The Connection

It is 8:30 on Friday night and the customers look expectedly toward the kitchen. Five bar stools are perched in front of a silent TV where several customers sit drinking Perronis and watching the third World Series game. Tables of diners crowd the small room as Francesco Abbruzzetti, owner and chef at Trattoria da Franco on S. Washington Street, appears. Daryl Ott, the Friday night piano player and operatic barotone, runs his fingers up and down the keyboard. They sing together, "it's time to say goodnight in old Napoli.” Abbruzzetti swings a white towel around his head and leans toward a customer with a la-la-la.

Abbruzzetti has just come from the kitchen where he was working with his cooks Juan Amador and Victor Rivera, "but on a night like tonight, they can handle it all themselves." Small cards are passed to the front of the room with song requests. The piano player has launched into "Lullaby of Broadway." Abbruzzetti first began singing when he lived in Rome and served as an altar boy at the Sistine Chapel when he was 10 or 12 years old. "At the Vatican you sang when you were an altar boy."

Pictures of Abbruzzetti's father in World War II are crowded together on the wall with photos of people who have eaten at Trattoria da Franco over the last 32 years. Abbruzzetti said he grew up in Rome and his father who was a colonel in the Italian Army was a friend of Rommel. "Here let me show you the picture." The faded black and white photo was dated Oct. 5, 1942. "This is my father on the end." Then one day Rommel asked his father if he was a Fascist and his father said, "No, I am an Italian,” and that was the end of that. Most of Abbruzzetti's relatives were kicked out of Italy or killed. Abbruzzetti's uncle told him to join the French Foreign Legion when he turned 18. "I was in Paris, bored and had a fight with my uncle. I didn't really like it." Abbruzzetti came to the United States when he was about 50.

A customer stops to chat as he walks out the door. BJ Dougherty says, "I first came here in 2002 for chocolate martinis with a girl I ended up marrying. I can walk here from my house. It is constant, a magical place, truly what I love about living in Alexandria."

As Dougherty opens the door, Abbruzzetti says, where you goin'?" Abbruzzetti adds, “We have some famous people who eat here. "I cooked for Mama Bush and for Pavorotti and President Reagan's daughter, Maureen, who came with her boyfriend. Again, "here, let me show you the picture." Business is a lot of the same familiar faces but Abbruzzetti says, "business has gone down a little. It's not the same."

Abbruzzetti says they have made the same kind of Italian food for over 30 years. "We make real Italian food. A lot of people say they make Italian food but they don't." The menu features food from all over Italy — seafood from the north such as misto mare which is a special tonight and all the pasta dishes from southern Italy. Sometimes they travel to Baltimore to get the seafood. He says when people bring the family, the kids "always like the spaghetti and meatballs." Osso buco is so tender tonight it cuts with a fork. Homemade lobster ravioli in Vodka sauce simmers on the front left burner. Tomorrow night they are having a Halloween party. He says, ”We will design the special menu tomorrow,” and this month it combines with opera night which is always the last Saturday of the month.

The evening moves on, and more memories are created for the worn scrapbook of pictures that he keeps inside the front door. In the meantime the piano player has moved on to "gonna take a sentimental journey, gonna set my mind at ease."