The Only One That Floats

The Italians might call it a zeppole, but Francis Garcia knows the dessert by another name.

“My mother used to call it a lead sinker,” he said, with “sinker” coming out as “sinka.” “It’s just heavy. It sits in your stomach like a lead brick. You’re eating a friggin’ fried piece of bread.”

The name has since inspired Garcia’s newest restaurant, Led Zeppole, which he co-owns with his cousin Sal Basille in Manhattan’s East Village.

Opened in January of 2010, Led Zeppole dishes up traditional Italian desserts such as cannoles and Italian ice, along with several other treats, which have been revved-up to suit the modern palate. This, of course, is just a decorated way of saying they deep-fry everything.

From the classically unhealthy deep-fried Oreo, to the highly refined fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Garcia and Basille aim to recreate the novelty flavors they remember from their Brooklyn childhood.

“We want people to feel like they’re back at Coney Island,” Garcia said. “It’s supposed to be fun.”

But Led Zeppole isn’t an only child. Two doors down from the Coney Island boardwalk-themed restaurant sits the cultish New York favorite, Artichoke Pizza, which the cousins also own.

“A lot of places in Staten Island do pizza and Italian ice,” Garcia remarked. “Artichoke is too small so we figured we could do [dessert] here.”

At first, they pushed their dessert case up to the sidewalk’s edge and hung a giant wheel for customers to spin, in gluttonous hopes of scoring a free zeppole.

But the set-up didn’t quite work. “So we pushed everything back into the space and added seats,” Garcia said.

For all of Led Zeppole’s charm, Garcia still understands the potential risks of opening a restaurant so close to his successful three-year-old pizzeria.

In order to waltz breezily into Led Zeppole, patrons must first traverse the sea of Artichoke patrons, hazy in their $4.50-per-slice stupor.

But Led Zeppole didn’t win Time Out New York’s 2010 Eat Out Award for Best New Drunk Food by accident. Garcia and Basille knew full well who is eating at their pizzeria after midnight. They also knew that those people eat dessert.

“We knew that if we opened a sandwich shop, or a hamburger shop, we’d be cannibalizing ourselves,” Garcia said. “You look around and see a Pinkberry or a frozen yogurt stand next to every restaurant. The two help each other out. We wanted to do the same thing.”

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  A scene from Francis Garcia and Sal Basille’s childhood in Coney Island, recreated in the East Village.
  
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  Signs above the front awning create an air of carnival nostalgia
  
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  Led Zeppole places its customers back in time for their favorite fried creations.
  
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  A child’s dream; an adult’s guilty pleasure.
  
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  The fryer: where the magic happens.
  
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  There’s no such thing as “too many boxes of Oreos”.
  
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  The batch freezer is the owners’ most trusted weapon for creating new menu items.
  
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  Novelty decorations adorn the aged, brick interior.
  
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  A retro-style CD player churns out the Nutcracker Symphony and other classic(al) pieces.
  
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  Fried foods need grease! (Elbow grease, that is)
  
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  Eddie Murphy, 1991; twenty years later it finds a unique home at Led Zeppole
  
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  Small batch?
  
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  For when wooden spoons just don’t cut it…
  
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  The owners look to put the bar stools to work once their liquor license is approved.
  
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  A main counter view of 14th St. provides interesting late-night entertainment.
  
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  The infamous fried Oreo
  
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  The lead sinker itself: the zeppole
  

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In this, Led Zeppole seems to be succeeding, though Garcia admitted the store isn’t selling as many zeppoles as he’d hoped. But because the fried indulgences are inexpensive to produce, the math works out.

“I can get a bag of flour for 10 bucks, then make a thousand zeppoles at a buck a piece,” Garcia explained. “Well, not a thousand. But you know—a lot.”

As for the restaurant’s future, Garcia and Basille have applied for a liquor license and plan to begin offering peanut butter and jelly Italian ice.

It’s an experiment born of curiosity.

“See that giant metal thing behind the counter? That’s a batch freezer,” Garcia said. “You can throw chicken soup in there and it’ll come out delicious. It’s like friggin’ magic.”

Not salivating yet? Hear customers rave about Led Zeppole’s fried Oreos and other treats.