What's up with that?

Photo: Andrew Tavani

What’s up with that ginormous wooden lion at the Getting Hungry deli on Varick Street? Where’d it come from, and how’d it get there?—Jay Demaio, Staten Island

Getting Hungry owner Adi Shoshun tells TONY that while exploring the city of Minas Gerais in his wife’s native Brazil, he met Guto, a local sculptor, and fell in love with his work. He commissioned the artist to carve a magnificent lion from one solid piece of teak timber, known locally as “angel wood.” Guto toiled for six months on the beast before it was loaded onto an NYC-bound boat and, two weeks later, ushered by truck and crane into the West Village eatery. The lion measures 15 feet in length and, at 8,000 pounds, outweighs the Wall Street Bull by a cool half ton. Shoshun is tight-lipped about the cost of his “one-of-a-kind sculpture,” but notes that he had New York in mind when he asked Guto to tackle the project, specifically commissioning a lion that symbolized “the courageous spirit of NYC.”

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