Cosimo’s Bocce Courts: A Fine Dining Experience
In Poughkeepsie, fine dining experiences can be found throughout the city’s outskirts, as well as along Main Street. Many of these restaurants have bands that play from six o’clock, well into their late evening hours.
Cosimo’s however, has taken their dinnertime entertainment outside, with their outdoor bocce nights. Since 2014, bocce night at Cosimo’s has been a staple for the restaurant’s frequent evening diners. Open Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from six p.m. to ten p.m., the bocce courts at Cosimo’s provide interactive entertainment for all of Cosimo’s fine diners.
“We can eat our dinner, then go out for a smoke and a quick game. It’s perfect,” says Jim Moritz. Moritz is a regular at Cosimo’s, who is usually found outside setting up a bocce game with friends Sam Newman, Henry McCorkle, and Frankie Daucerby. Every Monday and Wednesday the group comes for evening drinks and a few rounds of the Egyptian ball game.
The game’s setup requires two teams of at least two people, and starts when one player rolls the pallino; a smaller ball compared to the eight other bocce balls. The goal of the game is to get your team’s ball or balls closest to the pallino by any means necessary. This means that knocking your competitor’s balls out of the way is not only allowed, but highly recommended for a competitive bocce match.
Frankie is already starting a light while Henry rolls the pallino down the court. “We’re all getting up there in years, so it’s nice to have a game that we can play that won’t have us out of breath.”
This is a sentiment that is shared by numerous of Cosimo’s guests; both young and old, and Carlo Citera — one of Cosimo’s ownership partners — agrees. “The amount of people I’ve seen, either teaching their kids, or even groups of strangers getting together to start up a game just makes you smile…It’s the people that come, they’re the ones that make the bocce nights fun for everyone, even the staff.”
Citera has been with Cosimo’s since the opening of the bocce courts. “I’m actually part of the staff that pushed for some kind of outdoor entertainment…We already had the fire pits built in, and it’s a perfect space. I figured that we needed to find something else to put in here.” And so the bocce courts were built, and there’s hardly a Monday Tuesday or Wednesday night that goes by without the courts getting some action.
“Covid was really the first time we had to close down the bocce,” says Citera. “All the rules and regulations and the six feet apart — not to mention the fact that we are a restaurant first — made it difficult for us to rebuild our image in the eyes of the authorities and CDC. We really had to be careful so for the sake of everyone’s jobs, we temporarily closed the courts.”
It wasn’t until March of 2021 that one of Cosimo’s hostesses Morgan Brumba and her co-worker Stacy Keating decided to bring back the bocce courts themselves. “It was just a beautiful day, and we had our masks on, and I remember looking outside at the covered courts…I grabbed Stacy because it was our lunch break, and we just went outside and played a few rounds.” When the two went back inside for their shift, they left the bocce courts uncovered, and the next evening customers were outside playing as if the bocce courts were never closed.
“I’ve never been happier with our courts here,” Citera says. “So far they’ve survived a pandemic, and some pretty nasty weather, so I’m interested to see what else they can overcome, and how our guests will react when that something happens… I hope that people come quickly to enjoy [the courts], for the few months we still have them open for.”
