Is Al embellishing here? I mean the mayor, De Niro, La Motta and JFK's son dining at Donna Rosa; I find it hard to believe.
I read elsewhere some guy talking about his girlfriend working at the place when Al started co-operating and he said that the place was just a front and not a legitimate business.
http://books.google.ie/books?id=IKVWTsi5...iro&f=false Give me a break with that guy and that book. That restaurant was only there a few years to begin with, and it was never as busy as any of the better places down there (and granted, they were mostly tourist traps, even then).
I love how the New York Magazine write-up claimed that it was "the favorite restaurant of a certain plumbing supply salesman," or whatever the fuck they wrote, when by D'Arco's own admission Gotti never set foot in the place. He probably paid them to write that, which shows that he was half-a-rat even then.
No one in the other families on Mulberry Street had any use for Little Al by the late '80s. His claims that he was a confidante of Little Jimmy's for awhile, and that used to meet with him at La Mela, are so fucking laughable that they should be in a comic book rather than a Capeci/Robbins bio.
