A manager of the popular West Village eatery Da Silvano swears his restaurant is not behind the smoke-bomb attack on neighboring Bar Pitti, despite a long-simmering rivalry between the owners.
Da Silvano owner Silvano Marchetto and his former business partner, Bar Pitti’s Giovanni Tognozzi, have been beefing over stolen meatball recipes and corporate back-stabbing since 2002.
“I know about the fighting, but I haven’t heard anything about it in a very long time,” said the manager, who identified himself as Alessio.
Police sources said they do not believe that the rivalry played a role, but have ruled nothing out.
The NYPD on Monday released a second surveillance video of the smoke bombing, which shows the attacker — in an American-flag jacket — emerging from a subway-access grate, tossing the device and going back underground.
An alarm should have gone off when he popped the hatch — an emergency exit that leads to the tracks — at around 5 p.m. Friday, but it wasn’t functioning, sources said.
The man, also wearing a backward baseball cap, is seen in the new video peering out onto the sidewalk before lobbing the device into Bar Pitti’s outdoor seating area. No one was hurt.
The bomb was made by a UK company and is sold on Amazon.com and eBay for as little as $8.
Police said they’re looking for a white man around 20 years old with wavy blond hair.
Tognozzi said he wasn’t at Bar Pitti last Friday night and had no idea who the culprit could be.
He and Marchetto opened Bar Pitti together in 1992, but their relationship soon soured. The restaurateurs’ rift led to lawsuits over claims of stolen recipes — such as one for veal meatball and eggplant parmigiana — and looted profits.
Marchetto’s wife, Marisa, posted a “Memo to the Media’’ on Facebook, saying the target of the bomb was Bar Pitti, not Da Silvano, but, “Either way it sucks.’’
She maintains it was “the act of some angry man,’’ adding, “Don’t feed on the feud — we’ll all live longer.’’
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland and Larry Celona