Clickety-clack. Here was Donatella, coming through, charging into her new $2.5-million restaurant construction site. Donatella, nervelessly pushing past the yellow caution tape to traverse the splintery floor in nude-patent-leather four-inch Louboutins. Donatella, in short-short Prada silk. Donatella, pointing. Donatella, dishing. Donatella, certamente! No, not that other Donatella, the Versace one. This is New York's own Donatella Arpaia, the owner of Mia Dona and Anthos, both in Manhattan, and an owner, with Michael Psilakis, of Kefi in Manhattan and Eos in Miami. Her new 75-seat Neapolitan pizza restaurant -- to open in July at 184 Eighth Ave., near W. 19th St. -- is not just another of her partnerships with chefs like David Burke and Psilakis. It will be the ninth restaurant she has opened, and this time she is the executive chef, since 'the menu is developed, written and tested by me,' she said. The name of the place? Donatella. She clicked through a secret passageway into yet another restaurant space fronting at 263 W. 19th St. 'This will be DBar,' she said -- the first Donatella lounge, to open in June. 'You can see there is a lot going on here.' And so much more going on in the whirl of Arpaia. Suddenly, many of her projects are landing in a cluster bomb of hype she calls 'coincidental.' For starters, get some kiss-kiss as she celebrates her new book, 'Donatella Cooks: Simple Food Made Glamorous' (Rodale Press). Tune in as she handles Meredith and Matt in a 'Today' cooking segment. Anticipate a Food Network reality show on Donatella-the-restaurant-consultant, if the pilot clicks. Behold her cross-branding deal with Martini & Rossi to promote its prosecco and her book. Taste artisanal olive oil from the Donatella Food Collection. In the 12 years since she opened Bellini in Manhattan, her portfolio has spanned that of venture restaurateur, brass-knuckle dealmaker, video tummler and fashion plate. Now -- in the words of her new publicist, Charlie Dougiello -- she is 'taking off her high heels and trading them in for a hot oven.' Many chefs have left their steamy kitchens to emerge as restaurateurs, of course. Why, at 38, would she want to do the reverse? 'I didn't want to be the hostess all my life,' she said. 'I'm so much more than that. This is the only way I'm going to grow.' Once upon a menu, it was enough to be an owner-celebrity, like Sirio Maccioni and Tony May. 'But to make it on television now, you need to be a chef,' said the restaurant critic Gael Greene. Just in time. Arpaia's once-brilliant partnership with Burke foundered in 2008; her even more lucrative partnership with Psilakis is being disassembled piece by piece. Despite those speed bumps, despite even the recession, the Donatella Group, her company, had restaurant revenues last year of $13 million. She plows profits back into her ventures, and her only grand indulgence, she said, was the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo she bought to chase those market-crash blues. 'It was a brief moment of insanity,' she said. 'My mother wants me to get rid of it.' True, some might be uncharitable enough to think of her as some sort of golem of food-buzz inflation. But she is an heir to authentic red-sauce royalty. For 35 years her father, Lello Arpaia, ran a Long Island classic, La Tavernetta in Woodmere, Queens, which begat Lello (1980) and Scarlatti (1984) in Manhattan (all now closed). Lello won two stars from Mimi Sheraton in The New York Times in 1982 for 'unusually good and elegant food.' Lello Arpaia's current restaurant, Fiorini, on East 56th Street, is two blocks from her own Mia Dona at East 58th Street. And four blocks away, her older brother, Umberto, presides over Cellini, on East 54th Street. Lello Arpaia, Maccioni and May, all Italian immigrants, were waiter captains at Oscar's Delmonico downtown -- and all founded restaurant dynasties with their children. Donatella Arpaia's partner in Mia Dona, Psilakis, left last year, and she named herself executive chef, remaking the menu in her image. If that restaurant is her homage to la cucina povera -- the peasant cuisine -- of her mother Maria's native Puglia, the new place will be not only be a celebration of her father's Neapolitan roots but also a throw-down in New York's pizza wars. Its five-and-a-half-ton oven, built of volcanic-mud bricks and imported sand and cement, will be built on site by Enzo Coccia, a pizza sage from Naples. The space, she said, will be 'rustic luxe'; i.e., possessing rough-hewn solidity and va-va-voom -- 'a glamorous side.' After all, her universe is about not only brand extensions but also hair extensions. If her business dealings reveal her as the culinary incarnation of Carly Fiorina,she also dips into the walk-in closet of Carrie Bradshaw. 'It's a challenge, because she has to look glamorous for certain appearances,' said Davide Torchio, a native of Turin, Italy, who cuts her hair. (Arpaia recently invested in his Manhattan salon.) 'But not too overdone at other occasions.' Overdone or not, there is a certain imposing Sophia Loren-itude to her 5-foot-8 1/2-inch presence, though she says that when she was younger, she was mistaken for Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock. She is now taken for but one celebrity. Herself. Such is Arpaia's comfort factor that when Silda Wall Spitzer stepped out in public for the first time after the scandal involving her husband, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, 'we went to lunch at Mia Dona, and it was like being at home,' said Lloyd Constantine, a former senior Spitzer adviser and a longtime regular of Arpaia's restaurants. Asked whether Arpaia made diners think that she cares about them, Constantine said: 'No. She really cares about them. You can't fake that.' The chef Bobby Flay, who has known her a decade, said 'her presence is the key to the success of her restaurants.' He added, 'Losing her behind the kitchen doors entirely would be a great loss.' Of her kitchen aspirations, Burke said that 'everyone wants to be a chef,' but that doing so in a top-level restaurant 'is something that takes years and years of practice and experience.' But Arpaia insists she has paid her dues. Even as a little girl, she 'was always in the kitchen,' said her brother, Umberto, adding that she soaked up the Puglian aesthetic on summer visits to her grandmother's farm in Toritto. She grew up in Woodmere near the family's hugely successful restaurant, La Tavernetta, which opened in 1970. 'They were the only Italians in Woodmere, since it was predominantly Jewish,' said Bill Kaye, a retired lawyer and devoted customer. She recalled that 'my name was Donatella in a town where there were no Donatellas.' She dubbed herself Donna, 'trying to assimilate.' Unlike May, who owns SD26 with his daughter, Marisa, Lello Arpaia discouraged his daughter's restaurant inclinations. 'I just didn't want my daughters to go into such an extremely hard profession,' he said. Her father 'made me think I wanted to be a lawyer,' Arpaia said. She was admitted to the bar in 1997 but 'just hated it,' so her legal career at a Park Avenue law firm lasted but four months. 'I have always been fearless in business,' she said, and at 25 she rolled the dice with the entirety of her $200,000 trust fund to start up Bellini, where, she recalled: 'I faked it till I made it. I literally pulled customers in off the street.' The restaurateur Joseph Bastianich said that it was daunting 'to be a woman and an entrepreneur in this male-dominated business.' These days, the progeny of the Arpaia, Maccioni, May and Bastianich families may be envied by restaurant nonroyals. 'But the restaurant kids, we're not spoiled kids -- we work incredibly hard,' Marisa May said. 'Donatella and I work all the time. Clearing tables? There is nothing we won't do.' Though Arpaia made money at Bellini, it was her five-year partnership with Burke at the former davidburke & donatella that 'put me on the map,' she said. 'David gave me a name.' In fact, she insisted that her name be ampersand-ed to his, and Burke agreed. She sold out her interest to him, for more than $1 million in 2008. An irrepressible scene stealer, Arpaia seems effortlessly able to consume all media oxygen with a blink of her big brown eyes. Several people involved in her business partnerships, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to suffer Donatella de-friending, said that the partnerships unraveled because the food-o-sphere gave more attention to her than to her chefs. Burke said only that 'one child gets neglected, and it is hard to grow that way,' adding, 'It's confusing to the employees, about where the commitment lies.' Arpaia acknowledged that 'I'm very driven' and added, 'I'm a lot to take.' She sighed. 'But I'm not a control freak -- I have to delegate to talented people. And I'm very warm. And I'm close to my family.' By 2006, when Arpaia partnered with Psilakis, she was 'the known person,' he said, so 'her name was on the awning.' Last year he stepped away from Mia Dona, and in March she also bought him out of the haute Anthos, where they had attracted a Michelin star, rare for a Greek restaurant. Ultimately, Psilakis said, they parted company in these two restaurants because 'it was time,' adding, 'She was going in her own direction.' They still own Eos and Kefi together, but lawsuits are possible over the division of Kefi, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations who were not authorized to publicly discuss them. Neither Psilakis nor Arpaia would comment. In one of those messy culinary joint custodies, Mia Dona and Anthos are represented by her former principal publicist of six years, Jennifer Baum, while Arpaia's newer projects are handled by Dougiello, also a spokesman for Rachael Ray. Baum declined to comment on their partial separation, save to say that Arpaia 'always had her sights set on more.' And, oh, that she wishes her the best. Arpaia said, 'I was developing a lifestyle brand, and I needed fresh eyes.' With so much upheaval in her business relationships, it is perhaps just as well that she insists that she has never dated a chef. That said, 'I love men, and men love me,' she added, noting only that she is in 'a committed relationship.' She has been 'a driven businesswoman,' she said, but 'I've always wanted to become a mother. And will become a mother.' Well, there it is then. 'Anyone who doubts that Donatella can do something,' Flay said, 'is taking a huge risk.' 