Like a lost episode of The Sopranos, Steve Schirripa, aka Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri, is waiting for me in Little Italy restaurant Il Cortile on Mulberry Street.
Given his celebrity status and the fact that he lived above the establishment for two years, he has the so-called Renaissance Room all to himself, and the waiters are giving him the royal treatment. (There’s even a plaque commemorating him on the façade of the building.) While munching on a sesame breadstick from an overflowing bread basket, he explains this is where he would bring people after they were whacked on the show for a final meal. “A good sendoff everybody got,” he says. In fact, these dinners got so popular with the cast sometimes they’d have 15 people, including Edie Falco, and then the press caught wind of the practice, which put a stop to it.
I start to shift nervously in my seat. Steve, do you have something to tell me? “Yeah. You’re dead. You’re next,” he says with a laugh.
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Fortunately, this time the rigatoni is just… rigatoni. Nothing more. Despite having a big dinner at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse that night, Schirripa orders a spread that could feed a whole crime family. There are fat balls of mozzarella on thick slices of fresh tomato, shrimp, eggplant rollatine stuffed with creamy ricotta, a plate of fried calamari, and a platter of baked clams. And that’s just for starters.
For the main course, I order the rigatoni in vodka sauce. He orders his favorite dish, rigatoni in marinara sauce with whole sausage links, pork ribs and baseball-sized meatballs of beef braciola, which he calls Sunday sauce. “It reminds me of my grandmother’s,” he says. Every Sunday “was like a Thanksgiving. You ate like an animal. You had the antipast first, then they would bring out pasta and then some kind of a roast or a roast beef or chicken, and then the nuts and dessert and all that. And then they would bring out more food three hours later.”
The braciole was a favorite of Tony Soprano and made numerous appearances during the show’s six-year run. So it comes as no surprise to me that Schirripa and James Gandolfini would often eat at Il Cortile. They even hosted a bachelor party at the restaurant for Dominic Chianese (Junior) when he got remarried in 2003.
I point out that food was, of course, a big part of The Sopranos and Schirripa explains that was true in front as well as behind the camera. “Every day on the set, at some point, there was mozzarell, provolone, Italian bread, salami and pepperoni,” he says. And the food that they ate while shooting scenes was pretty good, he assures me. “If you’re going to give it to me, I’m going to eat it. I want to make it look real. That’s my thing,” he says. But “maybe it just gives me a license to eat at 7 in the morning.”
Talking about The Sopranos, I have to ask about what he makes of the final episode, which, of course, leaves Tony about to eat dinner in a diner with his family. “I think he’s alive and well and living in New Jersey. I don’t believe all the conspiracy theories,” he says. But he quickly adds, “I think people analyze the show too much. Sometimes what it is, is what it is. I don’t know. David Chase knows the ending. That’s my interpretation. He may have a different one. He wrote it, so he would know.”
The ending aside, “it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal,” he said of being on The Sopranos. “It was like playing for the Yankees. You were on the hottest show, maybe, ever.” That popularity endures nearly 12 years since it ended. In fact, he’s currently on tour with his co-stars Michael Imperioli and Vinny Pastore doing an event called “In Conversation with The Sopranos.” They’re selling out 2,000-seat theaters across the U.S. and will be doing six shows in Australia, where The Sopranos was a huge hit.
But Schirripa has certainly been able to move on with his life. He has a role on hit CBS drama Blue Bloods and next Tuesday is hosting A Night of Comedy at Madison Square Garden, which benefits The Garden of Dreams Foundation.
Having grown up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, few New York locations could hold more meaning for him. Although for the record, he has actually played MSG before when he was on Brooklyn College’s basketball team in the late 1970s.
On Tuesday night, he’ll be on stage in the Hulu Theater and will be introducing a true all-star lineup of comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Michael Che, John Mulaney and Jon Stewart. Is it intimidating to be on stage with such talent? “The crowds not coming to see me. They’re coming to see all these great comedians,” he says. “I’m happy to be there. I’m honored to be there. I’m honored to be able to raise money for the kids, which stays in the tri-state area. I’m happy to help out. I really am.”
In fact, “nobody’s getting paid a dime,” he tells me several times amazed at the generosity of such big acts.
And to be fair, Schirripa is a real comedy expert having, in his previous life, booked comedians for the theater at the Riviera Casino in Las Vegas during the 1980s and being a judge on the show, Last Comic Standing.
“It’s a very underrated art form. It’s very, very difficult to do standup comedy,” he says. “Not that I’ve tried.”
And he knows playing in front of 5,500 people at the Garden comes with a certain amount of pressure. However, “me, I don’t have to worry,” he calmly tells me. “If two jokes bomb, I just bring out the act and I’m out of there,” he says snapping his fingers and laughing.
