Anthony Potenzo Escaped Chicago To Find Happiness In New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS — The chrome Harley-Davidson parked outside Lilette on Magazine Street most nights belongs to a restaurateur who escaped Chicago.

Five years ago, Anthony Potenzo owned two of the hippest joints in my hometown, Three Aces and Charlatan. When rising rents threatened profits, Potenzo called it quits.

That was the culmination of a hospitality career for an Italian kid who grew up on Taylor Street.

When Potenzo was a young rocker in a Valentino suit, no socks and a huge personality, he took over for legendary maitre'd, Aurturo Petterino at the Pump Room. Frank Sinatra once tipped him $500. He welcomed guests at Rosebud and Jilly's Piano Bar on Rush Street, once a Rat Pack hangout in a corner of the Gold Coast called the "Viagra Triangle."

I've been on the lookout for ex-Chicagoans like Potenzo on my storytelling journey around America this summer, curious to find out how they've made peace with leaving a city that defines them.

I'll admit, finding Potenzo dressed like a New Orleans Uptown socialite and asking for a "half-a-glass" of white wine was a jolt.

Potenzo grew up playing in the alley behind the Taylor Street bar he'd later own. His late uncle was locally infamous for running the gambling operation for the mob. He made a career for himself when Chicago clubs were cool, classy joints. Even when he lived in the suburbs, it was on "John Prine's mail route." I'm not sure if there's anybody more authentically "Chicago" than Potenzo.

"Chicago was my everything," he said when I caught up with him at Lilette's bar on a recent weekday afternoon.

He wore a white linen shirt and gray linen pants, the polar opposite of his black-on-black wardrobe that was his uniform back home.

His trademark pompadour had been trimmed down to a subtle Mohawk.

He sipped chardonnay instead of downing shots of Old Crow.

"What the heck happened to you?" I asked.

"Down here, it's a different world, man. This place grows on you," Potenzo said.

"I didn't open my own restaurant until I was 52. When it was over, the only thing I wanted to do was go somewhere warm and ride my motorcycle. I got a one-way ticket."

He fell in love with New Orleans as soon as he landed at Louis Armstrong Airport.

"A brass band was playing. I peeled 'em off a couple of shekels," Potenzo said. "I asked,'Who are you playing for?' And he said, 'You, my man.' I knew I wanted to live here."

He bought a house in the Algiers neighborhood on the west bank of the Mississippi River where his friendly neighbors sometimes shout greetings from open windows.

"I'd be walking down the street and a lady said from her kitchen window, 'Oh sweetheart, look at you, you look so handsome.' It was such a catharsis to have people looking at you and giving a genuine salutation," he said.

"Everything about this place, the music, the people. It had me. I wanted a place that was warm where I could ride my motorcycle every day, and it wouldn't hurt like Chicago in the winter. And I got it."

Potenzo said he had no plans to get back into the restaurant business until he met up Chef John Harris, who opened Lilette in 2001 and has kept the French bistro on the short list of New Orleans' top restaurants ever since.

Harris —a four-time James Beard finalist who worked a stint at Spiaggia in Chicago in the '90s — hired Potenzo as his front-of-the-house host.

"Anthony had an instant connection with all our regulars, and we're a neighborhood establishment that doesn't rely on tourists," Lilette General Manager Jesse Martin said. "Our bread and butter is keeping people in the neighborhood happy, and it took him maybe a week to have everybody all smiles when they see him. He's got charm. He's got the good tunes going. People are drawn to him."

Potenzo says the eclectic collection of neighborhood regulars, A-list actors and musicians who frequent the Magazine Street hot spot keep him energized.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie used to come for dinner with the kids in a back booth when they lived in New Orleans. Bryan Cranston brought his family three nights in a row last year. Anthony "Captain America" Mackie is known to pop in.

"This has always been that kind of joint because it's low-key. They know the food is good. Now, you might think, oh, the famous actors. But I'm like, that guy over there across the room plays guitar, f------ Walter "Wolfman" Washington. If a musician comes in, I got 'em," Potenzo said.

"I'm having fun like I had in Chicago, but I don't have the worries of being an owner. Every day is a gift. This is the happiest I've ever been in my life."

He adjusted the cuffs on his white linen shirt, sipped his chardonnay and smiled.

Now, Chicago is a great place to visit, and home is where Potenzo parks his Harley.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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