La Stella restaurant was a public meeting place in Forest Hills, Queens, where a 1966 police raid exposed the vulnerability of mob gatherings to the scrutiny surrounding Bobby Kennedy’s campaign against organized crime. The restaurant’s significance in the book lies in two meetings a month apart: first, a gathering interrupted by police; then, the same group’s return accompanied by its lawyer.

Setting and Public Scrutiny

The restaurant appears in the account against the backdrop of Bobby Kennedy’s sustained campaign against Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. The book presents that campaign as having made it increasingly difficult for mob figures to gather openly without attracting police attention. La Stella gave that broader change a specific setting: a public restaurant in Forest Hills, rather than a private meeting room, where a group of men from around the country could be seen and interrupted.

The September 1966 Raid

On September 22, 1966, a table of mob figures from around the country was having lunch at La Stella when police arrested those present. The group included Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Joe Colombo. They were taken in and harassed, but released without charges. The episode made the restaurant a conspicuous example of the public exposure that now attended such gatherings, even when an arrest did not lead to prosecution.

Return with a Lawyer

A month later, the same group met at La Stella again, this time bringing Frank Ragano, their lawyer. The contrast with the September lunch is pointed: the group returned to the same restaurant after experiencing the police raid, but did so with legal counsel present. The book describes the meeting as defiant, making the restaurant a site not only of exposure but also of a visible response to that pressure.

Narrative Significance

La Stella’s importance is concentrated in this brief sequence rather than in a longer account of the restaurant itself. The first meeting shows public scrutiny interrupting a gathering; the second shows the participants continuing to meet while taking legal representation with them. Together, the incidents give a concrete local setting to the book’s account of a broader shift: organized crime’s meetings had become harder to conduct in public without police attention, while the group’s return demonstrated that such pressure had not ended them.