Every weekend, Joe’s Meat Market in South Bound Brook hosts sold-out, waited dinner service in its humble deli space, with white tablecloths and candles surrounded by pizza boxes and potato chips.
“They come for the food, not for the ambiance,” said Giovanni LaCorte, 20-year-old chef and son of deli owner Joe LaCorte. “But soon, I’ll have people coming for the ambiance, too.”
In late December, Joe’s Meat Market will open Giovanni’s restaurant, named after its young chef, in a former church fellowship hall next to the deli at 113 Clinton St.
It will continue the upscale dinner service that Giovanni began hosting in the deli about a year ago — but with a modern, elegant and minimalist vibe featuring lights imported from Italy, wood floors, neutral colors and a waterfall outside.
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Seats for 120 people will fill three dining rooms, also suitable for private events and weddings, between white walls and black ceilings. It’s a far cry from the 40-seat deli, where on packed weekend nights patrons sit on the pizzeria side of the space, too.
But the food will be the same. Just as he does at Joe’s Meat Market’s Friday and Saturday night dinners, Giovanni will serve classic, refined Italian-American dishes, like $25 homemade rigatoni with truffle cream sauce, filet mignon tips, sundried tomatoes and burrata; $20 chicken Parmesan with vodka sauce and penne vodka; and $60 lobster oreganata with mussels, clams, shrimp and calamari.
“I make good, simple dishes that people love,” he said. “People aren’t just coming in for a roast beef sandwich — they’re also coming in and ordering tomahawk steak.”
When Joe’s Meat Market was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” in 2022, Giovanni was the youngest chef ever on the show at 18.
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Since then, he has capitalized on his television stint by creating Instagram videos. He has nearly 15,000 followers, most who began following him after he appeared on the Food Network. Now, people visit from throughout the tristate area to try the food — and take a photo with him.
Online, not everyone is complimentary.
“I have a lot of people on Instagram who say I’m just an Instagram chef and I just make videos and that’s not true at all,” he said. “One of the biggest challenges is people think of my age and don’t think I’m actually doing the work.”
After he graduated from Somerville High School in 2022, LaCorte worked at the deli every day of the week. Prior to that, he spent years washing dishes before slowly making his way to kitchen prep.
But after three months working much more than full-time in the deli, he wanted to learn more about his real love in the kitchen: fine dining. So he dropped one day of work at the deli — only to work for free that day in Staten Island restaurant kitchens.
“I loved it,” he said. “I didn’t care about the money. It was about getting the knowledge.”
Giovanni brought the new skills he learned from New York, including how to use fresh herbs and how to use liquors in sauces, back to Joe’s Meat Market when he approached his father about using the church fellowship hall they bought in March last year as a restaurant, rather than its planned use as a catering hall.
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Joe LaCorte cut his son a deal. He told him to host dinners at the deli and if they were successful in a year, they would make the hall into a restaurant. But it wasn’t a steaming success right off the bat.
“When I first started, I had no tables,” Giovanni said. “Then for the first two months, I had one table.”
Slowly that began to change, and now, as soon as he posts his Instagram video about the weekend specials on Thursdays, calls start coming in to make reservations.
It’s a dream come true for the 20-year-old, who would always run into kitchens as a little kid when his parents took him out for dinner and speaks about the hot, stainless-steel rooms like they’re Eden itself.
“There was always something in my heart directing me to go into the kitchen,” he said. “I just loved to see the action. You’ll never see anything like it. A restaurant kitchen is amazing.”
And now he has found his place in one.
“I believe in myself,” he said. “I’m still learning. It’s just the beginning for me.”
Go: 113 Clinton St., South Bound Brook; instagram.com/giovannisitalianrestaurant113/; opening in late December.
Contact: [email protected]
Jenna Intersimone has been a staff member at the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey since 2014, although she’s a lifetime Jersey girl who considers herself an expert in everything from the Jersey Shore to the Garden State’s buzzing downtowns. To get unlimited access to her stories about food, drink and fun, please subscribe or activate your digital account today. You can also follow her on Instagram at @seejennaeat and on Twitter at @JIntersimone.
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