Donna Lennard never predicted she would open a restaurant—il Buco found her. In 1994, she and her then-partner started serving splashes of wine out of their Bond Street antique shop. Manhattan is particularly rough on restaurants, but despite the odds, il Buco not only survived but thrived, branching off into a grocery story and outposts in the Hamptons and Ibiza. Now, after spending years finding the right ingredients, Lennard opened up to CULTURED about her journey from there to here and what’s next for the storied Italian restaurant.
You’ve lived many different lives before il Buco. Walk us through some of them.
I went to Italy for the first time when I was 17, living with a family in Sardinia. I went on to study at Duke and then NYU where I trained as a filmmaker. I graduated from college, went to film school, fell in love with a filmmaker, and then he tragically passed away from a brain aneurysm right before our wedding. About a year later, while I was trying to produce a screenplay he had written, I met Alberto Avalle, a charismatic Italian, while working as a bartender at Arqua in Tribeca. He was a food purist, a world traveler, and an adventurer. After that, my life took a turn.
Is it true that il Buco originally began as an antique shop?
Alberto and I were partners in life and in business, and we started out collecting antiques to sell in Italy. We soon realized we desperately needed somewhere to store all the Americana we’d amassed. One afternoon while crossing cobblestoned Bond Street, a set of hand-wrought light sculptures in artist Warren Muller’s studio caught my eye. A few months later, the space was ours. It was 2,000 square feet for $2,000 a month. We filled it with our curated collection of antiques and started sharing the occasional glass of wine and lunch with neighbors. We procured a wine and liquor license, and il Buco became a speakeasy restaurant where you could buy the table you were dining at. Three years later, we stopped selling antiques to focus entirely on the restaurant.
Looking back, what first drew you toward food?
My mom loved to cook as we were growing up so I always ate well and loved cooking for friends in college. After meeting Alberto, that passion doubled as we traveled through Spain and Italy. Alberto was the apprentice of a chef in Foligno who was a hunter-gatherer and ingredient forager of the highest level. Even in the nine years we lived together on Avenue C, we cooked in a fireplace. It was all about sourcing the right ingredients. He spent years searching for the right olive oil, vinegar, salt. We’d visit producers, taste everything, and those people became part of our extended family in Italy.
What were your inspirations for the restaurant, its design, and its menu?
Since we began as an antique store in 1994, the transition to restaurant when the wine license arrived was fairly simple. We had the perfect warm, welcoming decor with primitive Americana and various pieces from Spain and Italy. I began my career as a filmmaker, so il Buco was like an independent film production. I also work from instinct, so it was never about executing a concept. It was about creating a warm feeling, inviting our guests into our home.
The antiques were already there, the hutches, the old chairs, the objects we’d been collecting with love over time. These objects and textures gave il Buco a mood that couldn’t be manufactured. It had its own life. The food followed the same logic. We selected the best ingredients we could find both locally and in Italy. We started as a tapas bar, shaped by the time Alberto and I had spent traveling Spain together. Eventually we found our way back to Italy, to his family in Foligno, in Umbria, and the menu followed us there. Ingredient-first, seasonal, rooted in the land; that philosophy remained constant over the past 32 years.
When we opened il Buco Alimentari on Great Jones Street, my two dear Umbrian friends, the cousins Antonello and Lorenzo Radi, who I’ve known for 25 years through Alberto, came in to help worldwide. Antonello is a collector and painter, a true artist at heart, whose palazzo has been featured in Elle Decor. They are, in every sense, my Italian “brothers” who share my vision for a life lived beautifully, for honoring the handmade, and bringing to life the things that have always been at the heart of il Buco.
Over the years, through many trips back and forth to Umbria, we had been dreaming together about a home line dedicated to supporting the Italian artisans in the face of mass production. Fast forward to 2019, and that dream finally took shape: the design spilled over from the restaurants into a full-fledged tabletop and antique decor collection, il Buco Vita—a natural evolution given our roots in antiques. With Vita, I returned to where it all began. After all, il Buco started as an antiques store selling collected treasures imbued with history and tradition. That same love of collecting, stories, friends, recipes, and art lingers today. Together, the three of us seek out artisans who are masters of their craft, safeguarding traditional methods that are quietly disappearing from the world. Antonello’s own paintings—boldly-stroked oil still lifes of vegetables, anchovies, and fish—hang throughout the restaurants and the Vita shops.
What has your relationship to the Hamptons been over the years? What made Amagansett feel like the right place for il Buco al Mare?
I’ve been out East for a long time. I’ve always been drawn to the sea to disconnect. My father had a home there for almost 30 years and I rented in Sag Harbor for many winters before I bought a small 1960s cottage almost 10 years ago in Springs. During the pandemic, living there with my son Joaquin and my cat Keiko, I began slowly designing and constructing my home, an incredibly satisfying project.
As for al Mare, it was definitely not in the works before the pandemic. I was intractable about it: no way, no how, was I going to have a restaurant where I go to relax. We dipped a toe in Summer 2020 when we took over my friend Fernando Trocca’s Mostrador at the Marram hotel in Montauk. It was a little kiosk, with outdoor seats overlooking the ocean. As the summer ended, my team talked me into checking out a space in Amagansett which had been offered to me for over a year. They convinced me to move forward and after six months the deal came together. Il Buco al Mare opened just barely in time for Memorial Day 2021.
Where are your favorite places to go in the Hamptons to eat, to shop, and to unwind?
For art, I’m always looking at what’s showing at Guild Hall, Fairfax Dorn Projects, Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton, and the Parrish Art Museum. For shopping, I love Winnie Beattie’s Warm, 180 the Store in Amagansett, Ganeaux, French Presse for bedding, and Lori Leven’s Love Adorned market in Amagansett Square. Henry Lehr is a forever favorite. When I’m entertaining at home in Springs, I load the car with things from Alimentari—bread, cheese, anchovies, colatura, bottarga—and then shop the farm stands like Balsam and Amber Waves and fish markets for whatever’s local. My mornings start with a sauna, meditation, yoga, a cold plunge in the bay. Then I’m off to ride my horse, Stallone, through the fields and often on Gibson beach. By evening I’m usually at al Mare for dinner, since I’ve likely skipped lunch entirely.
These days you’re entering a new chapter as your culinary director steps in. What’s next for you and il Buco?
Il Buco is entering an exciting new chapter. Most importantly, my nephew, Danny Rubin, has rejoined me as the director of operations, freeing me up to take a step back and focus on the creative pieces. We also recently hired a culinary director, Alex Napolitano, who is beginning with a focus on il Buco and assisting with the commissary program out East. In partnership with the culinary teams at each property, he’s refining menus across our restaurants, expanding il Buco Bakery, and helping evolve our market pantry product lines, among many other initiatives. Alex’s role reflects the opportunity we have to evolve, building stronger partnerships with local producers, improving collaboration between our kitchens, and creating more consistency across the company as we continue to grow.
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