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When Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta, parents to iconic artist Lady Gaga, opened Italian restaurant Joanne Trattoria at 70 West 68th Street by Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side back in 2012, New York was a very different city.
"Fifteen years ago, Joanne became a neighborhood restaurant with a regular bar crowd and white tablecloth seating," Joseph, whom friends call Joe, tells Time Out. "It has [since] evolved. Diners want more than dinner and drinks: they want an experience."
Those shifts in attitude and desires have led Joe and the family to usher Joanne's into its next phase of being. The restaurant will officially move into the "experience" space by offering new nightly programs that heavily lean into all things drag.
"We launched our Drag Me to Joanne's dinner and show on Valentine's Day 2023 and, every since then, guests have requested even more entertainment on other nights of the week," the owner reveals.
Among the newly launched programs are the Sunday night drag bingo event, the Thursday drag trivia night and the Friday cabaret, which touches on Joseph's other hope for the space: to become one of those legendary local institutions where would-be stars get to hone their crafts.
"New York's stages both large and small helped my daughter achieve her dreams and get discovered," he says. "I remember going to iconic New York venues like The Bitter End, the Knitting Factory or Arlene's Grocery to watch her shows in pursuit of her big break and I hope Joanne's can now be that place for someone else pushing for a breakthrough moment of their own."
For patrons, not much will change: the shows will be complimentary experiences that won't require special reservations or tickets. Guests will get to go to dinner and simply watch it all unfold around them.
The programming updates will come along with an updated menu that focuses on shareable plates, ideally consumed while catching a show. Although specific details and dishes are still being ironed out, guests can expect classic red sauce dishes to share menu space with modern takes on classics.
One more noticeable shift involves Joanne's drink offerings—which will heavily rely on the public's thirst for non-alcoholic beverages, a trend that Joe himself has noticed in the past few years.
"It's something that I've become passionate about since I stopped drinking five years ago," he says. "I'm happy to satisfy the increased appetite for non-alcoholic drink options. We have an extensive mocktail menu."
The restaurant owner also reveals that he's currently writing a recipe book aptly titled Make Me a Mocktail, which we're sure will perfectly complement his 2016 tome, Joanne Trattoria Cookbook: Classic Recipes and Scenes from an Italian-American Restaurant. Who knows? Maybe this book will also feature a foreword by the one and only Lady Gaga.