The Son Also Rises: Domenico Mangano steps up in the year after his father’s health scare

In early November, Vesna Mangano, co-owner of Giuseppe’s Ritrovo, recounted a recent car purchase made by her son, Domenico Mangano, in which he had to fill out a series of forms that included his work history.

“And they asked how long he had been working, and he put down 22 years, and they looked at his birthday and said, ‘Well, you’re 26, so you’ve been working there since you were 4?’” Vesna said, and laughed. “So, he pulled out a picture of himself at [age] 4 where he had a mallet in his hand, pounding out chicken cutlets. And he said to the guy, ‘You see this?’”

Co-founded by Vesna and her chef husband, Giuseppe Mangano, for 28 years Giuseppe’s Ritrovo has been a fixture at the intersection of East Main Street and South Drexel Avenue in Bexley. For Domenico, born and raised a five-minute drive away in North Bexley, the Italian restaurant has served as everything from a daycare to a second home, with Domenico recalling the after-school hours he and his older brother, Umberto, logged together working on their homework while seated at the bar before the eatery opened to the public.

“I don’t know how the staff back then even stayed here, because there were always these two kids running around, talking to people, being crazy, eating everything,” Domenico said in late October, seated in the dining area of the restaurant.

By age 13 or 14, Domenico began to regularly work busing tables. And within a couple of years, he became a regular fixture on the employee schedule, eventually moving to the back of the house where he served in a variety of kitchen roles. From that point on – aside from the 18 months he spent adrift at Columbus State Community College in his late teenage years – there appeared little doubt the youngster would one day follow in his father’s chef footsteps. 

What nobody anticipated is that it would happen so suddenly, with Giuseppe suffering a stroke in early November 2023, leading to an induced coma and subsequent complications, according to a GoFundMe established to help the family. The health emergency forced the elder from day-to-day restaurant operations and immediately thrust Domenico into a leadership role. (A year removed from the stroke, Giuseppe is still dealing with lingering cognitive issues but is doing well overall, Vesna said.)

“It was like, ‘What the hell just happened? What did we just experience,’” said Domenico, who had spent the six months prior to the stroke working side-by-side with his father, learning the cadence of the business so that he might one day take over. “We’re a family here, and everyone cares a lot, and everyone has a lot of heart. And we were all on our toes wondering what was going to happen.”

And yet, operations continued unabated as the family navigated the crisis, with Domenico doing his best to compartmentalize, embracing work as a means to distract from the weight of everything that swirled around him. “Maybe you block it out a bit,” he said. “Or you just don’t open up to people and tell them how your day has really been, because why would I roll into all of that?”

Vesna credited this focus in part to the way Domenico has always been wired. “He’s very head down and does the task in front of him,” she said. “Plus, you also have to understand, he was born into it.”

There were times, however, when Vesna and Giuseppe wished a different life for their children, with Vesna citing the long hours and stress that go hand-in-hand with operating a restaurant. And following high school, there was a short stretch where Domenico thought he too might take a different path, though nothing of interest materialized in the year and a half he spent at community college. So, in the fall of 2020, he enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York, intent on becoming a chef.

“It was the pandemic, which was definitely a stupid time to start culinary school,” Domenico said. “Everyone had to be in a mask, and we were wearing these plastic face shields that would melt if you stood over the stove.”

The education proved invaluable, though, and following his graduation Domenico kicked around the idea of either moving to Manhattan or traveling throughout Europe, spending time in Barcelona or Italy where he could further develop the skills introduced to him in childhood and sharpened at CIA. “I don’t even think he knew where he was going to go at the time,” Vesna said, “but he for sure wasn’t supposed to be staying here.”

Restaurants, over time, can take on the characteristics of the people who run them. This has certainly been the case at Giuseppe’s Ritrovo, which remains the type of place where long-time regulars can sidle up at the bar can and order dishes discontinued years earlier, treating the menu as mere suggestion. There’s also a warmth to the space that Domenico traced to his father, describing the elder as “magical” in his ability to make seemingly instant connections with other people.

“People talk about that a lot with restaurants, how you can feel the presence of the chef even though they’re back there in the kitchen,” Domenico said. “Even out here in the dining room, when you’re eating your dinner, you can feel that presence. You can feel that they’re working hard, putting everything they have into it. And I feel like this restaurant has that chef presence of my dad very strong.”

Owing to this reality, and to a base of neighborhood regulars, some of whom have been frequenting the restaurant for decades, it would have been understandable had Domenico felt intense pressure in taking over the kitchen in a restaurant that bears the name of his father. This has not been the case, however.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say I feel any pressure, but I do feel a responsibility,” said Domenico, who generally arrives at the restaurant around 8 a.m. each day it’s open, staying until an hour or two past close. “I mean, I’ve been doing this for my whole life, right? Even before the six months I worked beside him, there were years of being here, working, holding down positions. There were years of work that raised me to the point where now I have to do it.”

So, while there have been adjustments – particularly in learning the business and how to navigate the endless array of food purveyors, repair technicians and suppliers – Domenico said he has largely felt at ease in taking over for his father. It helps, of course, that he’s supported by a team of family members (Vesna and brother Umberto, who has taken on a larger managerial role) and longtime employees who have essentially become such, including bar manager Joe Peppercorn, who has worked at Giuseppe’s for more than 10 years and can now occasionally be found mixing cocktails alongside his son, Giuseppe.

“Cooking and being a chef, I was definitely ready for that part of it. But running the restaurant, taking care of administrative work and all of the other behind-the-scenes things, I don’t think anyone is ever ready for that until they’re in it, you know?” Domenico said. “But I have loads of help. My mom is here, and my brother, and I have all these vendors and reps that have been loyal and amazing to us. … My dad handled so much around here. I mean, he is the business. And without him, everyone had to step up. I never felt like I was on an island.”

In the course of our conversation, Domenico repeatedly expressed an understandable reverence for what his parents had built, and for the way the restaurant has been embraced as part of the neighboring community. And moving forward, he said he intended to hold to this vision, turning out recipes passed down through multiple generations of the Mangano family while finding ways to impress his own personality in ways that it makes sense. Recently, for example, he introduced a pasta special with crab meat, caramelized fennel, Calabrian chili and lemon zest – a natural expansion for a menu that often features Northern and coastal Italian dishes.

“This place is special,” Domenico said. “I hear all of the time how much this restaurant means to people, and that’s something I’ve held onto. I definitely didn’t want to let that go.”