Marco......Polo

Brooklyn eatery with mob ties mysteriously shot up

By Larry Celona, Reuven Fenton, Stephanie Pagones and Max Jaeger

February 25, 2018 | Updated

Waiter, there’s a bullet in my bolognese.

A mob-linked Brooklyn restaurant may need to check its macaroni and gravy for shell casings after someone shot up the eatery’s facade early Sunday to send a “message” to its owners, according to a law-enforcement source.

An employee arriving for work at Carroll Gardens’ Marco Polo Ristorante just before 8 a.m. found the front window and door riddled with bullet holes, police said.

Co-owner Marco Chricio, whose dad opened the eatery, told The Post that the restaurant was caught in the crossfire between battling gangs from neighboring Gowanus and Red Hook housing projects, but cops said the restaurant itself was the target.

“It’s obviously some kind of message,” a law enforcement source said of the shooting.

Police recovered 10 shell casings across the street in front of the Body Elite gym.

A worker there said surveillance video captured by the fitness center shows a lone, hooded man on the stalking around outside around 6 a.m. when the bullets started flying.

The 35-year-old trattoria is a mainstay for players on both sides of the law — judges and attorneys regularly sup at the Court Street institution, but its mob ties run deep.

Wise-guy restaurant owner Joseph Chirico, 73, pleaded guilty to laundering money for the Gambino crime family in 2008.

Chirico copped to collecting $1,500 in extorted dough from trucking-company executive Joseph Vollaro on behalf of fellow Gambino soldier Jerome Brancato, but dodged jail time after getting character references from former Brooklyn borough presidents Howard Golden and Marty Markowitz — both of whom took previously donations from the mobbed-up restaurateur.

Marco Polo’s broken windows were patched with menus, but the front door still had a gaping hole blasted through it Sunday morning as the eatery prepared to open for business as usual.

Neighbors were not surprised.

“The thing about Marco Polo and some of the other restaurants is, we know their history,” said one neighbor who asked to have her name withheld. “You always think twice.”

Another neighbor wasn’t put off by the violence, because the food is to die for.

“Would I come back here? Yeah, I’d come back. The food here is phenomenal,” he said.

(Sorry I haven't been around but I have been busy. Ricpic is right Marco Polo was my hangout. We used to go there three or four times a week a few years ago. When we had the show we ate lunch at the bistro every day. We had our premiere party there with two hundred people.

I am pretty close to Joe and Marco and I would never persume to question them about thiis.

Joe has long been rumored to be mobbed up but when they pinched him they only got him on a bullshit charge. Now don't get me wrong. I met many a mobster there at the bar. Joe would introduce us. I  remember one night I walked in and Joe was having a serious discussion at the bar with a famous hit man. Now that guy was in his seventies and just out of the joint. His girlfriend who looked about sixteen was sitting at the end of the bar. We walked in about eleven and the joint was empty. We just wanted a couple of cocktails and some apps. Anyway Joe comes over to say hello and takes the guy to a back table to continue their very serious discussion. Let me tell you if you saw this guy you would shit your pants. He looked like an old school mafiosi like Vito Genovese. I knew who he was as he used to hang out at a social club on Columbia Street before he got incarcerated in the 1980's. He was out. It was just like the scene with Feech LaManna in the Sopranos. In fact this guy could have been the model for that character.

Anyway Marco is totally straight. He went to Culinary School. He is partners with his Dad and renovated the joint and put in the menu. He has nothing to do with the Mob other than then greeting the guys if they come in. Joe doesn't really want them there. They scare the hipsters who dine ironically at the joint. He still gets neighborhood people and lots of people from the courts. He is very popular with the black contingent which dominates Brooklyn Politics now with Eric Adams as Borough President. The old timers who come there are really out of the game. Coasting and  clipping coupons not the stray Zip.

The young guys who are active hang out in the trendy pizza joint LoCale on Henry St. A couple of them are getting checks there to pacify the Parole Board. That is where the action it these days.

So I kind of believe that the shots fired were just a coincidence. Or at worst a couple of young bloods throw a few shots at the old guys to "let them know what's what." Those guys are out of the fray these days.

Of course if they push it they might call in the guy I saw at the bar that night. He might be in his seventies but he would slaughter the lot of them without a backward glance.

So this is a lot of noise about nothing.

The video is my friend Jay a waiter at Marco Polo making one of their signature dishes. )