Being a chef, says Marc Forgione, is kind of like living in New York. “You either love it or hate it; it’s a tough city that forces you to earn the right to enjoy it, it sort of forces you to become tough.”
Forgione loves both—and has certainly done the work to enjoy them.
Born in Manhattan and raised in Long Island, Forgione worked his first kitchen job at 16 at his father Larry Forgione’s famed restaurant, An American Place. After college and working in New York and France, a 29-year-old Forgione opened his own place, Restaurant Marc Forgione, in downtown Manhattan in 2008.
Then the recession hit. Broke and down to a bare-bones staff, Forgione and his business partner, Christopher Blumlo, “had to do everything,” he said, from 9 a.m. prep work to washing the dishes. “The first two years, it was like I was on a train moving at 100 miles an hour and I never got off.”
But pushing through paid off. In 2010, Forgione became the youngest chef-owner in the city to earn a Michelin star and then the youngest winner of “The Next Iron Chef” show on the Food Network. Consecutive Michelin stars followed in 2011 and 2012.
From the recession, to Hurricane Sandy, to the pandemic, “there’s no rulebook” for overcoming crises, Forgione said. “You just gotta keep rolling; you have to be a leader and try your best to be yourself.”
That attitude has carried him to his latest projects. In 2020, he took over Peasant, a beloved wood-fired Italian restaurant that opened in 1999. It was Forgione’s neighborhood favorite, and the retiring chef asked him to take the reins.
His newest venture, One Fifth, is named after the iconic Fifth Avenue address that houses it, an art deco co-op building dating back to 1927. The space has housed several restaurants over the years, including an original One Fifth in the 1970s, and most recently, Mario Batali’s Otto, which closed during the pandemic.
Now, guests dine among artifacts from the building’s past and restored 1970s terrazzo floors—on food that’s uniquely Forgione’s. There are antipasti and cicchetti, Italian small bites inspired by how he eats with his family; Roman-style pinsa, an ancient-grain flatbread he perfected with his father; and fresh pasta, made in an open kitchen. Other than specialty ingredients from Italy, everything is from the Union Square farmers market five blocks away.
That both restaurants are rescues of historic New York spaces was not planned, Forgione said, but his role preserving these storied pieces of the city seems a fitting one—and one he’s embraced.
“I love the fact that I’m keeping these iconic restaurant spaces going,” he said, “because if it gets in the wrong hands, it’s gonna turn into an Apple store or a bank. And I just think some spaces are too special for that.”
The nightly thank-yous he hears from locals happy to have their neighborhood spot open again are a testament to that. “It means something to people,” Forgione said. “I hope we’re here forever—and so far, so good.”
