Lost in Translation

The first thing you need to understand about Joey Vento is that he’s crazy. Not scary, guy-muttering-to-himself-as- his-eyes-follow-you-down-the- subway-steps crazy, but more like your Uncle Morty at the bar mitzvah after two manhattans crazy. With his tattoos, gold Sagittarius medallion, array of gaudy t-shirts (“My wife dresses me,” he says proudly), nonstop gesticulating, and machine-gun-fire manner of speaking — loudly — Joey Vento can almost come off as a caricature, a Fox sitcom version of a South Philly palooka. He’s half Tony Soprano, half Tony the Tiger.

We’re sitting in the famed “celebrity booth” in the rear of Geno’s, where seemingly anyone destined to end up on Dancing With the Stars has a picture taken with the owner when passing through Philly. Geno Vento, Joey’s 36-year-old son, approaches. Lots of people assume Joey named Geno’s after his son. Actually, Joey named his son after Geno’s.

“Look at this,” says Geno the person, excitedly holding a bright orange napkin dispenser that almost perfectly matches the signature tangerine-y shade that engulfs Geno’s the restaurant. A vendor has dropped it off, hoping Joey will order a few. “It’s terrific.”

“Yeah, it’s nice,” Joey says with a cursory glance, in a voice that could be sincere or might mean “I don’t really give a shit.” Sometimes, it’s hard to believe the two men are related. Geno — sensitive, soft-spoken, with a Pillsbury Doughboy physique and a fascination with celebrity (he’s just finished regaling us with how he delivered steaks to Michael Bublé the night before) — is almost the anti-Joey. That makes Joey worry about what will happen to Geno’s after he’s gone. “Look, I love my kid,” he says later. “But he don’t know from hard work. He’s here four days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. That isn’t work.”

Joey got thrown out of Catholic school in the sixth grade after a nun doused him with a bottle of holy water due to his foul mouth. His father, Jimmy “Steak” Vento, went to prison for murder; his brother, Stevie Vento (“One tough ass — Clint Eastwood would have played him in the movie,” Joey says), went to prison for drugs. “Let me tell you something. I never disowned my family — I still don’t,” he says, pointing one of his stubby sausage-link fingers at me. “I don’t condone what they did, but that’s my blood. And because I stood up for them, I had to pay a price. And I paid that price, and overcome it in the same neighborhood. That’s why nobody — I don’t care who you are — is going to come to me with any kind of story: ‘I lost my dad.’ ‘I had it rough.’ Bullshit.”