There is a corner of SoHo where, for a few minutes, you could almost believe you were in a small square in southern Italy. It is the Old Fashion Cafe, and behind its counter stands Antonello Iacca, who grew up among the tables of another Old Fashion, the one his parents and his uncle opened in Taranto, in Puglia, back in 1998. Today, together with his brothers, he has rebuilt that world in Manhattan.
What he carried across the Atlantic was less a business plan than a way of doing things. Growing up behind that counter, he says, taught him that a bar isn’t just a place where drinks are served, but a place where relationships are built. He watched his parents and his uncle know every customer by name, remember their tastes and always make them feel at home. It’s this philosophy, he explains, that he brought with him to New York, the Italian hospitality made of attention, warmth and authenticity.
The family side of the story matters to him more than the entrepreneurial one. For me, he says, the finest achievement was being able to bring my brothers to America and share this dream with them. The Old Fashion Cafe isn’t just a business project, it’s a family project. Seeing them by his side every day, building something that comes from their shared roots, is, in his words, the greatest satisfaction he could have wished for.
At the center of it all is a word that doesn’t translate easily: aperitivo. For us the Italian-style aperitivo is first of all a moment of sharing, Iacca says. The cocktail is important, but it’s only one part of the experience. It’s the essence of the dolce far niente, taking a break, setting aside your commitments and living in the moment. What he wants, he explains, is for every guest to feel as if they were in an Italian piazza, with a good drink, something to share and the right company. More than serving cocktails, we try to bring a way of life to the table.
That conviction didn’t appear overnight. Iacca arrived in New York in 2016 and spent years behind other counters before opening his own place, and one experience in particular stayed with him. The most important was without a doubt the one behind the counter at Ulivo, he recalls, a place where Italian identity isn’t just a concept, but is lived every day. There he understood how Americans see Italy, and how much they appreciate two values that for Italians come naturally, hospitality and quality. After those years, he felt the time had come to take a step further, and to bring across the ocean not only an idea of the aperitivo, but the sense of family that had always defined the Old Fashion in Taranto.
Ask him for the drink that best tells the soul of the place, and he doesn’t hesitate. It’s the Negroni Sbiancato, a cocktail he says was included among the hundred most important aperitifs in the world, a recognition that makes the whole team proud. For him it stands for class, elegance and balance, drawing on the great Italian tradition but interpreting it in a contemporary way. It is, he says, a drink that perfectly tells the soul of the Old Fashion Cafe, the respect for their roots, the attention to quality and the desire to offer an experience that stays in the memory. In the end that’s what we try to do every day, he adds, to bring a piece of Italy to New York, one aperitivo at a time.
As for what comes next, his ambition is simple and warm at once. He would like the Old Fashion Cafe to become a point of reference, a place where Italians can feel a little at home and where Americans can have an authentic experience of Italian culture. The United States, he notes, is a country that rewards those who know how to innovate without forgetting their roots. And he believes it’s precisely from the meeting between Italian tradition and an international vision that the best ideas can be born.