Draft-pick for chef at Sirio Ristorante gets hero welcome at Le Cirque last night.

          He’d just arrived from Verona, Sirio Maccioni’s hand-picked toque for the new Sirio Ristorante in the Pierre Hotel: Filippo Gozzoli, trim and mephistophelean with his shaved head and dark muzzle of beard. Sirio was showing him off at Le Cirque last night, introducing the 39-year-old  Cremona-born chef around before taking him off for dinner at Le Bernardin.

          “We’re showing him New York,” said son Mauro Maccioni, slim and elegant in his close-cut Italian suit, but still sporting a black eye...."from a fall", he said.

          Le Caprice doesn’t seem to be rushing to move. But Adam Tihany is already working on a Felliniesque look for the awkwardly narrow space as FloFab reported. That means the hoped for spring opening may stretch through the summer, as Grub St. predicted.

          Gozzoli had worked at Harry’s Bar and other clubs in London before moving on the Hotel Bauer in Venice. After a star chef spotlight at the Park Hyatt Milano, he had recently moved to the Hotel Villa del Quar Arquade, a Relais & Chateaux property outside of Verona in the heart of Valpolicella.  There he defined his three golden rules as curiosity, dedication and discipline. A seafood carbonara was a dish his customers favor, he told an interviewer. That will go well with the pizzas Sirio has already promised.  I wonder how Gozzoli will take it when he discovers that Sirio is always the chef, as Craig Hopkins observed wryly, a few days before his departure after three years as executive chef at Le Cirque.

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