Onondaga Community College Professor and Chef James Taylor feels like a proud father. He's the Guest Chef for A Mano restaurant's holiday farm-to-table dinner and he's hard at work in the kitchen as opening time approaches. The restaurant is owned and operated by father and son OCC alumni Anthony Fiacchi, '84 and Alex Fiacchi, '12. Noah Fiacchi, who is a current OCC student, also works there. "It's nice to see the alumni in the restaurant business just crushing it," said Taylor. "This place is happening and people in Syracuse are catching on. They're blending all these flavors and keeping it true Italian but making it modern."
The Fiacchi's opened A Mano Kitchen & Bar in Syracuse's Icon Tower (344 South Warren Street) in September 2018. The restaurant name, "A Mano," means by hand. Much of what's on the menu, including the pastas, are hand made. "We're trying to make good Italian food and steer away from putting red sauce on top of everything," said Alex Fiacchi. "It's a much more modern approach. Handmade pastas with regional vegetables, local meats, etcetera. It's more comparable to modern American food."
The Fiacchi's road to a family-run restaurant has been years in the making. Anthony Fiacchi earned his Hospitality Management degree at OCC in 1984. He spent more than three decades in the local restaurant scene, including the last 15 years as general manager of Avicolli's in Liverpool before going into business with his sons. He runs the business side of A Mano and stays out of the kitchen. "OCC was a great program for me. I had a very close relationship with (Professor) Jim Drake. The mentorship I got from him was great and now I see the same thing with Chef Taylor and Alex."
Alex Fiacchi came to OCC from Bishop Grimes (class of 2011) around the same time as Chef Taylor was beginning to teach here. "I took a couple of his classes and learned a lot from him." As Fiacchi was considering where to go to school next, Chef Taylor and fellow professor Chef Deb Schneider steered him toward the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA). "They really helped me out. CIA had pretty strict guidelines about the amount of experience you needed before you could get in. Chef Schneider wrote me an awesome recommendation which got me a scholarship. OCC's program was great and really prepared me."
While training in Italian food at CIA, Fiacchi met fellow student and current girlfriend Lauren Markowitz. They spent six years working in kitchens in Philadelphia before deciding to come to Central New York. Markowitz makes all of the pasta by hand and Fiacchi runs the kitchen.
Younger brother Noah Fiacchi (Bishop Grimes, class of 2016) is currently in OCC's Hospitality Management program and a couple of semesters away from earning his degree. His specialty is the brick oven. "You can do absolutely anything with it. It's like a blank canvas. We cook pizzas, scallops, fish, vegetables, anything."
Both brothers loved the opportunity to work side by side with Chef Taylor for a night. "It was really cool to have him in here and hanging out like a co-worker rather than a teacher," said Alex. "We've had a lot of fun cooking together in class. He's taught me a lot. And it's a blast having him here as a guest chef," added Noah.
For Chef Taylor, seeing a former student and current student excelling in the ultra competitive restaurant business is very rewarding. "It is so cool to see what they were like when they were younger and now they're accomplished chefs. I'm very proud."
