On a Thursday night in Long Island City, 1,500 people are dancing salsa on the waterfront. The Manhattan skyline glitters across the East River. Somewhere in the city, a member of a UN delegation probably still talks about the party they threw here last week. This is F. Ottomanelli By The Water — a community project, an immigrant story, and the culmination of multiple generations’ hard work.
It’s all anchored, of course, by a damn good burger. The meat gets ground fresh daily, the way it’s always been. And the man responsible for all of it is sitting nearby, almost certainly with the best story in the house.
Meet Frank Ottomanelli, who does not merely inhabit history, he feeds it.
Genesis
The story begins, as the best ones do, with someone who had nothing and made everything from it. Frank’s grandfather, Gennaro Ottomanelli, arrived in America around 1900 with a pushcart and a trade: cured meats sold on the streets of the West Village, transactions sealed with a look in the eye and a handshake.
Gennaro’s son Salvatore, Frank’s father, had other plans. He was studying for the priesthood in a seminary in Italy when World War II broke out and the headmaster sent everyone home. After the war, Salvatore told his father he was thinking of going back to finish.
Gennaro gave him a different assignment: take a pilgrimage to the homeland, from Naples to Capri and up the mountain to the church at Monte Sant’Angelo. Pray for two weeks. Come home and tell me what’s in your heart.
Turns out those heart strings strummed for New York. Salvatore walked into his brothers’ butcher shop on First Avenue and 64th Street, which opened in 1930.
“They put an apron on him and said, ‘you’re a partner.’ Just like that,” Frank laughed. “It’s kind of the same way I came to Queens for an apartment and ended up with a park.”
Going Viral
Frank’s father’s shop became something of a legend. This was the New York of the 50s and 60s, when recommendations moved by word of mouth and a great butcher was worth its weight in prime rib. Among their regulars was a woman who lived on 57th Street on a three-floor walk up. Frank’s father used to bring her order on a bicycle, only to wait outside once he landed.
“A man didn’t enter a parlor without the husband present, that was the code,” Frank explained. One evening, while the family gathered around the television, Salvatore pointed at the screen. “That’s my customer,” he exclaimed.
“We had to explain to him who Marilyn Monroe was,” Frank laughed while retelling the event. Turns out, Arthur Miller, Monroe’s famous playwright husband, was sending everyone he knew to Ottomanelli’s and selling the shop as New York’s best meat.
But a celebrity clientele and wild word of mouth did not keep Salvatore from doing things “the old fashioned way.” Frank grew up watching Salvatore conduct business as they did in the meatpacking district: face to face, a handshake at a time.
Frank became a reluctant recruit to the trade himself, conscripted by the immigrant logic of the Italian-American household. “Two arms, two legs, you’re healthy…you’re working. It was school, hockey, and back to the shop.” Work ethic in the Ottomanelli family wasn’t optional.
From Monroe to Emeril
Like his father and grandfather before him, Frank found that bringing meat to the masses meant meeting a disproportionate number of interesting people. And some of those people changed the trajectory of the Ottomanelli evolution.
In the mid-90s, a customer introduced him to “something called the internet” and told him everyone would be shopping from their computers one day. In true Ottomanelli form, he immediately registered his domain, found an old meatpacking warehouse on 13th Street, and opened one of the earliest mail-order meat operations in the country.
Frank later came across Joe Langhan in a Wall Street Journal profile that described a fledgling TV shopping network he was building. Frank cold-called Langhan’s office, and found an unlikely kindred spirit. Langhan brought Frank on as a partner in the venture, and would go on to found the Food Network. The endeavor nearly folded before becoming the institution it is, and introduced Frank along the way to a roster of talented, yet-to-be-known chefs destined to become culinary megastars.
Frank reminisces about meeting one such up-and-comer who was getting paid $150 an episode and told to bring his own coffee to set. Frank’s trademark mischievous smirk surfaced when he recalled his friend’s trajectory. That friend’s name was Emeril Lagasse.
“William Morris came calling, and suddenly Emeril was getting $9 million a year,” added Frank. “Plus, free coffee.”
Talking to Frank Ottomanelli on the breezy boardwalk that fronts Hunter’s Point South Park, watching him squint across the East River toward Midtown’s skyline, one thing becomes clear: this is a man who loves a good story and has learned to let his own unfold.
His family’s humble butchery was discovered by a famous playwright and movie star wife; he was an early mover in online retail; he had a front-row-seat to the birth of a media empire and the invention of the celebrity chef; he came to Queens to buy an apartment and ended up serving burgers to UN delegations at his own riverfront park.
Sitting with Frank feels a little like sitting beside Forrest Gump at the bus station, listening to this incredible history being casually recounted. There are countless people in the park: children chasing each other in circles, couples lounging on blankets, frisbees and volleyballs arcing through the air. There’s a group of young folks on the pier, tying an arch of flowers, prepping for an engagement. It’s all happening in Frank’s park. Everyone has their story. For Forrest Gump it was a box of chocolates. For Frank, it’s been a package wrapped in butcher paper. You never know what you’re gonna get.
How the Otto Burger Came to Be
For over a century, the Ottomanellis were a butcher family. After Salvatore passed in 2003, a neighbor suggested setting up a booth at the annual street fair in Woodside. Frank picked up a George Foreman grill and had contractors from down the block build a wooden stand. The plan was fifty burgers.
They sold 730 the first day, with a line down the block. The next year: 2,500. By the third year the team had two booths, comprised six people, and sold 4,000 burgers. After that, Frank pulled the plug on the street fair. It was time to open a restaurant.
F. Ottomanelli in Woodside opened in 2012 to the kind of acclaim you can’t manufacture. All with a simple, unpretentious product and a line out the door.
“It was like the street fair in a building,” Frank saif. “People just knew there was someone who cared about what went into what they were eating.” Three generations in, the butcher family was finally serving burgers.
The Revival of One of America’s Great Urban Parks
Frank had been in his new Long Island City home for all of one day when a woman from the Community Board called: the waterfront park in his neighborhood was up for bid. His daughter Tatiana’s reaction was immediate.
She shared the story with a chuckle: “What are you, crazy?” she said. “What are you going to do with a park?”
He was up against 45 competitors, including some of the biggest concessionaires in the country—but Frank’s community roots and reputation for simple excellence were exactly what the board was looking for. The Ottomanellis won a 10-year contract, and the burger born at a Woodside street fair was about to reach a whole new audience.
Frank came to the park the way his grandfather came to a pushcart: with a vision and no patience for waste. The Ottomanellis inherited a space in disrepair, and they transformed it. New furniture, shade sails, upgraded event spaces, a refreshed storefront, and above all, a commitment to community. Last year, Hunters Point South Park won the Urban Land Institute’s Award for Excellence, one of real estate’s most prestigious honors.
Frank and Tatiana are especially proud of the ongoing mural project, which engaged local artists in conjunction with Queensbridge Houses, one of the country’s largest public housing communities. The installation will soon encircle the park, each mural paired with a QR code linking visitors to the artist’s story. The throughline is part of the magic. It’s more than a burger. It’s more than a painting. Behind everything that’s good, there’s a good story.
The Story Goes On
Tatiana grew up in the business — working the Woodside Street Fair at eight years old, handing out burgers, collecting cash, and standing in supermarket aisles doing tastings. She studied psychology and biology in college, headed toward a career as a physician assistant. The park came through right before graduation. Then the pandemic hit, and she found herself delivering bags of meat across Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx with her then-boyfriend, now husband, bringing protein to families who couldn’t find it anywhere else.
“People greeted me at their doors like I was a front line worker,” Tatiana remembered. “And I just realized that what we’re doing is important in its way. It changed my whole idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and for my family.”
So Tatiana came home to the family business. She runs the events program now, and payroll, and inventory, and P&Ls. She manages the city relationship up for renewal in 2032, which she hopes to carry to 2042 — when maybe her son, just an infant today, will be donning an apron of his own.
If you want to see a butcher man light up, ask Frank Ottomanelli about his daughter and grandson. It’s the light of a man who cherishes legacy. So, what’s been the secret to the family’s success?
He stopped and looked back over the water at a city filled with his answer: hard work, family, story after story, endless possibilities, met with open arms and an open mind. He smiled and put his hands on the table.
“You should eat your burger,” he says. “I hope you enjoy it.”
