half of the kitchen will be out in the dining area. It’ll be hard to get a seat at the chef counter.”
Chances are it’s going to be hard to get a seat anywhere in the restaurant. “Graffiato will have an industrial feel’’ Isabella predicts. “It will have great rock ‘n’ roll. It will be crowded. It will be loud.”
And, you can bet, with Mike Isabella at the helm, it will be fun. “Everything (about operating a restaurant) is business,” he says. “But you want to have fun.” Some of his earliest kitchen memories were of the fun he had helping his grandmother make meatballs at the age of 6. He recalls family gatherings where all the other children were out playing, and all he wanted to do was be in the kitchen.
As he approached his teen years, when asked by relatives and friends what he wanted to do when he grew up, Isabella recalls, “I didn’t know anything then about celebrity chefs, but I told them I wanted to cook.”
He admits the business can be stressful. “You’re working long hours. You’re working holidays. You’re working weekends,’’ he says. “Sometimes there’ll be five on the line in the kitchen. There’ll be sweating, yelling and screaming. It’s an intense lifestyle. You have to love what you do.”
So, get ready Richmond. Mike Isabella is about to share some of that love with us, and that sounds like a crazy good idea to me.
Click here to view an exclusive recipe from Mike Isabella’s Crazy Good Italian Cookbook!