David decided to come clean about his Mafia past to author Gabe Sherman in the May issue of Vanity Fair Magazine. “In the 1980s and 1990s David Ruggerio was a rising star of French cooking in New York—and a proto–celebrity chef with cookbooks and TV shows to his name. But all that success in the kitchen belied the double life he was leading as a rank-and-file member of the Mob. Decades after his fall from grace and mysterious disappearance from the food world, Ruggerio is coming clean.”
” Ruggerio was candid during our conversations, sometimes shockingly so. But members of organized crime are, not surprisingly, just as organized about what they admit to—and what they don’t.”
“Ruggerio quickly understood that a French kitchen was not dissimilar to La Cosa Nostra. Both were governed by rigid hierarchies and Old World codes. Transgressors were punished harshly.”
To read the article in its entirety- https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/the-life-and-confessions-of-mob-chef-david-ruggerio.