Victor's Back In Business, And Seattle's The Luckier For It

Well, we may lose the Blue Moon to some Philistine wrecking ball, but a Seattle tradition came back the other night, and there was scarcely a dry eye.

Victor is back. The padrone is once more in action, the protector, the owner, the master at his trade.

Seattle without a Rosellini restaurant is a poor city indeed. But Vic and Mick's, an eatery that, because of Victor, has almost instant tradition, finally got open down at 910 Second Ave.

Victor was 15 months in limbo after he closed his Denny Regrade restaurant. But now he is back - and to some of us, at least, it is like an emperor returning from Elba, a king restored to his throne.

Except for the limbo period, for 40 years, come May, there has always been a Vic Rosellini place to gather.

The first, at 610 Pine St., opened in May 1950 and was Seattle's first real upscale watering hole.

The ``old'' 410 in the long-vanished White-Henry-Stuart Building opened in 1956. Then, after 19 years, Victor was forced to move - and the ``new'' 410 flourished out at Fourth and Wall.

On this opening night at Vic and Mick's, Victor looked 20 years younger than the 74 he is today. ``He's positively glowing,'' his wife, Marcia, beamed. ``He's on a pink cloud,'' somebody else said.

And so it seemed.

Taller, straighter, more vibrant than he was in retirement, Victor has returned - greeting people, laughing, hugely enjoying himself - returning to exercise the memory that can call 5,000 Seattleites by their first names.

If nostalgia runs a bit thick at the moment, it is because any Rosellini restaurant is very much in and of the family. What happened the other night was like a family reunion - the padrone is in charge, a provider of jobs, and much of the family came home.

Out in front, of course, were the greeters, Debbie and Myra and, to be sure, Addie Ewing, who has been with Victor for years.

The waiters from the 410 were back, too - John Chemeres, Tino Salud, Pedro Bara, Robert Strazza.

Tino's wife, Barbara, is due in April, and it almost goes without saying that Victor will be the child's godfather.

The chefs, Robert Carson and Renaldo Zapata, also from the 410, are being watched over by John Pogetti, Victor's brother-in-law and original partner at the 610. John moves slowly, aided by a cane, but he is back too.

To get this sense of ``family,'' consider the Zapatas. Frank Zapata, long a Rosellini employee, had seven sons and daughters, all of whom worked at either the 610 or both the old and the new 410. Among them, the Zapata family's service with Rosellini totals 100 years.

Another name at Vic and Mick's is Mark Manca, a fourth-generation son of the family which owned the famed Manca's at First and Columbia.

Ken Moriarty, half Irish, half Italian, is the day manager at the new place. Ken's grandmother is Victor's cousin.

And then there is Joe, Joe Miccio, who presides over a beautiful, 45-foot-long reddish mahogany bar. Joe is among a long line of loyalists who tended bar for Victor - Paul Pishue, Vito Santoro, Tommy Ryan, Jimmy Santoro.

There was also the baby-faced kid named McHugh, the Mick in Vic and Mick's, who long ago worked as a bar boy for Victor.

In Victor's new bar there are place mats that have stitched on them the message, ``Joe's Place.'' Joe Miccio is boss of that bar, and the place mats came out of an incident when Victor walked into the old 410 bar and said, ``Joe, I want to make a suggestion.''

``Get out of here,'' Joe said, ``this is my place.''

There was always a sense of good-natured democracy in Victor's houses. It is true, of course, that in recent times at the 410 Victor took some barbs from the young twerps assigned to review restaurants.

These were the critics who claimed to know when the sauce was reduced 32.4 seconds too much, the fern-and-glitter boys who could get into a terrible snit if the vegetables weren't underdone properly. They said he had too many Cadillacs in his parking lot, that he was passe and ``too pricey.''

What they forgot, or chose to ignore, is that Victor's ``family'' was always paid good wages and benefits, while the yuppie places were sneaking by on minimum-wage help. Loyalty goes both ways.

Victor stood by his aging people when the fern-and-chrome kids would have fired them without a day's notice.

Victor's new menu is solid, straightforward and mid-priced, and yet the menu is only part of it. Already aged in the new wood is a warmth, the feeling of being welcome, the remembrance of flings past.

Welcome back, padrone.

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Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.