Where Stanley Tucci Goes to Get a ‘Stellar’ Martini

While Stanley Tucci is by far best known for his many movies — from The Devil Wears Prada to The Hunger Games and Conclave, to name just a few — he had a very different job when he was first breaking into the entertainment business.  

Before making his acting debut in the 1982 Broadway production The Queen and the Rebels, Tucci spent a summer with his aunt and uncle in New York City. At the same time, another uncle, Oscar Tucci, was designing the interiors of the now-closed restaurant Alfredo’s the Original of Rome at the CitiCorp Center in Midtown Manhattan. 

The Italian eatery was on the hunt for a bartender, and Tucci landed the job, marking his first position in the service industry. The Manhattan-based restaurant was an offshoot of the famed Alfredo alla Scrofa in Rome, which lays claim to the invention of fettuccine Alfredo. (While the New York City location closed back in 2007, the original restaurant in Rome is still in operation and dishing out its signature Alfredo, tossed tableside.)

“My uncle had designed the interior of it, so I got a job there through complete nepotism,” Tucci recounted with a laugh while speaking with our team at the 2024 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. “It was the summer after my sophomore year at university, and I worked there and learned bartending.”

The Golden Globe-winning actor credits the experience with kickstarting his love of cooking and making drinks. “I really, really loved it. I learned everything from these two really good bartenders who taught me how to make things quickly. It was amazing.” 

Today, Tucci often shares his affinity for cooking Italian food and mixing cocktails with his six million Instagram followers through informal video clips and on his television shows, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy and its follow-up series Tucci in Italy, where he tours the show’s eponymous country to taste its wide breadth of culinary traditions. 

An appreciation for great cocktails is one of the through lines in Tucci’s long love affair with food and drink — and when he isn’t mixing something up himself, there’s one place the actor is probably going to grab a tipple. The Julie & Julia star has lived in London with his wife, Felicity Blunt, since 2013 and makes a point to stop at one particular cocktail bar in his home city as often as possible for what might be the most famous martini in the world.

“I love going to the Connaught Bar,” Tucci tells us. “Ago Perrone and the whole team make the experience so incredible and sophisticated.” 

Director of mixology Perrone leads the cocktail program at The Connaught Hotel’s namesake bar in London’s Mayfair neighborhood. Under his leadership, the bar has been regularly ranked among the best in the world. Moreover, The Connaught Bar has been named the best bar in the world twice by World’s 50 Best Bars, and Perrone himself was named the International Bartender of the Year at the annual Tales of the Cocktail festival in 2010. 

The acclaimed mixologist is especially famous for his martinis, which are served from a signature trolley at The Connaught Bar. “His martini is stellar,” Tucci confirms. “I really love going there, and they make it seem so simple, but it’s not that simple at all.” (The actor is such a big fan of this martini that he’s even filmed a tutorial of Perrone teaching him how to make it.)

A major part of The Connaught Bar’s martini-making process is how customized the drink is to each person, down to the different bitters that Perrone incorporates to create subtly distinct flavor variations in such a simple drink. 

How does Tucci take his martini? He’s shown us before on Instagram, revealing that he prefers the drink stirred, not shaken, and with a touch of vermouth. But when he’s at his favorite bar, “It depends on what Ago tells me to get,” he says with a laugh.