La Rotonda, the popular Italian restaurant that closed in June after nearly 14 years in business, will reopen within the next two weeks at its original 8 Bond St. location, said George Pecoraro, the eatery’s executive chef and co-owner.
“I’m anxious and excited to be coming back home — it’s such a familiar place,” said Pecoraro, who was La Rotonda’s head chef when it opened in 2002.
Former La Rotonda waiter Henry An, who helped finance the restaurant’s reopening and is now a co-owner, will also help operate the restaurant.
An approached Pecoraro about two to three months asking him to reopen the eatery.
“I always liked working here, I always felt like this was home,” Pecoraro said. “I knew the menu, and knew the customers.”
The new menu will be similar to the old menu, featuring such former favorites as the pasta and chicken dishes as well as brick-oven focaccia bread and pizzas.
Other popular items on the previous menu, such as the baby rack of lamb and Chilean sea bass, will now appear as specials, he said.
“Our customers come in two to three times a week,” he said. “We’re fair-priced, and that’s what bring people in and keeps customers coming back.”
The restaurant will also have a more extensive wine menu than its initial incarnation, Pecoraro said, with wines from Italy as well as California.
He said he is also looking to offer delivery as well dining in the restaurant.
Pecoraro said the restaurant closed because the volume of business couldn’t make up for the cost of a 2012 expansion, which added two more dining rooms to the existing restaurant, as well as a party room.
Following the expansion under former owner Luigi Muto, the restaurant could seat more than 100 diners at once.
“We put in a party room and full bar hoping it would bring in the crowds, but the crowds never happened,” Pecoraro said. “We just weren’t filling up the seats.”
The new incarnation of the restaurant, he said, will be smaller with no party room.
Patrick Silberstein, the restaurant’s landlord, said there is not enough business in Great Neck to offset the cost of large space the former owner had.
“It is the same people night after night. You have a very successful following several times a week,” Silberstein said. “But this is not New York City.”
Wanting the pair to be successful in the restaurant’s second attempt, Silberstein said, he has reduced the rent on the space and is giving the new management team the first five months free.
“I came to the realization that the market is not what it was, and to get a good tenant you have to make adjustments that are necessary,” Silberstein said.
Pecoraro said he was working in Italian restaurants since the 1980s when he took a job at Latitudes, a seafood restaurant in Port Washington, in 1995.
He said the five years he spent at Latitudes exposed him to working with different ingredients, and a whole new world opened up to him.
“I realized there was a lot more to this cooking thing than sauces and cheese,” Pecoraro said. “It’s so much more involved.”
Village of Great Neck Plaza hailed the return of the restaurant in granting a conditional-use permit to the restaurant at a board meeting in March.
“We’re glad to be bring new business back into the Plaza,” Trustee Gerry Schneiderman said.
