The Man Keeping a 105-Year-Old Italian Restaurant Alive

[bright music]

Basilio Inn has been open since 1921.

It is the oldest restaurant on Staten Island.

Around the end of October,

we'll be starting our 106th season.

It's an Italian restaurant.

The bestsellers will be the homemade pastas,

in general, all of them,

the ossobuco, the branzino, the zucchini blossoms.

This is a family business.

My father purchased a restaurant about 50 years ago,

but then in the past 24 years, I've been here every day.

It's going back in time when you come in here.

You're not gonna find places like this much longer,

so yeah, nostalgic.

[bright music continues]

[gate clangs]

Hello.

Welcome to Basilio Inn.

[gate squeaks]

My name is Maurizio Asperti,

and Basilio Inn has been here since 1921.

Come on in, let's start the day.

[upbeat music]

So I've been working here on and off 50 years,

longer than I can remember.

This was a carriage house

for a mansion that was on the road,

but the restaurant kept the isolated feeling

because it cannot be seen from the main road,

and unless you know there's a restaurant here,

there's no way of finding this.

Okay, so we're gonna start the day by picking up

the zucchini blossoms that are going to be served tonight.

It's actually gonna be a special the whole summer.

[upbeat music continues]

These are zucchini flowers.

These are the males.

In the summertime, we pick zucchini flowers,

and the zucchini, here's one right now.

We haven't planted in multiple places,

and I only pick what I expect to use for the day.

Reason being that, one, we stuff them with cheeses,

which has moisture, and if we pick too many,

then they get soggy, and they don't last as long.

[leaves rustle]

[gate squeaks]

This is a bocce court, and it used to be very popular

back in the 30s and 40s.

It was mostly Italian immigrants that used to come down

from Manhattan or Brooklyn and spend the summers upstairs.

We removed one of the bocce courts

so that we could grow more food.

I am from Napoli, a large city in Italy,

and they make it just in a batter and fried.

I guess we... [laughs]

In New York, we used to have stuffed and without anchovies.

It seems that we are bored, the anchovies in New York.

I don't know why.

I'm stuffing the flowers with ricotta cheese,

parmigiano, and mozzarella, they're all blended,

black pepper for the aroma and the flavor.

I'm telling you, I got black pepper in here,

because I don't want anybody to think,

Oh, there's an ant in here.

[upbeat music]

Okay, we're all done.

They're ready to be placed in a batter and fried,

but they're now going in the fridge

ready for service tonight.

[upbeat music continues]

So we deal with Delfino's making raviolis.

Ravioli is another dish that, when I was growing up,

was a time-consuming dish,

mostly used in the north of Italy,

but the majority of the pastiera pie,

the pastas that had the filling in, were made up north.

So now, he has made the dough,

and he's gonna run it through.

This is just a very tiny batch.

When we make a batch, we make maybe 50 orders of ravioli.

So this one here can be stuffed with many things.

Sometimes, around October,

we make it with the pumpkin that you saw this morning

or butternut squash.

Today, we're doing a spinach and ricotta,

because they're the ones that we have on the menu.

We could do with the different sauces on this.

We do either a fresh tomato or a brown butter.

So Delfino's gonna finish the ravioli.

I'm gonna prep for the bucatini.

The bucatini that we make are a little wider

than the ones that you buy in the store.

We put in the flour.

This is a durum wheat, super fine.

This gets mixed with about a third of water.

When we make pasta on Monday,

we might need to make it again on Saturday,

and then if we had to make a lot, we freeze it,

even if it's used two days later.

[bright music]

It's early afternoon, the bucatini almost done.

We need to go upstairs doing the final touch

before we open up for service at 3:00.

[bright music continues]

So I start my day by having an espresso or two or three.

It is an integral part of my waking up,

and I check the reservations,

and see what's needed for the restaurant for the day.

[phone rings]

Hello, Basilio.

[Caller] Hi, I'm calling to make a reservation.

I'm an automated service provided by Google,

and this call is monitored and recorded

to improve Google services.

Do you have an available table for 7:0 PM?

Yes.

For how many people? Yeah.

How many people? It's gonna be four people.

And the name?

The name. Okay.

So do you need the name then?

Yes. The first name is Hello.

That's H-E-L-L-O. And the phone number?

[Caller] First name is Hello, H-E-L-L-O.

Okay, got it. Yeah.

All set, thank you.

The reservation come from artificial intelligence,

a bot that will make the calls and reserve the table.

I will say that I'm getting maybe 25%

of the reservation through Google now.

The restaurant was purchased

by my father about 50 years ago.

He worked in restaurant and ships, actually.

That's why he got all the ships on the wall.

He always wanted to have a restaurant.

So it was a dream of his, and the opportunity

presented itself with this place.

I made a promise to him that we will keep it running,

but, eventually, it's gonna come to pass, you know?

Again, if I hit the lottery tomorrow,

we're not shooting any more videos.

[upbeat music]

This is the founder of the restaurant, Basilio.

This is in a backyard.

So these bocce courts are the bocce courts that

we showed before, but, now, there's only one

that's much narrower.

These people playing bocce, they're all wearing a tie.

There was a decor that no longer exists,

different etiquette, different time.

[upbeat music continues]

Some years ago, I found this recently in the attic,

we received a letter from Bon Appetit

requesting a recipe for our tiramisu,

which we never replied to,

and then you came along.

So I don't know, synchronicity or whatever it's called.

[Interviewer] Well, I guess, now I think about it,

you are gonna be in Bon Appetit.

It's just 34 years later.

Yeah, yeah, so I can't escape it. [chuckles]

[upbeat music]

It is now 12:00.

Service will begin at 3:00.

The rest of the staff will be coming in in about an hour,

and that's when other things will start.

Well, it seems that my eyes are dotting all over

and noticing little imperfections here and there,

little things that shouldn't be there or should,

but one of the things that get checked is that

if the tables wobble, if the table

has all the silverware, if it has Basilio Inn on it,

and then over here where the arches are,

that's because the carriage house from the mansion,

and that was added on about 70 years ago.

So minor things have taken place.

It still retains the old, very old feeling.

[upbeat music]

This is where the meats get cut and prepped

and has been sanded down a few times.

It's an old block, about 38, maybe even 40 years old.

Saul has been with us for a number of years

and is getting ready to prep pork shanks,

pork ossobuco, if you will.

We put it over mashed potato with porcini mushrooms.

So it's got a very earthy flavor.

We gonna clean it up, remove the excess fat.

These are cooked many places in Europe and in Italy.

It was an inexpensive cut of meat

that was served with a special spoon

to remove the marrow, the bone marrow.

That spoon is called assature.

Assature is a tax collector.

So it takes everything out of you,

and we gonna toss it in flour

and give it a quick frying just to coat the outside,

and then here is a pot where we putting in the sofrito.

Frito is like a mirepoix.

In goes the olive oil, the onions,

the carrots, the celery.

So we're putting wine on it,

and then that gets placed in there

as the wine begins to evaporate,

and then we gonna put it in the tomato sauce and braise it.

So it's a long process, and then it cooks for a while.

That's why it needs the prep and time.

[upbeat music]

We have people already coming in.

We're gonna do a duck breast with a fig sauce.

This is something that it's done when it's ordered.

It's not pre-prepped.

We're gonna do as soon as the order comes right here.

It will be done with a sauce with flour, figs, butter,

white wine, cherry, shallots,

and a little veal stock.

It then gets reduced, and the breast is cooked separately,

and then added to the sauce.

Duck is the kind of meat that I enjoy

because it doesn't taste like a bird.

It tastes more like beef.

It's richer.

So this is the branzino.

This is one of the most popular fish

we sell at the restaurant.

It is imported.

This one here happens to come from Spain.

We get the whole fish, put some garlic in it,

some lemons, and it goes on a hot grill.

I personally prefer the whole fish.

I think it comes over to the table.

You look at the fish, it's you know what you're getting,

and it smells better.

To cook it evenly, it starts from the top

where the bone is, and then we turn it.

So it's a pretty simple, straightforward process.

Doesn't require any sauces, although, sometimes,

we make sauces that people request,

but then it's a delicate fish.

It overpowers it.

Right now, this one gets just plated, and it's done.

It's ready to go.

We call the wait, and then they come in, out.

[upbeat music]

The prep for tonight's dinner has been done.

It's completed.

People are coming in, and thank you for coming.

We'll see you at a different time.

[upbeat music continues]

Goodnight.

[upbeat music continues]