ALBANY — The owner of Taste of Italy in Latham, a flashpoint for ongoing controversy since widely reviled comments attributed to the restaurant were made following the death of an autistic boy in late June, said Monday he is postponing by “a month or two” the opening of his second restaurant, Grazie Italian Kitchen, previously scheduled for Wednesday.
Frank Cappello said he is also considering selling Grazie, which he spent six months renovating earlier this year after taking over the former restaurant Risotto, located at 320 Northern Blvd. It is in a plaza across from Samaritan Hospital’s Albany Memorial campus.
“I’m gonna put (Grazie) on hold for a month or two and concentrate on getting the business back at Taste of Italy,” Cappello, who owns Taste of Italy with his wife, Alyssa, said in a brief exchange of text messages with the Times Union. Alyssa Cappello is listed as the principal of Grazie on its liquor license, which was granted June 24, according to State Liquor Authority records. The license currently has a “safekeeping” status at the restaurant’s request, a common administrative move when a license has been approved before the business is ready to open, according to an agency spokeswoman.
Acknowledging a planned protest outside Grazie on Wednesday, Frank Cappello said he is not going to “open up a restaurant and deal with a whole bunch of weirdos protesting.”
What is dubbed a Rally Against Racism is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday in front of Grazie, according to a page dedicated to it on the website for Indivisible Albany, a progressive activist group. In response to an inquiry by the Times Union, an unsigned statement from the group on Monday afternoon said the protest would go ahead as planned, “because the Cappellos’ despicable Islamophobia has no place in our community.” The group also posted a letter to the SLA asking the agency to terminate Grazie’s liquor license, as allowed under SLA regulations, if a licensee is found to have “unsatisfactory character and/or fitness.”
The rally was organized soon after initial protests at Taste of Italy were sparked by a comment made from the Taste of Italy Facebook account, about the death of Harbe Nagi, a 7-year-old nonverbal, autistic boy. He was found dead in a swimming pool behind a home near where he was last seen two days prior.
In the since-deleted comment, the Taste of Italy account said, “Let’s not forget if that boy lived in a Muslim country his Muslim family would have killed him a long time ago.” It went on to call Islam a “horrific fake religion” and say it is “not a religion but a terrorist organization,” adding, “No Muslim should be in any place of Authority in America.” CBS6 News reported that Alyssa Cappello admitted to its reporter off-camera that “she wrote the comment after mistakenly believing she was posting from a personal account rather than the restaurant’s account.”
Days of protests followed, at Taste of Italy and Alyssa Cappello’s beauty business, She’s Yar Lash & Beauty Bar, with locations in Glenmont, Guilderland and Latham. Taste of Italy also closed for less than a day.
Frank Cappello said Monday that Grazie’s future is uncertain.
“Might even sell it off,” he said. “I don’t know yet. Just (playing it) day by day.”
