The brothers behind one of L.A.'s most successful restaurant empires say their success is rooted in family ties and a reverence for good ingredients.
When Beverly Hills restaurateur Giacomino Drago talks about the food he grew up with in Galati Mamertino, a hilltop village in Sicily, he leans back in his chair, closes his eyes, and lets loose a soft sigh of pleasure. “It was very simple, uncomplicated food, made with just a few ingredients,” he says. A salad of tomato, onion, cucumber, basil, and day-old bread. Fresh green bean soup or minestrone. Caponata, the beloved Sicilian eggplant dish.
"You’d eat the same thing day after day,” he explains, “and never tire of it because the flavor of each ingredient was so distinct."
It helped that the family of 10 grew, raised, or made almost everything they ate. Giacomino’s father was a farmer with land just outside the village. “Mama processed all the food Daddy would bring home,” Giacomino says. Olive oil was pressed from the farm’s olive trees, and cheese was made from the milk the family cows produced. Summers would bring a bumper crop of tomatoes, which meant spaghetti with a simple sauce of tomato pulp and basil. What couldn’t be eaten during the season was bottled. “We always had 400 or 500 jars of tomato sauce,” Giacomino says. His mother baked bread two or three times a week, and the pasta was always fresh. “Mama would give all the kids dough to make something with,” he says. “It was our Play-Doh.” One word, he says, sums up the food that the Drago family enjoyed: genuineness.
Today, you can find that same spirit of authenticity in the Drago empire, a group of nine Italian restaurants, two sushi spots, a bakery, and a catering company, scattered throughout Los Angeles. Collectively, they are owned and operated by Giacomino and three of his older brothers: Celestino, Tanino, and Calogero. Trying to figure out the threads of just who can claim title to which property—most are owned by at least two brothers—is like attempting to untangle a plate of spaghetti. No matter. It’s all in the family.
Every one of the Italian restaurants—from Drago Centro in downtown L.A. to Piccolo Paradiso on the neighborhood boulevard of South Beverly Drive—reflects the culinary traditions of the family. Take panzanella, the tomato and bread salad that Giacomino loved so much growing up. It’s on the menu at six of the Drago restaurants, and their location in Sherman Oaks is named for the dish. None of this was originally planned.
As Giacomino tells it, he’d fix the salad for himself at the end of a night at Il Pastaio in Beverly Hills, the first restaurant he ran on his own. “A guest would come by and ask, ‘What’s that? Can I get it?’ So I’d go into the kitchen and make the salad,” he says. “Then someone at the next table would see them eating it and want it, too. I felt embarrassed to put it on the menu because it’s so simple. Anyone can make it.” Eventually, he gave in to the demand, and panzanella has become one of the most popular items served across all Drago locations. Today, Giacomino says he understands its appeal. “Food has a culture and a history,” he says. “Sometimes chefs focus so much on trying to be creative, they lose sight of that. Creativity is good, but people are happy when you share your culture with them.”
As he says this, Giacomino is sitting in his chef’s whites in a private dining room at Via Alloro in Beverly Hills, just back from a gourmet bicycling trip that took him and five of his buddies from Milan to Rome. (“I picked all of the restaurants,” Giacomino says.) He also spent a few days in Galati Mamertino visiting with “Mama and Daddy,” as well as the two brothers and one sister who live nearby. Giacomino keeps a home in the village that dates back to the 1600s. “Going back to that small town is always therapeutic,” he says.
Celestino and Tanino stop in at Via Alloro, and together the three brothers recount the story of how the Drago empire got its start. Celestino, the oldest of the siblings, came here first and was hired in 1979 as a chef at an Italian restaurant in West L.A. Within a few years he was opening restaurants of his own. He agrees with Giacomino that the brothers’ success in Los Angeles is rooted in the culinary education they received from their parents.
“When we said a tomato tasted great, they wanted us to know what was done to make sure it was tasty,” Celestino says. “It all began with the heirloom seeds that went back to my grandma. Then we were taught what was done to the seed before it was planted and when the tomatoes should be picked. If they were picked when they were still a little green, they would be good for salad. But tomatoes for sauce should be picked later in the season.” When he was seven years old, Celestino was given his own plot of land on the family farm. “Going to that farm was like going to church for my family,” he says.
After he’d settled in Los Angeles, Celestino called for his brothers, one by one. As the family’s New World patriarch, he was generous. “I learned everything from Celestino,” Tanino says. Each brother would work for a couple of years in the kitchen of one of Celestino’s restaurants. Then he’d give them their own place to operate. Giacomino was just 20 when Celestino announced that the soon-to-open Il Pastaio was his, saying,
“Call me if you need me for anything.” From day one, the restaurant was packed. (Carolina Drago, a sister, is one of the managers.) “Il Pastaio became my baby,” Giacomino says, “and I grew up with that baby.”
Today, the Drago brothers all have children of their own. Black-and-white poster-size photos on the walls of Via Alloro show three generations of the Drago family at gatherings in Sicily and in the backyard of Celestino’s Beverly Hills home. Mama and Daddy come to Los Angeles for an extended visit every year, and the Drago kids spend big chunks of their summers in Galati Mamertino.
“Growing up, we had so much food in our home, 200 or 300 people could come by and we’d be able to feed them all,” says Giacomino. “Most nights it was 15 or 16 people. A neighbor, a cousin, or Grandma would stop by. It was like a restaurant; it still is. And my brothers and I hope that our restaurants here in Los Angeles have the warmth and the welcome of Mama’s home.”
Written by Shelley Levitt | Photography by Lisa Romerein
