Da Ruggerio, the famous chef who was once a star New York City’s haute cuisine scene, says he was a member of the Mob for decades.
Ruggerio made the revelation in a conversation with journalist and author Gabriel Sherman, published on Thursday (24 March) in Vanity Fair.
Sherman says in the piece that he was introduced to Ruggerio “in the spring of 2021 by friends who said he was ready to go on the record about his years in the Mob”.
Ruggerio, a Brooklyn native, was part of the renaissance of French cooking that took place in a variety of New York City restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s, having presided over the kitchens of such iconic venues as La Caravelle and Le Chantilly.
According to Sherman, Ruggerio “was for decades – including the entirety of his cooking career – a working member of the Gambino Mafia family.” His father, Saverio Gambino, was a cousin of crime boss Carlo Gambino.
“I was living two lives,” Ruggerio told the journalist.
Per Vanity Fair, “his own Mob résumé includes heroin dealing, truck hijackings, loan-sharking, bookmaking, extortion, and participating in several notorious gangland murders.”
Ruggerio also reportedly told the publication “he steered lucrative restaurant supply contracts to Mob-connected vendors and bribed union officials to keep his kitchens nonunion.”
When asked whether he feared becoming a target for going public about his history in the Mob, Ruggerio replied: “I’ll let the chips fall where they may. After I lost my son, I knew that this has to end with me.” Ruggerio’s son died of an apparent drug overdose in 2014 aged 27.
Ruggerio was charged in 1998 with defrauding a credit card processing company and customers by allegedly inflating tips – which he denied in his interview with Sherman. He pleaded guilty in 1999 to second-degree attempted grand larceny and, according to the New York Post, was sentenced to five years of probation and 500 hours of community service, as well as a $140,000 repayment.
