My Favorite Cigar
Marc Vetri • Chef/Restaurateur
Montesino Robusto Maduro
With three successful Italian restaurants and a new steakhouse on its way, Philadelphia’s Marc Vetri is one busy chef. He still finds time to enjoy a regular cigar.
“I have a neighbor who stops over and we have cigars on the weekends,” explains Vetri, who has two James Beard awards. “I’ll have cigars with friends. A cigar lubricates a social situation.” He also smokes in front of the fire at his Boulder, Colorado, house, pairing his cigars with amaro, the Italian herbal liqueur.
Vetri, 55, says his “go-to cigar” is Montesino, which is made by the Fuentes. He orders them from his friend Robert Levin of Holt’s Cigar. “If I’m smoking two or three cigars a week, it’s the Montesino,” Vetri says. But he likes to mix it up. He has a “humidor full of Ashtons. I’ll rotate. I love the ESG, the Cabinet Selection. I might smoke those once a week. The Fuente Hemingway also.”
Years ago, Levin took Carlito Fuente to dinner at Vetri’s eponymous fine-dining restaurant in Philadelphia. Carlito gave Vetri a cigar from his “private collection.” Vetri was very touched by the gesture. “The romance makes it great,” he says. “That’s the cigar I want to smoke.”
—Alejandro Benes
