Eataly complex opens in New York as analysts and stockbrokers queue for jobs
NEW YORK – “Two young communications studies graduates came to see me in Turin. They were looking for a job. I told them I had nothing for them in Italy but was I opening a large complex in New York. A top-quality food store and seven restaurants. I needed people who could make mozzarella by hand. The job was theirs if they were willing to learn. The two jumped at the chance and they’ve been in Andria for the past two months”.
When they get to Manhattan, the young hopefuls will find what is still a huge construction site of Italian food on Fifth Avenue, as the opening day of Eataly USA on 31 August approaches. The huge, 6,000 square-metre space stands opposite the Flatiron, New York’s iconic early 20th-century skyscraper. According to Oscar Farinetti, a man disinclined to modesty, it will be “the most important place for Italian food anywhere in the world”. The Piedmontese businessman is best-known for his Unieuro electrical goods chain. Now in the wake of Eataly events in Italy and Japan, he has joined forces with America’s leading Italian chefs, Mario Batali and Joe and Lidia Bastianich, and the Sapers, two Jewish brothers from New York who abandoned Wall Street for the world of food.
