I know he wanted otherwise, but I wish Tony Vallone had taken my advice and spent his final years in Italy, with Donna, near his beloved Naples.
Whenever I would tell him about my wish, he’d laugh, get a wistful look in his eye, and repeat what he had been telling people for years: “They’ll carry me out of the restaurant, a fish in one hand, and pasta in the other.”
Tony has left the building. He passed away early on the morning of September 10 at home in Houston. He was 75, and had reigned over his beloved Tony’s for 55 of those years. He was laid to rest today. An era in Houston has ended, and I am sad.
Vallone was my friend, and I’ll forever cherish the meals and conversations we shared, from the first time I sat with him, at lunch at his restaurant on Richmond Avenue — the occasion our initial interview for a piece I wrote marking the 50th anniversary of Tony’s — to casual evenings with him and Donna and Angela and Russ and Judy at home, to our final encounter, perched at the bar at Tony’s on a crisp September evening in 2019. I was preparing to leave Houston, and Vallone had invited me for a last supper at my favorite restaurant in that city.
At the bar that night we discussed, as we always did, many things, including politics and the arts and our families. He told me I was a lucky man — he was referring to Angela — and I replied that he was as well, because, Donna. We meant those things, because we knew we had been given second chances at love.
But above all, we talked food. Always food, and the preparation of it, and the joy of dining, in restaurants or with friends and family at home. We could discuss that forever.
We talked of Alfred Portale and the best way to prepare sweetbreads, we joked about the latest food trends, and we recounted our experiences at the tables of favorite restaurants in Manhattan. I told him about a dish I was working on for one of my Brockhaus dinners — a foie-stuffed morel — and he told me to make him one so he could consider adding it to his menu. He asked me to hold a Brockhaus event at Tony’s, which I did, back in 2017. It was an honor to cook in that kitchen, and to serve my food in his domain.
I miss Tony’s smile, and I miss sitting with him. I was honored that he solicited my opinion about the food coming out of his kitchen. One evening, he asked me to taste a sauce — if I recall correctly, it was what the restaurant was serving with beef short ribs during Houston Restaurant Weeks. I told him I thought it was lacking a bit of salt. He excused himself from the bar, where we were sitting, and walked to the kitchen. He came back a few minutes later and thanked me, agreeing with my appraisal.
I miss the softness in Tony’s voice, and the way the skin around his eyes would crinkle when we talked about this or that restaurant or an article about food or a restaurant review. I miss the way his hands grew animated when we discussed cooking. Never before had I enjoyed such engaging, profound, and respectful conversations about the culinary world. I hope I can find that again, because I need it.
Tony’s was my favorite restaurant in Houston, and I dined there often. I liked it for many reasons, among them that it reminded me of some of the places I missed in New York. Detail matters, and Vallone and his team rarely missed a beat. I felt comfortable there. To me, it was at the time one of the few restaurants in the city that could have been picked up lock, stock, and barrel and placed down in New York, or Paris, and be received with open mouths (and wallets) by the citizens of those dining meccas.
And I ate well chez Tony. Corona beans, and lamb chops from Colorado. A perfect artichoke salad and soft-shell crab. Halibut and salmon and Kobe beef and red snapper and pasta stuffed with duck and langoustines and a delicious Caesar salad and … so many dishes whose flavors I remember still, including one of my all-time favorite pasta dishes, Tony’s Bolognese Bianco, which will be on my final meal menu.
I wrote the following in the piece I mentioned above, marking the 50th anniversary of Tony’s: Watching Tony Vallone preside over the perfect little world that is Tony’s — in my opinion, the best restaurant in the state of Texas and among the best in the U.S. — the concepts of order, harmony and zen mingle in my mind. Vallone, who celebrates his namesake restaurant’s 50th anniversary this month, conducts every movement at the Richmond Avenue institution with the grace of a consummate and controlled artist. If a dining-room chair is not where it should be, a nod from the 71-year-old puts it in place. If a guest is on the verge of making a request, Vallone is the first to anticipate it.
Vallone was an institution, a Mensch; he was among the very few to have owned and run a restaurant for 50-plus years, anywhere. He founded fine dining in Houston, and set the bar high in a city whose diners were more accustomed to steak sauce than Béarnaise.
Again, from the story about Tony’s 50th anniversary: My first glimpse of Vallone in his restaurant is something I recall often. I was walking across the dining room, and through the large (mostly glass) wall that separates it from the kitchen, this is what I saw: The maestro was wearing a dark-blue suit, and he was sitting in a simple chair in the kitchen, in front of the pass, one leg crossed over the other at the thigh, cell phone in hand. His face spoke of calm order, though all around him cooks and waiters went to and fro with haste, plates and cutlery and food in hand.
That image of Vallone will stay with me forever. Now, when I cook, I’ll be cooking with him (he joins my maternal grandmother, Ida, in my spiritual kitchen brigade). I have lost a dear friend, and though I know I’ll feel the need to make my way to Tony’s the next time I am in Houston — Donna has decided to keep the restaurant open, and about that I am glad — I am not certain I want to be in Tony’s place knowing that he’ll never again grace its environs. Whenever I sit at my favorite table, I’ll long to see him make his way around the dining room, greeting each of his guests, and I’ll want to shake his hand. I’ll miss feeling his hand caress my shoulder.
Of one thing, however, I am certain. Very soon, I am going to cook a meal at home, and it is going to be in honor of my friend, of his life and legacy and struggles and successes. It will include pasta and a fish and lamb. We’ll open a bottle or two of something Italian; a Barolo will definitely be on the table. And with every course, I’ll toast Tony.
Bye, my friend. I’ll miss you for a long, long time. I’ll miss you forever.
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