Remembering Gino's and Devil's Chicken
Recipe for Pollo alla Diavola, a classic inspired by my parents' favorite New York City restaurant
Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking teacher, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
FOOD WRITERS IN PIEMONTE, FALL 2025: Kathy Gunst and I have added a second Food Writers in Piemonte workshop to our 2025 schedule. This five-day workshop and tour will take place Oct. 3-8, 2025. The itinerary will be similar to our sold-out May workshop. If you are interested in this small-group experience, please send me an email at domenica@domenicacooks.com for more information.
This week’s newsletter features a recipe for classic Pollo alla Diavola—butterflied and grilled chicken with loads of pepper, enough to set your lips on fire. The newsletter is free for all subscribers, and the recipe is available to paid subscribers.
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My parents met on a blind date in New York City. They were introduced by my mom’s roommate, Lillian.
I know little about that first date beyond the fact than it took place and, apparently, went well (they were married for nearly 62 years before my mom died).
I can picture it, though. The scene: 1950s Manhattan. (In my head it’s September because New York in early fall has always been my favorite New York, a place filled with possibility and also nostalgia.) She: outgoing, stylish, turned-up nose and hourglass shape, newly arrived from Italy. He: the son of immigrants who spoke little English, recently graduated from Brown University with a degree in chemical engineering; slim, with dark wavy hair and dark eyes, an introvert with a dry sense of humor.
Where did they go? What did she wear? What did they talk about? She was the talker, he was the quiet one. The particulars of that evening are lost, if I ever knew them at all. Few details of their courtship have survived the decades. There was the story they told of the time my mom invited her new beau to dinner for homemade gnocchi. Having never attempted them before, she had no idea what she was doing. She ended up with a gooey mess, which, the story goes, she hurled against the wall in frustration. They went out to eat.
And there was Gino of Capri (a.k.a. Gino’s), on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, their favorite place to dine when they were engaged. The restaurant, opened in 1945 by Gino Circiello, was famous for its “secret” red sauce, for its garish red, black, and white leaping zebra wallpaper, and for attracting the likes of Frank Sinatra. The waiters were all from around Naples. The job was their career and their livelihood, which is how it was back then. My folks knew them by name, and they knew my folks.
Gino’s iconic wallpaper was designed by Circiello’s friend Valentino Crecenzi. It was reproduced by in the 1970s by textile designers Franco and Flora Scalamandré after the restaurant was damaged in a fire. My sister, Maria, who worked in textiles in NYC for a time, remembers that the textile company used to have to special order reprints of the paper when Gino’s needed to refresh its walls—though it looks from the company website like the design has since made a comeback and, indeed, is now available in lots of colors.
Once or twice when we were growing up, long after our parents had made the move to Jersey, they took us to Gino’s for dinner. These outings sometimes started with an Italian movie downtown, maybe Little Italy, where we saw classics like Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D and Francesco Rosi’s Three Brothers, still one of my all-time favorite films. Often we ended up having dinner in Chinatown because we all adored Chinese food. But Gino’s won out on a couple of occasions. It’s where I first had Pollo alla Diavola, or “Devil’s Chicken,” named for the generous coating of hot pepper on the char-grilled bird. When the platter was brought to the table, I remember thinking that the kitchen had burned the chicken, so blackened was its skin. But no, when I sliced into it, it was perfectly juicy and buzzing with heat.
Much later, in the early 2000s, I developed a recipe for Pollo alla Diavola for my second cookbook, Big Night In. I cobbled it together mostly from memory, relying on my husband’s grilling skills to obtain that desirable char, and a rather vague recipe published in Pellegrino Artusi’s 19th century Italian cookbook, La Scienza in Cucina e L’Arte di Mangiar Bene. In his description, Artusi (in a wonderful translation by the late Kyle M. Phillips III) notes that “This chicken got its name because it should be cooked with strong cayenne pepper and served with a sauce so spicy that the diner, feeling his mouth catch fire, will damn the chicken and the cook.”
I always get a hankering for Pollo alla Diavola at this time of year, as summer tips into fall. So I made it (well, actually, my husband did) last weekend. My recipe takes liberties—I add lemon zest and lots of garlic to the spicy paste that coats the chicken. To me those additions are no longer embellishments, but rather integral to the zesty flavors of this memorable dish.
For those who would like to know a little bit more about Gino’s and its wallpaper, here’s a interesting snippet from a 2016 trailer for a film about the cutthroat NYC restaurant business.
Do you have a favorite Italian restaurant from childhood (NYC or beyond)?
RECIPE: Pollo alla Diavola
This is a simple recipe: a spatchcocked (butterflied) chicken is grilled (or cooked in a cast iron pan) with lots of hot pepper and/or black pepper—enough to make your lips buzz from the heat. If you’ve never butterflied a chicken before, you’ll see it’s pretty easy, though you will need poultry shears or sharp kitchen shears to cut out the backbone of the bird. Also, the skin of the chicken will char quite deeply—almost like Cajun blackened chicken—so don’t fret. This is the finish you’re looking for.
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Alla prossima,
Domenica
Loved Gino’s, the first time I went was in the 70s for lunch with my bosses, it was packed, and I will never forget the wallpaper — or the waiters in their white jackets! Went so many times over the years, thanks for this sweet memory, Domenica. xx ps — the legend was that when Marilyn lived in the neighborhood, she and Frank would go there and then after closing at Gino’s would head across the street to the Subway Inn for one last late- night pop.
You’re a delightful storyteller and the stories of your parents’ meeting, Gino’s, and the wallpaper are told beautifully.