Chef Stefano Secchi has opened his second Italian restaurant, naming it Massara. It is located in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, a short walk from his first Italian restaurant, Rezdôra.
Massara is spread on two levels with the 600 square-foot (about 56 sq. m) expanse divided into distinctly different spaces by New York-based Sarah Carpenter Studio. The studio’s extensive hospitality work is testament to the designer’s ability to interpret each space individually. There’s no “signature style” or nervous “our way or no way” thinking.
Accordingly, the 105-seat Massara exudes effortless, casual cool. Nothing forced, nobody trying too hard, no one pushing any specific style or theme. But when one delves into the detail, the deceptive nonchalance turns into magic with real stories behind each decision.
The focal point is clear: it is the food, the cuisine of the Campania region of southern Italy. In the four-metre-high atrium, natural light focuses on the custom rough-stone wood-burning pizza oven, on the long Carrara marble counter, and on the long communal table constructed of the wood beams salvaged from the original building from the early 1900s.
But Massara is not a pizzeria, Secchi emphasizes. He has been quoted as saying that …”with Rezdôra, there is more lardo, Parmesan, dairy. In the Campania region it’s more vegetables, olive oil, seafood and live-fire cooking.”
In Massara, channelling an Italian farmhouse, the walls in each space are sparingly decorated with lighting fixtures of brass and bronze and an eclectic set of framed old prints and books, all sourced in Italy. Vintage pendants from Murano complement the “odds-and-ends-with-tyle” ambiance.
Chef Stefano Secchi may be from fairly humble beginnings financially, but from the culinary perspective, he’s fully loaded. Brought up in Dallas, Texas, he learned to cook in his father’s restaurant, Ferrari’s, under chef Dino Borrello whose live wild-yeast starter from Campania is still used in Massara today. Secchi then spent several years in different regions of Italy learning from the rural masters of hand-made pasta, fresh ingredients and the love of cooking.
In 2019, with partner, restaurateur David Switzer, Stefano Secchi opened Rezdôra in New York, an Italian restaurant celebrating the cuisine of the Emilia Romagna region located at the top rim of the Italian boot. Within weeks, it was impossible to get a reservation in the 60-seat eatery. And it wasn’t because of the promo, or the cool people, it was because of the food that people flocked in. And they still do. Rezdôra is now a successful one Michelin-Star restaurant and Secchi is hailed as the man who makes the best pasta in New York.
Loosely translated, Rezdôra means “head of household” which in Secchi’s childhood and formative culinary years was usually nonna, handrolling pasta each day. And, to make things even more closely linked to the origins of the cuisine, Massara is the Campania-region dialect for the same, formidable nonna in charge of the household’s cuisine. Tuija Seipell
Images by Brian W. Ferry