A Table In Heaven with Sirio, Mauro and the Family At Le Cirque

Anyone who knows me knows that celebrity of any kind leaves me lukewarm at best and cold at worst. If you mention the word "celebrity" in the same breath as "restaurant," you can bet I'll be running for the door. Give me a small, intimate restaurant, a table a deux or al fresco or a simple home cooked meal around the dining room table with good friends and real conversation, over some big celebrity restaurant any day.

But Tuesday night I attended with family the New York screening of a new documentary film by Andrew Rossi and Charlie Marquart called A Table in Heaven about Sirio Maccioni and his family---including his wife Egi and three sons Mauro, above right, Mario, and Marco---who run the famed restaurant in New York known as Le Cirque.

Le Cirque is, was and probably always will be a celebrity restaurant run by celebrity restaurateurs. There's no other way to put it. The next night on Wednesday, after attending the screening, we had the pleasure of dining at the new Le Cirque located on the Bloomberg Building on 54th. I had a wonderful dinner and even better time. But I would never have gone there were it not for seeing A Table in Heaven the night before.

The film will only add to the celebrity mystique of the Maccionis, especially of papa Sirio. I was crazy about it because it was an honest portrayal of people being themselves in the best and worst of times. There was never an attempt to squelch the squabbling or their inter-generational struggles, and occasional Italian style commotions. This is a family who is what it is and in the truest sense, long on hard work and even longer on personality.

I didn't expect to like any of them, but I came away wishing I'd been born Italian.

This film is not so much about the evolution of a well-known celebrity restaurant in New York, as the evolution of an Italian family started by the patriarch when he literally got off the boat--a Italian cruise ship he was working on as a waiter--- in New York City.

The restaurant business is only the backdrop to the real story of family, food, feuding and fun. And because of this, it has universal appeal that transcends time and place.

It's Americana at its best. Legal immigration and assimilation at its best. Italian Americana at its most real. And Sirio is the closest thing I'll probably ever come to a real life godfather, Italian patriarch of the first order. And he is a real character---ready, willing and able to tell you what he thinks whether you want to hear it or not. He doesn't mince words.

I liked these people. Liked Sirio, his (adorable) sons and of course the glue that holds the whole family together, Egi. Behind every good Italian family business and household, you can bet there's a good woman. And Egi is it.

If you ever have the chance to see this film, don't miss it--and learn why it's called "a table in heaven"---whether you ever go to Le Cirque or not. Sure glad I did.

Great job on the film, the filming, the editing and the final work are terrific, Charlie and Andrew!

A small link here.