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Mr. [Padolecchia], who says he is the last living relative of Marco Polo, is a native of Venice who explains that his two last names together mean ”Polo son of Polo.”
The true quest for Mr. Padolecchia, who has held diplomatic posts in Asia and is the president of Euro China, an organization devoted to increasing economic cooperation between China and the West, is clearing up a historical mystery. It rankles him a bit that Marco Polo is always presented as an adventurer or some sort of ”searcher of women or something,” he said. He was, Mr. Padolecchia argues, in fact on a mission from Pope Clement VII to the court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, when he met a Chinese woman who became the love of his life.
”The last relative of Marco Polo — all the Italians are excited,” said Buddy Scotto, who owns a funeral home not far from the restaurant and has been active in several efforts to improve the neighborhood and clean up the Gowanus Canal. ”Or I guess we’re supposed to be. Celebrating Marco Polo is about as Italian as you can get, so I’m going to go and wave the Italian-American flag and maybe get them to agree with me on cleaning up the canal.”
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Copyright New York Times Company Jun 9, 2003It all started out as a bit of a lark. To generate a little buzz about the 20th anniversary celebration of the Marco Polo Ristorante in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, the owner, Joe Chirico, and a public relations consultant thought they would try to find a relative of the great traveler himself who might be persuaded to come.
They did not have great hopes for success; even if they could find someone, they thought, he or she was unlikely to make a trans-Atlantic trip for an upscale Italian neighborhood place that made good. But, in the end, there he was: Siro Polo Padolecchia, standing in the dining room at the corner of Court and Union Streets, elegant and courtly in a gray suit and a Knights of Malta pin. He chatted gamely with the chef about Venetian restaurants, sipped cappuccino and handed out business cards from the several organizations he runs, all within sight of a mural dedicated to his ancestor, with whom he shares quite a distinctive nose.
Mr. Padolecchia, who says he is the last living relative of Marco Polo, is a native of Venice who explains that his two last names together mean ”Polo son of Polo.”
He has traveled from his home in Monte Carlo for this sort of thing before. There was the time that he served as chairman of a three-day festival celebrating the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s return to Venice.
There was the time he went to the Marco Polo restaurant in Xiamen, China, where, he said diplomatically, ”The food was certainly not better than the food I will experience here with my friend Joe, but I think they have done all they could not to make Marco Polo descendants upset.”
Mr. Padolecchia even has an idea to somehow link the various Marco Polo restaurants he has seen in China, the United States and Europe. ”These people certainly have something in common, at least the name of Marco,” he said.
But the true quest for Mr. Padolecchia, who has held diplomatic posts in Asia and is the president of Euro China, an organization devoted to increasing economic cooperation between China and the West, is clearing up a historical mystery. It rankles him a bit that Marco Polo is always presented as an adventurer or some sort of ”searcher of women or something,” he said. He was, Mr. Padolecchia argues, in fact on a mission from Pope Clement VII to the court of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, when he met a Chinese woman who became the love of his life.
”It’s the moment in which Marco meets for the first time the person about whom history for strange reasons doesn’t speak too much,” Mr. Padolecchia said, ”which is supposed to be the wife or concubine of Marco.”
”Unfortunately the destruction, the ravages made by Turks, by Arabs, by you name it, Slavs and et cetera, have destroyed the churches in our area, which have destroyed the documentation which we should have had,” he said.
So, using his own money and with help from Chinese authorities in Jiangsu province, where Marco Polo is said to have been a governor, he has been trying to trace the woman’s story and locate her grave.
It is ”dramatic research” that Mr. Padolecchia’s great-grandfather began, and now he thinks it is only a matter of time and money before her final resting place is found.
In the area, the Chinese have built a small Marco Polo museum, he said, ”which makes me very soft in my heart when I think about it because we know it is there.”
”Maybe in the next 10 years, in the next 100 years, but we have to find this reality because this exists and must be found,” he said, ”because we are very much annoyed, worried and upset that history does not speak about that.”
For people in Carroll Gardens, though, the arrival of Mr. Padolecchia, who is directly descended, 33 generations hence, from Marco Polo’s brother, is a little bit like the arrival of history itself.
”The last relative of Marco Polo — all the Italians are excited,” said Buddy Scotto, who owns a funeral home not far from the restaurant and has been active in several efforts to improve the neighborhood and clean up the Gowanus Canal. ”Or I guess we’re supposed to be. Celebrating Marco Polo is about as Italian as you can get, so I’m going to go and wave the Italian-American flag and maybe get them to agree with me on cleaning up the canal.”
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said he planned to attend as well. ”Because I’m devoted to Brooklyn I’m going to attend and stay the course of time, one course at a time,” he said, adding that he was looking forward to the restaurant’s signature pasta dish, homemade fettuccine tossed with truffle oil in a hollowed-out Parmesan wheel.
”I like the red sauce stuff, the chicken Parmesan,” said Mr. Markowitz, who is organizing a second boroughwide diet, intended to better the health of all Brooklynites. ”Forgive me, it doesn’t sound sexy, but I like it. I like good basic wholesome food.”
But tonight’s festivities will be anything but basic. The guest list includes owners of popular Italian restaurants like Cucina in Park Slope and San Domenico on Central Park South, members of the food press, elected officials like Mr. Markowitz and United States Representatives Nydia M. Velazquez and Edolphus Towns, as well as Italian and Chinese diplomats.
And the menu, compiled after weeks of research and testing, is a six-course Venetian extravaganza, heavy on seafood and nonexistent on pasta, with a different wine for each course.
Venetians, Mr. Padolecchia explained, do not eat pasta. ”Marco Polo brought noodles from China but the noodles have never been received, accepted, in our republic of Venice, but accepted by all the rest of the world, starting with the Italians,” he said.
”National dishes,” he added, are polenta and seafood, as well as ”vegetables, from which we prepare the famous minestrone.”
The meal, served by waiters in 13th-century garb, is to begin with scallops and langoustines sauteed with shallots and brandy and end with a sponge cake filled with gelato and topped with a chocolate sauce.
In between, the chef plans a rice course with pancetta, green peas, butter and Parmesan; crabmeat-stuffed turbot; and roast duck breast with raisins, pine nuts and balsamic vinegar reduction served over polenta.
For Mr. Chirico, who also owns the landmark restaurant Gage and Tollner in downtown Brooklyn, the evening represents a career capstone. ”When I saw him yesterday in the airport, right away I recognized him,” Mr. Chirico said, a bit incredulous.
He added, ”I am so thrilled, really, finally to meet somebody, you know, who was descended from Marco Polo.” Indeed, he said, his son is named Marco.
Mr. Chirico emigrated from Calabria in 1964 and opened several businesses over the years, but was looking to do something a little nicer in 1983. Inspired by a celebration of Marco Polo in Venice, he decided to name a restaurant he was opening for him. He envisioned it as an elegant tablecloth establishment serving authentic Northern and Southern Italian dishes.
The restaurant, which Mr. Chirico built from scratch with a mix of light-colored stone and dark brick, struggled in the beginning, but now it is something of an institution among the neighborhood’s longstanding Italian-American population.
In the evenings, especially on the weekends, patrons dress up and drop their cars with the valets outside. Upstairs, Mr. Chirico has a banquet room with a stained glass inset in the ceiling that has been the setting for everything from a meeting of the Italian Teachers Federation to an elaborate party held by a couple in a rocky marriage (they split up).
After tonight’s gala, Mr. Chirico said he planned to offer the special Venetian menu created by his chef of 17 years, Francesco Insingo, for a week, and then the restaurant’s original 1983 menu at 1983 prices for the following week.
As for Mr. Padolecchia, he said he would continue his investigations into the long lost love of his ancestor, while pursuing his many diplomatic ventures.
Marco Polo, he said, ”was a wonderful person who started his life with an effective mission.”
”I understand that he carried out his mission in the best possible way,” Mr. Padolecchia continued, ”but I understand that he also suffered terribly much for the loss of the only person he really loved.”
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