You might recognize Chef Fabio Viviani, who is soon to open Italian restaurant Zingaro in Madisonville, from multiple appearances on “Top Chef” or several other cooking shows like “Chopped,” “Beat Bobby Flay” and “Cutthroat Kitchen: All-Star Tournament.” You may also know him from one of his best-selling cookbooks, or even from one of his 40 other restaurants in Chicago, New York and California.
But Viviani doesn’t want you to focus on any of that.
“I’m not that cocky. I don’t think there’s a major reason you should know about me unless you want to be in proximity to delicious food,” he said. “It’s not like I’m a destination resort chef, right? Like, ‘ohhh, you gotta go see Fabio.’ But once people experience what we offer, they appreciate our food. I don’t want to just put my name on a building and run away, chasing fame. The goal is to build a place that lasts a very long time.”
Born and raised in Florence, Italy, his family got him involved in the restaurant business at 11 years old—”we didn’t grow up with much money, so I had to get to work as soon as possible”—as a dishwasher. By 18, he had opened his first restaurant in Italy. By 27, he had created several major restaurants in the region, which he then sold in a package deal.
Shortly after selling his restaurants in Italy, he took a vacation to the U.S., where he ended up falling in love with a nearby Italian restaurant that needed “on and off consulting” and eventually moved to start his career anew in America.
For his new restaurant, Zingaro, Viviani isn’t trying to “reinvent the wheel.”
“My menu is a combination of shit I love to make and shit other people love to eat… it’s really a hit list of all the best tunes from every region of Italy, north to south. We didn’t create anything you haven’t heard of, we’ve just perfected it all to be served the way I grew up eating it and the way you’d expect to have it in Italy with some added showmanship and tableside preparation,” he said.
That doesn’t mean the menu comprised of Italian staples like pasta, steak and seafood items is anything to scoff at, though.
Highlights at Zingaro include the handmade pasta dishes, the branzino, wagyu meatballs, the caprese salad (“name another restaurant in Ohio that hand-pulls mozzarella in front of you before serving you a caprese,” Viviani says), and the pork ossobuco with saffron and bone marrow risotto. But the dish he won’t stop talking about is the chianti smoked porkchop.
“You try our porkchop, you’ll give up filet mignon for the rest of your life. You’ll never have another porkchop again, and if you do, you will be disappointed because our porkchop is absolute cinema,” he said. “It could not be more tender or juicy. It’s fucking annoying how good our porkchop is, because when you leave, that’s all you’ll be thinking about. I’m telling you, I’m not overselling it.”
Adjacent to Zingaro is the restaurant’s sister bar, Viaggio, which focuses on craft cocktails and wines from across the globe.
The bar features an expansive cocktail menu that offers interesting options like negronis on tap. Viviani’s favorite service at the bar, however, is a wine machine that will allow guests to try “all the fancy stuff” that would normally be cost-prohibitive.
“You can skip around a few regions of Italy and try multiple wines without spending $1,000 on a nice bottle… now it can just be one glass for $30,” Viviani said. “And we have cocktails that span from the West Coast all the way to Thailand and Norway. You can’t try them all at once, because then we’re gonna get you out on a wheelbarrow. But we want you to come back and try more. You could come ten times and never be bored.”
A major reason Viviani chose to open a restaurant in Cincinnati is because he recognizes the talent contained in the city’s culinary scene.
“There is a ton of great chefs in Cincinnati. I appreciate Cincinnati very much, because there is still a lot of mom-and-pop, small places. And those are the places that make the city,” he said. “It doesn’t have the rush to open restaurants like Chicago, LA, New York, where for every one restaurant that opens, five are closing… I’m not trying to make this the place that everyone goes to. I just want to be the one that you come back to because you like it the best.”
The restaurant is located at 5380 Medpace Way and is slated to open on March 24.