New York City is certainly a city that has gone through a lot in its nearly 400-year history,

civil unrest, direct attack, rebellions, a revolution, natural disasters, and of course the

effects of a devastating global pandemic. But it's also often said that New York and New Yorkers

can come back from the edge, stronger, better, and more hopeful than ever. And the ability

to do that is something that certainly other cities share around the world as well. Coming back is an

idea that is true of some of New York's most treasured institutions. After the challenges of the past

few years, theater and musical performances are back, museums are full, people are enjoying themselves, meeting each other to socialize in public and crowd, something that we all have to navigate as New Yorkers, are most definitely back.

The idea of coming back, rising from the ashes, honoring what was, but embracing what is and what will be, is really the essence of it all.

And that is so deeply evident all around us here in the city.

And New York has always been something that is never static, something that is always evolving.

In some ways, a city that has always been

returning from something. And one example of that is the return of a true New York institution,

one that has been part of the city's history and social scene, and that has brought people

together for nearly 200 years, and that is the restaurant called Delmonicos.

Delmonicos holds the distinction as being the first fine dining restaurant in America, beginning with humble roots fostered and cared for by two immigrant brothers.

It became the social center of the Gilded Age until prohibition shut it and all others

like it down. But Delmonicos came back again in the 1920s. The dreams of Italian immigrant

Oscar Tucci and his children Mario and Mary ran the business until the 1980s and brought Delmonicos back from its shuttered past again.

And today it is Mario's son Max Tucci, whom I sat down with just a year ago

that has taken the business and reopened its doors yet again,

deeply honoring the world that created the early Delmonicos, his own family, and adding his own

truly unique spirit to it all as well. Delmonicos, like New York, shares that spirit with

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