"I’ve never done this before,” says Joe Germanotta, Lady Gaga’s 59-year-old father. He's talking about writing and releasing a cookbook, and that changes on Tuesday (Nov. 22) as Germanotta releases Joanne Trattoria Cookbook: Classic Recipes and Scenes from an Italian-American Restaurant, shedding light on the inner workings of Joanne Trattoria, the Upper West Side restaurant he and his wife Cynthia opened in 2012.
"I had no idea what the process was,” Germanotta said of writing the cookbook. "I learned quite a bit. Now the work really starts! Now there’s a lot of promotion that needs to be done, just like for an album."
Like Lady Gaga’s latest album, Joanne, Germanotta’s restaurant was named after his sister and Gaga’s aunt, who died of lupus when she was 17 years old. "My kids never met my sister,” says Germanotta. “When we were in the process of buying the restaurant, they came in, looked around and said, ‘Let’s do it, let’s call it Joanne.’”