Leonardo Coppola felt most at home in the kitchen, where he would combine his creativity with the traditional skills he learned from his mother and grandmother.
It’s been more than a year since her husband’s death, but Kim Coppola still sees Leonardo every day.
She sees him in their 9-year-old son Nico, in the recipes Leo loved to create with his mother, in Padrino’s Bistro and Italian Steakhouse, the restaurant they opened together.
It’s been more than a year since Leo died Jan. 17, 2015 shielding a woman from a gunman at the Melbourne Square Mall in Florida. Each morning brings fresh the reality for Coppola that her husband’s not there physically, that he’s not coming back. She allows herself to grieve for a moment, to register Leonardo’s absence. Then, she turns to him in her mind, asking, “How am I supposed to do this without you?”
Determined to make him proud, Coppola braces herself for the day. She wakes up Nico, the spitting image of his father. She tries to keep a smile on her face, so Nico doesn’t see she’s sad. It’s a weary task hiding the grief that hounds her. But Leo pulls her through. She doesn’t make a move without him guiding her.
After bringing Nico to school each day, Coppola heads to Padrino’s. Stepping inside the restaurant is hard for Coppola, but it’s also a blessing. Leonardo still lives here. His presence is all around, in the way the dining room’s decorated to recall his native Italy, in the menu that reflects his upbringing in Naples and his time spent watching his grandmother cook in Calabria.
Nothing here has changed since he died. Everything is the way Leo wanted it. His departure had shaken everyone at the restaurant already; they didn’t need or want any more changes. Besides, this place had been Leo’s dream. It lives on, so he can, too.
His spirit survives in the kitchen especially. The Padrino’s website still says Leo is in the kitchen crafting his recipes, and sometimes it seems like it’s true. Every now and then, the cooks have an urge to add a pinch more salt to the sauce or maybe try something they wouldn’t do normally on their own. That can only be Leo’s influence, they say.
But perhaps Leo’s greatest legacy can be found in the atmosphere at Padrino’s, in how Coppola and her employees have coped with Leo’s passing. Leo never let the little things affect him. He rarely became upset. He would implore those close to him to ignore annoyances or let go of anger.
Coppola always had struggled with this. But, with Leo’s help, she’s working on it. Whenever she feels angry or sad or hopeless, she imagines Leo urging her to not keep hate in her heart. She thinks about his smile or the practical jokes he used to play or how he had devoted himself to making others happy. And, ultimately, the darkness passes.
“Considering everything, you want to hold on to so much of that pain,” Coppola said. “But that’s not Leo, so I try to let that all go. He was such a good man. The world really lost an angel that day.”
* * *
On Jan. 17, 2015, Leonardo Coppola took a bullet meant for Idanerys Garcia-Rodriguez.
Jose Garcia-Rodriguez, 57, had stormed into the Melbourne Square Mall that Saturday morning as employees in the food court readied for the lunch rush. He fired into a crowd of people, wounding his wife, Idanerys, 33, an employee at Scotto Pizza. The couple, both originally from Cuba, had been married for 16 years and had five children together.
Leonardo, who owned the pizzeria, acted fast, protecting the woman from the next round of gunfire. Police say he was hit pulling his employee to safety.
That Leonardo was there, in that mall, was a series of coincidences. He had opened the Florida location in September 2015, with hopes of bringing what he did in Florida back to New Jersey. His goal always was to come home.
He split his time between his family and his new venture, a few weeks in New Jersey and few weeks in Florida. He was on the phone constantly while in Florida, and watched the cameras he had installed in Padrino’s every day. He placed orders for all the supplies needed at Padrino’s. He consulted Coppola on every decision. He knew everything that was going on at home, even when he wasn’t there.
Leonardo thought he could succeed as a franchise owner, and just had gotten Scotto Pizza off the ground in Melbourne when he died, at age 36. He had only been in Florida for four months.
Law enforcement in Florida hailed Leonardo as a hero; Idanerys Garcia-Rodriguez would surely be dead without Leo’s quick thinking. The Hamilton-based Italian American National Hall of Fame agreed, and honored Leonardo with a Medal of Heroism during its November 2015 banquet in Atlantic City. Nico beamed with pride as he received the award for his father.
Coppola’s still processing the shock of losing her husband, but she’s not surprised at what he did the day he died. Leo was always giving to others. He hated waste, and would bring anything extra from his restaurants into Trenton to feed the hungry. He invited anyone he knew would be alone for Christmas dinner to his home. He collected donations for Toys For Tots and Hurricane Sandy victims. One night, he came home with no shoes; he had given them to a homeless man with bare feet.
His last sacrifice was the ultimate one, but it wasn’t a decision Leo would have spent much time weighing. Someone needed his help, and he responded—just like he always did.
“None of us were shocked to hear what happened to him,” Coppola said. “He would never let anybody get hurt. He’s a true hero.”
* * *
Leonardo was a shy and private person, more comfortable behind the scenes than in the spotlight. But anyone who ate at one of his restaurants knew him. Maybe not personally, but through his food.
He believed he put a part of his heart into every dish, and he would he would peek out of the kitchen to watch people’s reactions as they ate the food he had made. He rarely came out onto the dining room floor, though. The attention embarrassed him.
He merely focused on being a good host. And, in the Italian tradition, being a good host meant, above all, providing good, fresh food. He learned from his grandmother in Calabria, who would spend hours in the kitchen showing Leo how to make fresh pasta and sauces. He took his spirit from these sessions—from her he learned how the soul can be nourished when you cook from the heart. He would watch his grandfather pick fruits and vegetables grown on the family’s land for the day’s meals, and taste the difference fresh produce made.
From his mother and father, he took his work ethic and his style. They moved from Italy to Hamilton in 1990, when Leo was 12. A couple years later, they opened Pasta Blitz on Brunswick Pike in Lawrence, and Leo went to work for his parents. It was at the restaurant that his love for cooking truly took hold.
In the kitchen, his mother, Tina, would teach him family recipes. Once Leo mastered them, he was encouraged to make them his own, to use his creativity to make them contemporary. He particularly loved making seafood dishes, which reminded him of his hometown of Monte di Procida—resting on the coast where the Tyrrhenian Sea meets the Gulf of Naples.
He carried all these lessons with him always. His culinary education was a family affair, and Leo saw his patrons as an extension of his family and his restaurant as the extension of his dining room table.
He had lived to provide joy to those who ate his food, since he took so much joy in making it. And Leo couldn’t hide how much fun he was having. The kitchen was where he could be himself, where his creative side ruled hand-in-hand with his goofy sense of humor.
Sometimes Leo’s family and employees paid the price. Leo would chase them with live lobsters. He once made a roll that looked like a mouse, tied fishing line to it and pulled it through the kitchen to scare his sisters, Monica and Marcella. He got a kick out of people’s reactions to his pranks, but always repaid them in some way.
“You didn’t know whether to hug him or yell at him,” Coppola said. “He was always doing little practical jokes. And then, after scaring you, he’d bring you a beautiful bowl of pasta and say, ‘I made it with love.’ How can you be upset after that?”
* * *
Before Kim Coppola fell into love with Leonardo, she fell in love with his vodka sauce.
It was the vodka sauce that convinced her, as a sophomore at Rider University, to take a job as a hostess at Pasta Blitz. She considered applying to other restaurants, but there was something about Leonardo’s cooking that charmed her.
And then, she met the man, and it all made sense.
“I walked in, and he walked around the corner, and my heart just dropped,” Coppola said. “He was the most amazing person I ever saw.”
They instantly became best friends and, from there, a couple. They married, in 2003, and moved in together in Hamilton. In the seven years between, Pasta Blitz had become Lamberti’s Cucina. Coppola took a job as a drug and alcohol therapist.
Life was good, but Leo wanted to strike out on his own. In 2005, the couple opened their first restaurant, Leonardo’s, in the Hamilton Marketplace. Coppola quit her job and took over the front end of Leonardo’s. Leo ran the kitchen. From there, they took over Lamberti’s, renaming it Leonardo’s II, and opened Limoncello’s in the Lawrence Shopping Center.
Leo loved his restaurants, but he sold them all when Nico came along in 2006. He felt the restaurants would take him away from his son. Family came first.
Still, the itch to create never left him. When the opportunity to open a restaurant in the Briarwood Shopping Center arose in 2009, he jumped on it. Coppola and her father, Bill Begley, ran the business—called Padrino’s—while Leonardo focused on the food. The restaurant was close enough to the Coppolas’ new home in Upper Freehold that they could tend to Nico while still running Padrino’s.
The couple had help. Most of the employees at Padrino’s had followed Leo from his other eateries. They had worked with Leo for years, and knew how he ran a restaurant. He would reward their loyalty by bringing in ice cream for them on a hot day or breakfast in the morning or by playing soccer with them during lulls in the day.
They’re still helping each other. Staff members had known Leo as long as—or longer than—Coppola, and they feel his absence as keenly as she does. During the day, they find themselves talking about Leo, sharing stories. They pull jokes they think Leo would enjoy. Coppola brings in treats when it strikes her Leonardo would do the same.
They work through their grief together. The solidarity redoubles their resolve to see Padrino’s succeed.
“They’re here for me, and I’m here for them,” Coppola said. “If they’re having a moment where they miss Leo, they know I’m having the same moment, and we talk about him. We share things. Everybody’s invested. Everybody wants to make Leo proud. Everybody looks at that little boy and sees Leo, and it makes them work doubly as hard. I can’t say thank you enough to them for that.”
Coppola also finds help in family, from her father and Leo’s. Leonardo’s sister Monica travels from Queens every weekend to assist at the restaurant.
It isn’t easy, but it’s a labor of love. They know that Leo lives on as long as the restaurant does.
* * *
There’s one more place Leonardo survives: in his son.
For as much as Leo loved cooking and creating, he loved Nico more. He had given up his restaurants once for his son, and he would’ve done it again if it had ever gotten in the way of providing for Nico.
As it was, he knew Nico’s well-being rested on the success of Padrino’s, which motivated him. Leo made it a rule that the family had to eat at least one meal together, so he would eat breakfast with Nico, then head straight to the restaurant to work on his recipes. He’d stay there until after close.
Nico would stop by Padrino’s several times a week. At the restaurant, he would watch soccer, a love that was one of the many things he inherited from Leonardo. His favorite teams are Leo’s: Napoli and the Italian National Team.
Nico particularly loves Napoli, and his club jersey is his favorite belonging. He wears the shirt every day, putting it on as soon as he comes home from school. Coppola guesses it’s because Nico associates the club with his father. He feels closer to Leo with the jersey on—it’s like getting a hug from Papa when he wears it.
Like Coppola, Nico misses Leo, and talks about him constantly. Coppola sees her husband in her son—they look alike, walk alike, have the same mannerisms and the same sense of humor. Nico has adopted his father’s philosophy on life, telling Coppola, “My Papa would want me to be happy in life, so I’m going to walk through life being happy and do things that would make him happy.” He laughs and giggles all day because he thinks that’s what Leo would want.
Of course, sometimes emotions swell, and make being happy impossible. He asks a lot of questions about what happened to Leo and where life is going to take his family now that Leo’s gone. Coppola struggles with those moments because she doesn’t have all the answers, either.
“The last year has been torture,” Coppola said. “It’s been so hard. Leo was everything to us. He was such a great man. He was the best husband. He was a loving father. He gave, everyday, 100 percent of himself to us. To wake up every morning and not have that anymore, it’s such a huge void in our lives. It’s just hard. It’s just really hard. We miss him every second of every day.”
Coppola knows that what was normal doesn’t exist anymore. She and Nico have set out to make a new normal for themselves, never forgetting Leo along the way. And just as he lived for them, they now live for him.
“He was a beautiful person,” Coppola said. “A family man. A caring man. And he really brought that out into the restaurant. We continue every day trying to make him proud, with his recipes and his traditions. Every day, we wake up, and say, ‘We’re doing this for Leo.’ I hope that people see it.”
Padrino’s is located at 2452 Kuser Road in the Briarwood Shopping Center in Hamilton. Web: padrinosofhamilton.com. Phone: (609) 587-7575.
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