Lady Gaga’s Parents Open NYC Restaurant

Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty ImagesLady Gaga was nowhere in sight Wednesday when her parents, Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta, opened their new restaurant in Manhattan, but Gaga duet partner Tony Bennett made an appearance, the New York Post reports.

The eatery is named “Joanne” after Joseph's late sister. Post restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo did not give the restaurant high marks for its first night.  Cuozzo wrote, “You don’t expect a brand-new eatery to be running on all cylinders, but Joanne...was running mainly on acrid-smelling burnt vinegar wafting intermittently through the raucous dining room.”

Cuozzo said appetizers “took 50 minutes to arrive” adding, “grilled calamari with bitter greens and radicchio were the worst I’ve had in a lifetime of squid-mongering.” Cuozzo said the $38 veal osso bucco was “unspeakably fatty.”  The restaurant critic said the orecchiette with shellfish recalled the flaccid pasta commonly doled out...at 35,000 feet.”

The restaurant's food, overseen by celebrity chef Art Smith, is described as "Southern Italian," because Smith is Southern and Gaga's family is Italian.

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