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To Serve Mankind

Anthony Devoti, Owner/Chef at Five in the Grove

No more swill for this swine.

The poor porker lay bare, its carcass slapped on a slab in Five’s kitchen. Armed with a saber-sharp knife, the restaurant’s owner and chef, Anthony Devoti, deftly slices away ribs, chops, loin.

The pig’s dainty hoof? Still attached.

At 28 years old, Devoti’s dream of owning his own restaurant has already come true. By fall he expects to have opened his second, a gastro pub just down the street from Five named The Newstead Tower Public House. Clearly, this young man with curly blond hair and sapphire blue eyes is focused on one thing: the restaurant.

“I work here, I eat here,” Devoti says. “This place is my life. This is what I do. I enjoy it. I love it. There is nothing else I want to do.”

Devoti’s vitae include culinary training at Forest Park Community College and the French Culinary Institute in New York City and stints at Astoria, Zuzu’s Petals and San Francisco’s Zuni.

His goal: “To make really unbelievable food with regional products. It is the way I think everybody should cook and the way people should eat. It certainly defines a region—what you grow is what you eat. We have a very short menu, and we try to do everything perfectly.”

In a measure that is nothing short of brave, Devoti situated Five and the pub to come on a stretch of Manchester intermittently pockmarked with boarded-up buildings. “It seems to be the perfect place to build stuff,” Devoti says. “You are right between 44 and 40, and you’re on Manchester. It seems weird that this neighborhood was allowed to get into this state. It has really cool architecture; it has a lot of character”—and soon, two Anthony Devoti restaurants.