Ruggero's

Description

So after a couple of weeks being open; after having a big media event touting nobody John Albanese as the new "Chef", Albanese is gone and now some guy named Giovanni Filippone is the greatest chef ever in history. Filippone and his wife opened San Marzano Ristorante in Pembroke Pines in 2015 and it was closed in 6 months.

Their PR person has gone dark after we asked the following hard questions:

1) Who is the owner of the restaurant?
2) With Albanese gone, what is the connection between the old Ruggero's from 2005 and this Ruggero's?

*** Original Post ****

So you open a fancy, overpriced Italian restaurant and for 2 years it never catches on; so you close it and someone opens an even more expensive Italian restaurant, which is just down the street from where Tony D lost a boatload of money with an overpriced Italian restaurant.

Worse than that, it's the same owner and name as the Ruggero's that failed quickly in the Red Cow location (before it was Johnny Cocktails), with a similar concept.

More interesting stuff is that while the Sign and Menu have changed, they're still operating under the Santa Lucia food service and liquor license, which would be illegal unless the owners of Santa Lucia are operating it, since you can't just buy a restaurant and use the former owner's license. So from a legal standpoint it would appear that this restaurant is under the same management as it was before.

Of course the company that the licenses are registered to is in dissolution because they didn't file an annual report this year.

On their web site, they touch some reviews from 2005 by the phantom Judith Stocks, except there doesn't seem to be any connection between this restaurant and the last one. How much did someone invest in the idea to copy a failed restaurant from 10 years ago and try to use their reviews to promote a new business?