Eating a first meal in Pavia near Milan with a couple of other food media people last month, an item on the menu immediately caught my attention: Orecchia di elefante.  That translates to “elephant’s ear.”  It’s not elephant ear, though, which is probably difficult to procure in northern Italy, but an amusing way to describe the costoletta alla milanese, the fried veal chop that is a staple of Milan.  With the bone attached to one end of a large flat piece of breaded meat that nearly covers a plate, it does look somewhat like the ear of elephant.
 
I made sure that was part of our meal at the restaurant Peo, as one of my hopes for that trip was to taste an authentic veal Milanese, a dish I had long enjoyed and I often make its Austrian cousin, schnitzel, with pork at home.  It is one of the most famous of all Italian dishes.  I had been to Italy over ten times previously and had never had the dish there, simply because I hadn’t spent any time in Milan and avoided the dish if it was on a menu far from the city, opting for something more local.  I had really hoped to try it in Milan during this trip, but having dinner during my one day there was precluded by a train strike announced for that night that I was fortunately alerted to, which would have got me stranded far from my hotel.  So, I missed both these Italian specialties: the veal Milanese in Milan, and a transportation strike.  A trade-off.
 
I do have the dish a couple of times in Pavia and found it enjoyable, and little different than I expected.  The veal was not as flattened as I had imagined, barely so, in fact, and both preparations were from the veal rib, with the bone attached.  Though I came across renditions in articles and on the websites of restaurants in Milan without the bone attached, it seems the dish is always made from the veal rib chop.  As it turns out, veal Milanese is more different from the Viennese wiener schnitzel than I had believed.  The schnitzel is flattened much more so, is popular in versions other than veal – like what I do in my kitchen – and the schnitzel is dipped in flour before meeting the beaten eggs and breadcrumbs, and can be cooked in something other than butter.  The recipe for costoletta alla millanese – or the less frequently found cotoletta alla milanese, which is actually the exact same thing even without the “s” – is basically and simply a barely flattened cut from the rib of a calf, dipped in beaten eggs then breadcrumbs and then pan-fried in butter or clarified butter over medium heat for about six to eight minutes a side, and then salted and served with lemon wedges.
 
With good quality meat, it is delicious, not-so-complicated dish with a nice interplay of textures and tastes, with savory veal, a crisp breading, a citrusy acidic bite from the lemon and some necessary salt.  The first version of it I had featured it ladled with halves of ripe cherry tomatoes and arugula, the primavera (spring) version.  I’ve read that this newer rendition, a creation of the past decade or so, is way to aid a lesser cut of meat.  This seemed to have some truth as the dish, and meat, was better at the second restaurant where I had it, the oddly named Habanero, also in Pavia.  Though it did initially look like the other elephants’ ears, it was made with a cut of t-bone.  The restaurant is a meat specialist, seemingly looking to do things a little differently.  Their version of the costoletta alla milanese was very good, especially the less-cooked, more tender and flavorful pieces near the bone.
 
I had to assume that these two versions of the famed dish were very similar to what is served in Milan.  Hopefully, I can confirm that in the future.  An organization that anointed the costoletta alla milanese as one of Italy’s most iconic a few years ago has an interesting and very believable history of the dish on its website.  It’s a dish that’s been around since at least the middle of the 19th century, the moniker of elephant’s ear seems fairly new as it doesn’t appear with the recipe in any of the several older classic Italian cookbooks I have or guidebooks.  Some fun with an older dish, I guess.  I certainly had fun with it.

A very recent version of the costoletta alla milanese from a restaurant actually in Milan. Photograph by Anthony Campofelice

​Today, Thanksgiving, is pinnacle pumpkin consumption in this country with pumpkin pie leading the way.  And I’m looking forward to having at least a large size even after overeating beforehand.  I do like pumpkin pie.  Pumpkin pie and Saint Arnold Brewing Company’s fall seasonal Pumpinator are about my only consumption of this iconic American fruit.
 
While I was in northern Italy last month, I had several dishes, savory flans or light souffles (sformatos) and risottos, made with pumpkin according to the English translation of “zucca” on the menus we were given.  Each of these dishes was very good, at least a couple especially so.  The pumpkin taste with which I was familiar was absent.  Pumpkin can have a strong flavor and the various flavors in these different preparations were rather subtle, with the exception of the gorgonzola that complemented the zucca in a risotto, a combination that works very well and which I had enjoyed before.
 
The reason for the lack of pumpkin-ness, as I might have known, is that zucca is not a pumpkin in the American sense.  It “closely resembles our butternut squash” according to a phrase in a cookbook I came across after returning home.  So, in case you have the hankering for more pumpkin after Turkey Day, Italian recipes calling for zucca in the original Italian might not work as intended with it.  Or, it will just taste more American.

An excellent Risotto Carnaroli del Pavese mantecato alla zucca Bertagina di Dorno, salsa al gorgonzola e polvere di liquirizia at Cascina Vittoria, about 20 miles south of Milan, last month

​The Certosa of Pavia was part of a nearly weeklong tour of Pavia and its surroundings I was on last month.  The Certosa is a famous church and monastery compound, about twenty miles south of Milan, “The pinnacle of Renaissance architecture in Lombardy,” according to a fairly erudite and wordy older English guidebook I have.  And Jacob Burckhardt, the famed 19th century Swiss historian of Italian Renaissance architecture, called it “the decorative masterpiece in all of Italy.”  I found the Certosa impressive.  The church, which is most of the complex, especially its façade, was gorgeous on a foggy morning and filled with more than a few striking works of art, from its ceilings to chapels.
 
It’s also an active monastery, somewhat active, as there are just six monks that lead a contemplative life there including the one or two that help out with tourists like us.  The Certosa has a small gift shop, much smaller than the much more visited monastery and church in Assisi.  It’s rather quaint and homey and it even sells the peppers that the monks grow in the courtyards on the grounds.  I saw a couple different peppers, including the Carolina ghost peppers.  I quickly joked to another person on our trip that that the Certosa should be selling another ghost pepper, “holy ghost peppers.”  And they probably could get quite a fair penny for the “Holy Ghost Peppers,” especially if labeled accurately.
 

​I was at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck last week and heard owner Teresa Andrews extol the virtues of their Irish breakfast, which I don’t doubt that it is excellent, like all their food.  Hearing a description of the breakfasts quickly made me think of a vignette about the similar British breakfast that I came across a few years ago from the Pomodoro!:A History of the Tomato in Italy by David Gentilcore, a book that I found to be very interesting.  The author is a professor of early modern history at the University of Leicester in the UK, and the quality of writing and pace of the book makes it a better read than the output of most academics.  It is also more widely researched than most tomes about food, both academic and otherwise. 
 
It lives up to its title, being chock full of engaging facts about the Italians’ and Italian-Americans’ favorite fruit (that is used as a vegetable).  One regards the influence of the British breakfast habits on the development of Italy’s most famous tomato.  The traditional full British breakfast consists of bacon, sausage, poached or fried eggs, baked beans, toast with butter, and grilled tomatoes.  It is likely the antecedent to the far superior big American breakfast.
 
However lacking in comparison to our breakfasts, one component of the British version had deep resonance in Italy:
 
 “British demand was able to affect production strategies in Italy. In fact… the British were indirectly responsible for the introduction of the ‘San Marzano’….  The British like fresh tomatoes cooked, especially baked or grilled…there was no way for whole tomatoes to by enjoyed beyond the short growing season [in the UK]… In southern Italy, it turned out that the small, egg-shaped tomato varieties that were most popular here also were suited being canned whole…. The tomato variety that made this all possible was a… ‘recent cross’ between the ‘Re Umberto’ and ‘Fiaschetto’ varieties. This was the ‘San Marzano’, variety after the town near Salerno, where it was first cultivated. In just a few years, the ‘San Marzano’ had become the major variety used for canned whole tomatoes.”
 
The delectable San Marzano was quick to reach preeminence in Campania near Naples after getting a boost from the Brits.  It’s fun tidbit about the tomato that many deem to be the best for making tomato sauces for pasta, for meals well removed from breakfast.

​A trip to the small town of Vigévano – pronounced vee-JAY-ven-oh – was part of the itinerary on a recent gastronomic sojourn to Pavia, south of Milan and its environs.  I had never heard of Vigevano much less its splendid piazza, the Piazza Ducale that provides a grand and beautiful centerpiece for this town of around 60,000 about 25 miles southwest of Milan.  It is one of the most impressive piazzas in its own way that I’ve seen in Italy, as much so as the far more famous and visited seaside St. Mark’s Square in Venice and the scallop-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena.
 
Built according to the ideal Renaissance proportions of three-to-one for such matters, the rectangular piazza measures something like 48 meters by 144 meters and was designed in the 1490s by Bramante, later the original chief architect of St. Peter’s in Rome.  Continuous three-story arcades line three sides while a magnificent concave baroque façade of the cathedral that more than aptly caps one end of the piazza.  This was instigated in the late 1600s by a Spanish bishop, Juan Caramuel de Labkowitz, who later presided over the congregation.  Decorative light-colored cobble stones from the nearby Ticino River contrastingly provide attractive geometric designs and a subtle sense of dynamism to the piazza, which is studded with cast iron lampposts, an addition from early in the past century.  A visit to it was a delight, even on a rainy and chilly day. 
 
The sense of specialness of the piazza is related in the city’s website with a vignette about the famed conductor “Arturo Toscanini, [who] despite his ill health, asked to be taken to Vigevano to sit at the tables of the bars around the square, as he considered Piazza Ducale to be a musical symphony, a four-sided orchestral composition akin to the four movements of symphonies.”  A beautiful one at that.

​The late Marcella Hazan helped to popularize a more authentic Italian cuisine in this country beginning in the 1970s, especially for dishes from her native region of Emilia-Romagna.  Among the very greatest of those dishes is the ragù bolognese, the slowly cooked meat sauce named after the city of Bologna meant to be served with freshly made pasta.  Hazan has an excellent version in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, related in her usual authoritative, or didactic, fashion.  Below is a slightly modified version that I’ve used to great effect over the years, spicing it along the way.  I’m a longtime Houstonian, after all.
 
Though I had a tasty ragù at the new Rosie Cannonball, I believe that this tastes better.  That is takes at least five hours to create is part of the reason.  It’s better with better beef, and make sure that it is at no more than 80% lean.  Some good chuck, hormone-free from H-E-B worked very well the other day.
 
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon
Butter – 3 tablespoons
Onion – 1, chopped
Celery stalk – 1, chopped
Carrot – 1, diced
Ground beef, 80% lean – 1 pound
Whole milk – 1 ¼ cup
White wine – 1 ¼ cup
Peeled tomatoes – 1 15 ½-ounce can
Nutmeg, ground – a pinch
Serrano peppers – 3, seeded and diced
Salt – a pinch
Black pepper
Parmigiano-Reggiano – grated
 

1. Melt the butter in a cast iron pan or a heavy-bottomed pot with the olive oil and cook the onions until translucent.
2. Add the carrot and celery and cook for at least 2 minutes stirring to coat the vegetables well with the butter and oil.
3. Add the ground beef along with a pinch of salt and a few grindings of black pepper.  Break up the beef and cook until the beef is brown.
4. Add the milk.  While stirring frequently let simmer gently until the milk is evaporated completely.  This will take at least a half an hour.  Cooking the meat in the milk before adding the wine and tomatoes reduces the impact of the acidity of the wine and tomatoes.
5. Add the pinch of ground nutmeg.
6. Add the white wine and simmer until entirely evaporated, which will take another half hour or so.
7. Add the tomatoes and stir in well.  Cook uncovered with “the laziest of simmers” for at least 3 hours.  If the sauce begins to dry out, which is likely, add some water.  Before serving, there should be no water left in the sauce.

Serve with just cooked pasta and some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Before a trip to Pavia recently, all I had really heard about it was zuppa alla pavese, a historic soup named after this city that’s not far south of Milan, something that I had come across in Ada Boni’s classic “Italian Regional Cooking,” which was published in English fifty years ago.  The legend associated with its creation is related in that tome:
 
“On February 21, 1525, Francis I, King of France, was losing the battle of Pavia. Pursued by the Spaniards and about to surrender, he stopped at a cottage near the city and asked for a meal. As it happened, a classical vegetable minestrone was being prepared in the kitchen, and the cook, with a proper sense of occasion, decided to enrich it. She added a few slices of stale bread, toasted and buttered, broke a couple of eggs over the, threw in a few handfuls of Parmesan cheese, and poured the boiling vegetable broth over the top.  Francis ate this strange new dish with great curiosity, and as the Spaniards closed in, he thanked the peasants for their hospitality, declaring, “What you have given me was a King’s soup.!” And that, according to authorities on Lombard cooking, was the origin of Pavia soup, or zuppa alla pavese.”
 
As my trip was sponsored by Pavia’s chamber of commerce and mostly of a gastronomic nature, I assumed that zuppa alla pavese – it’s named after the town and seemingly it’s most famous dish, after all – would be served at least one of the meals, and likely more.  It wasn’t.  Not only that, but the dish does not seem to exist on any of the town’s menus – at least I didn’t find and I was looking – and might not even be cooked much at all in the area.  Our guide and translator, both from the area, had never had the dish.  One reason that it might not be found on too many menus is that it’s relatively straightforward and unfussy dish, and one with centuries-old roots; how many menus sport items that were created in the 1500s, after all? 
 
The dearth of the dish, and the resonance of its name, had encouraged the self-same chamber of commerce to encourage local eateries to update the dish in a variety of creative ways in a program called, “zuppa alla pavese 2.0” that might not have gotten too much traction.  I did encounter that, well, a sign announcing it at one restaurant.  I couldn’t get a table at the only place where I saw.  The restaurants are especially tiny in Pavia, it seems, befitting a pedestrian-centric municipality not needing to seat an influx of tourists.  No matter.  A rendition of zuppa alla pavese is easy to recreate at home.  Good bread and good stock are quite helpful.  And, if you can get some of those gorgeously orange-yolked eggs that are used in Italy, even btter.
 
Zuppa alla pavese – adapted from “The Silver Spoon”
 
Serves 4 as a first course
 
Thick slices of hearty bread with the crusts removed – 4
Butter – 2 tablespoons
Meat broth, homemade if possible, of course – 3 cups
Eggs – 4
Parmigiano-Reggiano – 4 tablespoons
 

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Bring the broth to a boil.
3. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the bread on both sides.
4. Put the bread in four ovenproof bowls.
5. Break on egg on top of each slice of bread and pour over the hot broth.
6. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano to each bowl.
7. Put into the oven for a few minutes or until the cheese melts.

I just returned from a trip to Pavia and its surroundings that was sponsored by its local chamber of commerce and included the significant nearby wine region of Oltrepò Pavese.  Located in northern Italy barely a half-hour train ride south of Milan, this is a city and region just a little further south that are essentially unknown to most American wine drinkers, including those who purchase a lot of Italian wine, like myself.  Just as unknown is that the Oltrepò Pavese produces a lot of Pinot Noir.  In fact, with more than 7,000 acres of the grape and roots in the area back over 150 years, the Oltrepò Pavese “earns the distinction of Pinot Noir’s Italian home” according to the Wine Spectator.
 
Used mostly in sparkling wines – where the region is also a big producer and unknown to American consumers – it also makes a fair amount of still Pinot Noir.  Or, Pinot Nero, as the varietal is called and labeled there and nearly everywhere in Italy where it is bottled.  It’s been planted in Italy since the mid-1800s at least and the Italianized name is quite longstanding unlike the more recently planted Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
 
The labeling of Pinot Noir as Pinot Nero is a problem, I believe.  If American can find a Pino Nero from the Oltrepò Pavese or anywhere else in Italy, they might not immediately think that the wine is Pinot Noir.  Or if they know Pinot Nero is Pinot Noir that might think that it is something outside the bounds of typical Pinot Noir, maybe even adulterated.  I mentioned this to the owner of Prime Alture, one of the wineries that we visited.  I should have looked at his Pinot Noir first.  He seemed to have the same concerns as me, and his is labeled as Pinot Noir.  Unfortunately, though he said that he is in most of the top restaurants in Milan, he doesn’t yet have an American distributor, even if he might be more ready for the market than most.
 
I had several versions of Pinot Noir recent trip and enjoyed them all, including a white wine made with the grape, which was new to me.  It very nicely complemented the sturgeon dish at a famed long-running trattoria in Pavia.  A few years ago, at a dinner at a sommelier’s house, I had a Pinot Nero from the Alto Adige that was fantastic, even outshining an excellent white Hermitage from the cult producer Jean-Louis Chave that had nearly twenty years of age.  To generalize, the Pinot Noirs produced in Italy provide a different take on the grape, neither Burgundian or Californian in any of its guises, dry with subtle red fruits like blackcurrant and raspberry, not bold, and balanced with nice acidity.  Each has tasted Italian to me, maybe with a hint of underlying bitterness that is present in a great many of the reds of the country or something.  If you enjoy Pinot Noir, especially with food, it’s worth your while to give Pinot Nero a try, from Oltrepò Pavese or elsewhere, provided you can find it.

A white Pinot Nero (or Pinot Noir) at Antica Osteria del Previ in Pavia just over a week ago. 

​Though some restaurants were becoming more Italian during the 1980s, several widespread aspects of the Italian restaurant in America were not to be found in Italy.  This included a small bowl or cruet of olive oil set on the table along with a basket of bread for dipping into the oil.  This seems to have begun sometime in the 1980s.  It might have been one of Pino Luongo’s innovations.  He, the Tuscan-bred and New York-based restaurateur who helped introduce Tuscan cooking to this country with places like Il Cantinori and Coco Pazzo that resonated with both critics and celebrities alike.  Though the concept of dipping raw vegetables into oil, pinzimonio, is found in parts of Italy, the similar use of bread is not, at least the way it is done in this country.   Olive oil for the bread quickly spread and became expected by most diners, even if it was an additional freebie for the owner and a way for customers to waste a lot of decent olive oil.   It became emblematic of Italian restaurants here – as much as soft, overcooked pasta – and was resisted only by those able to adhere more closely to the Italian model.
 
If presented in a bowl or plate, the olive oil was often studded with herbs, garlic and sometimes balsamic vinegar.  The use of the sweet vinegar became another hallmark of American Italian dining.  Balsamic vinegar in its truest, most artisanal form, was nearly unknown outside of its home in and around the city of Modena in Emilia-Romagna until it began to be imported into the U.S. and used at the most discerning restaurants around 1980.   As it took years to make small amounts, it was expensive, but its concentrated flavor went a long way as a condiment.  As the original aged versions gained traction with Americans and the American press, commercial vinegars bearing the name “balsamic vinegar,” tasting vaguely similar and far less pricey, began to be produced.  It was with these that most American diners grew to enjoy, both with bread and more so mixed with salads.
 
Predating both the table presentation of olive oil and the familiarity with this uniquely Italian-esque vinegar was the Italian steakhouse, at least in America.  There are no steakhouses in Italy.  Outside of the Florentines and later other Tuscans, there has been no steak tradition in Italy.  In fact, the bistecca in the famous bistecca alla fiorentina comes from the English “beefsteak” because there was no suitable Italian name for the dish.   “Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak,” as Kurt Vonnegut rightly observed, and Italian-Americans found it both profitable and enjoyable to serve steak.   The first might have been The Palm in Manhattan that opened in the 1920s, even if it did not consciously start out as a steakhouse.   It was later joined, especially after 1990, by numerous others primarily in the northeast and midwest.  These served similar preparations and steaks as the typical grand American steakhouses.  What made them “Italian” was that the menu was filled out with a number of rote Italian-American dishes, and usually the restaurant’s full name included the phrase, “Italian Steakhouse.”
 
Frank Sinatra was a reportedly a big fan of one of the longtime Italian steakhouses, Gene & Georgetti’s in Chicago. Sinatra was reportedly a big fan of countless Italian-themed eateries.  In fact, “Frank Sinatra ate here” might only be rivaled by “George Washington slept here” in the northeast.  According to the dedicated road food warriors, Jane and Michael Stern, who would know better than anyone, “there are countless places between Philly and Boston (not to mention some in Vegas and Palm Springs) where, if you judged by the pictures on the wall, you'd have to say that Frank was the management's best friend.”   A tree of decades-old Italian-American eateries in the Los Angeles area can trace their heritage back to Sinatra beginning with Hollywood’s Villa Capri.   Though Sinatra was, by all regards, a terrific customer known for his extremely generous tipping, he also brought a tremendous amount of star power and glamour.   He was, after all, one of the most famous Americans since the time he burst on the scene in the early 1940s until his death in the late 1990s.  The advertisement of a restaurant’s connection to Sinatra was and continues to be a recognizable feature of the Italian restaurant here, just as it once was with previous Italian-American heroes, Joe DiMaggio and Enrico Caruso.
 
Sinatra’s fixture is more permanent, because Sinatra’s music – and in some sense his persona – has become intertwined with Italian-American food and joyous carousing.  Sinatra might be as much a part of the American Italian restaurant as red sauce.  His songs and those of the other popular Italian-American singers interpreting the Great American Songbook after the Second World War have become a requisite part of the soundtrack of Italian-themed restaurants.  Sinatra was just the best and has been the most played, but he is often joined by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Louis Prima, Bobby Darin, Jerry Vale, Jimmy Rosselli, Mario Lanza, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, and Vic Damone as part of the ambiance when out at an Italian restaurant.
 
Though American-bred singers seemed natural complements to the restaurants serving the food, what might be surprising is the disdain that the vast majority of Italians have to Italian food with any American concessions.  Most Italians absolutely cannot stand Italian-American food, or at least they say so.  This seems to stem largely from the fact that Italians have possibly the narrowest palates in the world.  That and their intense local pride fostered by history and geography.  They complain bitterly about the preparations of dish a town over in Italy if it is slightly different than their own.   Of course, they are typically quick to complain about restaurants here.
 
This was adapted from my eBook, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione: The Story of Italian Restaurants in America.

​Flying to the Chicago area last weekend, I was looking for a convenient place to meet a friend near O’Hare and ended up at a branch of Harry Caray’s, more properly Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse.  I had enjoyed trips to the original location downtown many years ago.  And, this most recent visit worked out well.  I needed some food as I waited, and my order of toasted ravioli, that deep-fried St. Louis treat, was quite tasty.  Crusty ravioli filled with a mixture of four cheeses, and served in a very pleasant, light marinara sauce.  As it turned out, my friend has had very good luck with the place for business meals, and a cousin I saw that weekend had long liked up their pastas.
 
The menu at Harry Caray’s – there are three of these in addition to their other concepts – has long-popular and more current Italian-American and Italian-themed preparations like Eggplant Parmesan, pasta alla Vodka, Shrimp Scampi, fried calamari, and a well-regarded signature Chicken Vesuvio, a Chicago Italian-American classic, along with salads, seafood, and then wet- and dry-aged steaks in filet, strip and ribeye cuts.
 
The Italian steakhouse, at least in America and at least in name, has predated Harry Caray’s use of it in recent years.  There are hardly any steakhouses in Italy, though.  Outside of the Florentines and later other Tuscans, there has been no steak tradition in Italy.  In fact, the bistecca in the famous bistecca alla fiorentina comes from the English “beefsteak” because there was no suitable Italian name for the dish. Similarly, rosbif is the Italian word for roast beef.  I was in Piedmont late last year, a region that is very proud of their beef, and asked a winemaker during long luncheon if there were steaks to be found in Piedmont – which I hadn’t encountered in two trips there – or anywhere else in Italy, in addition those Tuscan steaks.  He said that there might be a steak somewhere in the Veneto, he wasn’t exactly sure where, but that was about it.  There are plenty of steaks to be found here, of course.
 
“Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak,” as Kurt Vonnegut rightly observed, and Italian-Americans found it both profitable and enjoyable to serve steak, as have innumerable other restaurateurs over the years.  The first Italian steakhouse might have been The Palm in Manhattan that opened in the 1920s, even if it did not consciously start out as a steakhouse.   It was later joined, especially after 1990, by numerous others primarily in the Northeast and Midwest.  These served similar preparations and steaks as the typical grand American steakhouses.  What made them “Italian” was simply that the menu was filled out with a number of rote Italian-American dishes, and usually the restaurant’s full name included the phrase, “Italian Steakhouse.”
 
The phrase Italian steakhouse does make some sense in this country, even if there really is very little or no Italian heritage involved.  What it translates to is a menu of aged steaks often from the great slaughterhouses of the Midwest in familiar cuts and preparations alongside a slew of Italian-American dishes.  These have long been two of America’s favorite cuisines, after all, and what’s wrong with that?

Lunch at an actual steakhouse in Italy a few years ago

​By the end of my first trip to Italy many years ago and what proved true in a few subsequent trips, especially in the inexpensive trattorie and osterie that I was visiting, is that with the complimentary bread on the table that’s the custom there, the better the bread, the better the restaurant.  This also proved very true here in Houston during the past week. 
 
In the last several days, for some reason, I’ve had a few meals in Italian-themed restaurants.  First, the new, self-proclaimed Italian-American B.B. Italia in the former longtime home of Carmelo’s on the west side, then the original Carrabba’s on Kirby, which I hadn’t visited in at least a couple of years, and yesterday, Nundini Chef’s Table that is set gloomily in the midst of a windowless retail space.  The bread at B.B. Italia, a small, noticeably fresh, somewhat spherical boule, was fairly mediocre, not nearly as good as the breads later at the original Carrabba’s and Nundini.  And, the food, too, at B.B. Italia was not nearly as tasty, which is an understatement.
 
It’s not surprising that the bread at Carrabba’s was better than at B.B. Italia.  Proprietor Johnny Carrabba bought Common Bond, the city’s best commercial baker, back in 2016.  At lunch at Carrabba’s, the basket of very crusty white bread – that tasted like it was probably even leftover from the previous night’s service – and a brown roll both did excellent work sopping up the olive oil and dipping sauce and then leftover tomato sauce from my pasta dish. The soft squares of the pre-pranzo focaccia at Nundini, if not tasting of coming from Common Bond, was also enjoyable, and better.
 
Though the bread at B.B. Italia might have been disappointing, I didn’t realize right away that it would be a harbinger for the rest of the meal.  That was quick to prove true with the simple Caesar salad that was basically just cut up romaine lettuce, heavily white and pale green, in a straightforward dressing dotted with lame, unevenly and often barely cooked croutons – not helped by the bread, of course.  It wasn’t bad, but measured up poorly to about any version of the salad I’ve had in memory.  The pasta dish I ordered was necessarily better, but also below-par of what you would expect at a restaurant, at least what I would expect.
 
It was the Grandma’s Ravioli, ravioli filled oddly with short rib stuffing, and served with what is described as mushroom Marsala ragù.  Though the pasta shell was actually pretty decent, the filling of minced beef and, more so, the sauce, a thin bit of Marsala wine with mushrooms about, not a ragù at all, tasted discordant to me and made the dish much less than the sum of its parts.  Plentiful grated Parmesan (or maybe it was Parmigiano) could not help too much.  The sauce tasted to be, basically, just quickly cooked cheap Marsala.  My dining companion also had a pasta dish, ravioli topped with a pesto.  That pesto was an overly liquid-y version that tasted almost solely of basil; the pine nuts and taste of cheese was entirely missing.  We agreed that their pesto tasted nothing like that made in its home of Liguria or in the neighboring regions where it is also found; also, a far cry than what I make at home with a mortar and pestle.  It was also not nearly well-done as the version I just had with similarly properly prepared potato gnocchi Nundini, which was appropriately more viscous and richer, more flavorful with evident pine nuts and cheese in the mix.
 
B.B. Italia seems to be playing at Italian-American food.  Both the dishes and the concept seemed to be artifice to me.  What I experienced there was the antithesis of soulful food.  None of this would have mattered too much at B.B. Italia if the food was very good, or good, but it was not.  It was a far cry that the food that I had at Carrabba’s on Kirby the other day.  Maybe it’s not surprising, given that Carrabba’s on Kirby and Voss – not the chain outposts, of course – have long been judicious and often eminently enjoyable destinations for well-made, sometimes upscale Italian-American cooking with a local bent.  I had ravioli at Carrabba’s, too.  It was far better.
 
I have to state that I found the name of Grandma’s Ravioli for what I ordered at B.B. Italia as rather ridiculous, even pandering, as it alludes to the fact that it might have been something a typical Italian-American matriarch might have regularly cooked for the Sunday lunch.  Not so.  The ravioli dishes cooked by the Italian-Americans here were ricotta-stuffed and served in a tomato sauce.  No one cooked ravioli that with minced beef short ribs.  This is just made up.  Then came the ravioli filled with ground meat that were long a staple at Italian-American restaurants.  A well-made version of this, featuring distinctively large rectangle of pasta, is what I had at Carrabba’s.
 
And there were other disconcerting signs at B.B. Italia, in addition to the not-so-great food.  Service, though friendly, was not terribly professional.  The service specifically at the bar, we had wine sold to us as 9-ounces that looked and drank very suspiciously like 6-ounce pours in every other establishment in the city – I usually order a few glasses of wine out each week.  Thinking wine, the restaurant sports a very limited and largely uninteresting wine list for wine list, but which of the three of the wines we ordered were out that night.  I can’t recall that I’ve ever been to a restaurant where a trio of the wines were not available; a very high percentage for B.B. Italia.
 
As disappointing as the visit to B.B. Italia was, I feel the need to give it at least another try.  It had only been open for a month or so, and drawing a final judgement so quickly is not fair and possibly not accurate.  And, with as the owners also have a steakhouse, I have hope that the meat preparations are much better than the couple of dishes that I had.
 
Carrabba’s, The Original
3115 Kirby (between W. Alabama and Richmond), 77098, (713) 522-3131
1399 S. Voss (at Woodway), 77057, (713) 468-0868
carrabbasoriginal.com
 
Nundini Chef’s Table
500 N. Shepherd (north of I-10), 77007, (713) 861-6331
chefstable.nundini.com

A tasty version of ravioli, at Carrabba's on Kirby, showered with plentiful Parmigiano.

​A passeggiata is the traditional evening promenade in Italian towns and villages. Though Italian food and restaurants in our area might have a rather undistinguished history in national terms, a meandering, somewhat selective, chronological stroll – or passeggiata – of 100-plus of its significant or interesting particulars can be entertaining, and even informative, especially since Houston is now a top restaurant city. This is due, in part, to substantial contributions from Italians and Italian-Americans. I penned an earlier version of this for My Table magazine back in 2011.
 
1884 – The Houston Directory published for 1884-1885 lists grocers with names like Fenno, Manno, Maretti and Roco. Alexander Bergamini – the owner of the Casino saloon at 72 Congress – is, appropriately, a New Orleans native. There is also a restaurant named Delmonico; it’s not Italian, but rather named after the famous New York establishment.
 
1890s – Veal, popular with Italians and also central Europeans, is a fairly common item in Houston’s many German-owned meat markets in the late 19th century, but eventually became scarce. Years later, restaurateurs Johnny Carrabba and Frankie Mandola don’t recall ever having it at home while growing up here.
 
1905 – Carrabba’s Chicken “Bryan Texas” is the most popular dish across the entire chain, and named after Bryan, 100 miles north of Houston. An Italian emigration official, Adolfo Rossi, reported that 2,500 Sicilian immigrants are working the land there in 1905. Along with two in New Jersey, it is “perhaps the largest Italian agricultural community in the United States” according to a later government report. Initially, Sicilians from different villages settled on either sides of the Brazos River, an example of campanilismo – the extreme provincialism – of most Italians at the time.
 
1906 – A restaurant called IWW French and Italian Restaurant opens downtown at 702 Preston.
 
1911 – Galveston’s oldest restaurant, Gaido’s, opens in 1911. It is named after the founding Sicilian family that still owns and operates it. It is not an Italian restaurant, though.
 
1913 – Houston has two pasta factories: Houston Macaroni Manufacturing Co. and Magnolia Macaroni Manufacturing & Co.
 
1915 – An immigrant from Sicily, Joe Grasso, pioneers the Galveston shrimping industry. Through the 1920s he sold most of it as bait as virtually no locals ate shrimp then.
 
1920 – Houston is home to Chinese and Japanese restaurants, but seemingly no Italian restaurant.
 
1930 – Houston’s first spaghetti house – and seemingly the first full-service, fully Italian restaurant – opens, Del Monico’s.
 
1944 – Like Gaido’s in Galveston, Massa’s in downtown Houston – whose run lasts over seventy years – is also a seafood restaurant rather than an Italian one.
 
1948 – On Park Place an inexpensive Italian restaurant called Big Humphrey’s opens. It is named after owner Joe Vitale’s professional wrestling persona. It later moves to Pearland and is open today.
 
1948 – Along with her husband Mama Ninfa – later the instigator of the nationwide fajita craze – opens a tortilla and pizza dough factory on Navigation east of downtown. The Italian dough part might not have been a surprise since her husband was an Italian-American from the northeast. Much later her offspring open Laurenzo's Italian Bar and Grille that lasts just three months and Bambolino's, a drive-through slice place, one of which still remains on Westheimer.
 
1950 – Frank Sinatra’s scandalous (i.e. adulterous) affair with Ava Gardner is confirmed for the nation in late January at Italian restaurant in Houston, Vincent’s Sorrento. Sinatra is in town for a several week gig at the Shamrock Hotel. A guest of Mayor Oscar Holcombe at the restaurant – whose proprietor is a Vallone – Sinatra accosts a photographer from the Houston Post who is about to capture the couple on film.
 
1953 – Matranga’s opens on Irvington north of downtown. It is an intimate spot with a garrulous, oft-crooning owner, Joe Matranga, who “was a character,” remembered Johnny Carrabba. It quickly becomes the favorite Italian for most Houstonians, and carries on for over 30 years, known for dishes with plenty of “simmering tomato sauce and garlic – lots of garlic” that resonated with customers. Matranga once admitted to a reporter that his sauce contained “onion and garlic and olive oil and salt, pepper and basil” along with tomato paste and was simmered for eight hours.
 
1953 – In November of that year, the Sacred Heart Society of West Little York, Roman Catholic men’s group founded by Sicilian immigrants from in and around Palermo, begins its tradition of a Thursday spaghetti lunch that is inexpensive and open to the public at its home in Whitney Hall on Airline just north of Crosstimbers. With the lunches remaining popular today, the meat balls and tomato sauce still follow the same recipes as when the lunches began. The fresh Italian sausage is made by Society members.
 
1955 – Pizza finally comes to Houston with opening of Valian’s in July. The reason it took so long is that Houston lacked a critical mass of Neapolitan immigrants that were found in New York, New Haven, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago, each of which had pizza for decades. There are a couple of other contenders for the first pizza place in Houston, but it was certainly Valian’s that made it popular and is remembered as the local pizza pioneer. Near the Shamrock Hotel, the owner of Valian’s – like most new owners capitalizing on the exploding taste for pizza across the country – is not Italian. Armenian-American. The restaurant also serves barbecue and fried chicken.
 
1950s – The most popular place for imported Italian specialties – and about the only one – is Trapolino Import Co. Started by Frank Trapolino, a native of Bisaquino near Corleone in western Sicily. He had previously worked at the Houston Macaroni Co.
 
1960 – Pino’s opens at 3000 Cullen near the University of Houston. It is owned by Pino Farinola from coastal Brindisi in southwestern Italy and his wife. The restaurant is an old house and seats about 50.
 
1965 – Tony Vallone’s Tony’s opens as a casual Italian restaurant, known at the time as a spaghetti house, on Sage Road near where the Galleria would be constructed in a few years. It is later described as, “a place that was fun to visit, with good food and drink, dancing….”  Within a few years it would attract the well-to-do and 
 
1969 – Near the eastern edge of Westheimer in January, Michelangelo opens. Maybe somewhat exotic at first, it continued in business for over four decades later, known for its comfortable Italian-American fare and vaguely romantic setting.
 
1969 – The April 19 issue of Billboard reports, “Tony Bennett Spaghetti House…the first of the restaurants is scheduled to open in Houston in early August. Five additional units will open in the same city before the end of the year, with dozens more planned in other cities for early 1970.” At least one did open, briefly, in Town & Country where, “the food was…was very bland,” recalled a rare patron. Lasting longer is, “Benedetto’s, Texas State Hotel, 720 Fannin…a supper club that features an Italian feast, cheek-to-cheek dance music and name Vegas acts,”  run by the singer’s older brother, John.
 
The songs of the popular Italian-American singers interpreting the Great American Songbook after the Second World War are a requisite part of the ambiance of Italian-themed restaurants in this country. From that group, oddly, more than Tony Bennett had ties to the city. Vic Damone lived here for years after marrying an oil heiress, and two of three of Frank Sinatra’s kids were married to Houstonians (at least briefly). Nancy Sinatra married singer Tommy Sands – who attended Lanier Junior High and then Lamar – in 1960. Frank Sinatra, Jr. married a Houston-area lawyer in 1998. Plus, one of Dean Martin’s very best songs is his 1965 recording of “Houston.”
 
1970 – As the city moves westward, Pino’s follows. It moves to Hilcroft and Westheimer. Its success allows it to eventually grow to four times the capacity of the original.
 
1971 – Antonio’s Flying Pizza opens in 1971 by Sicilian immigrants serving pizza and assertive Italian-American red sauce classics, and proving that this formula with competent hands in the kitchen still works well after 40-plus years.
 
1974 – In their November issue, Texas Monthly reports that "Tony's [is]our nomination for the city's best restaurant… [with] trout Veronique… Chauteaubriand…. Souffle" as it advertises itself as serving the "Poetry of French Food."  Vallone's heart seems to remain with the vibrant culinary verse of Naples and environs, though.

1975 – Cajoled by Houston socialite Maxine Van Dusen, Sergio Ballatori, whose family had run a restaurant in Rome between the main train station and the Trevi Fountain for four decades, moves to the Bayou City to open Ballatori’s at 4215 Leeland in November in a recently occupied bank building east of downtown. Aptly aided by his wife, five children and parents, Ballatori features Roman and Italian dishes like saltimbocca alla Romana, the fresh pasta tonnarelli alla carbonara, and risotto alla Milanese along with sought-after tables set inside a spacious steel bank vault.
 
1976 – In January Star Pizza fires up its pizza oven for the first time. Its thick-crust pizzas – not really the Chicago-style deep dish as advertised – are arguably the best in the city at the time, and quickly become a favorite with the college-age customers.
 
1976 – Jason’s Deli – founded in Beaumont, Texas in 1976 by a Sicilian-American, Joe Tortorice – eventually includes over fifteen Houston area locations. A noticeable part of its success is due to its version of the muffaletta, the sandwich invented in the French Quarter in New Orleans in 1906. The mufffaletta takes its name from a somewhat unusual, dense type of loaf that originated in Piano degli Albanesi, a town about a dozen miles from Palermo and home to a large ethnic Albanian community.
 
1977 – Nash D’Amico – who had recently run an Italian restaurant in Huntsville, and helped significantly by his cousin Damian Mandola – opens “something new and exciting for Houston,” D’Amico’s at 2407 Westheimer east of Kirby. It is known for dishes like frutti di mare salad, fried calamari, and tortellini in a cream sauce. Several years later, still “one of the busiest restaurants in Houston,” Texas Monthly describes it as “the first sumptuous Italian restaurant in Texas.”
 
1977 – In a small house on W. Dallas – a few blocks west of an area once rife with Italian grocers – Vincent Mandola opens Nino’s, which will grow into a two-block compound over the years. Greatly inspired by the cooking of their mother, Grace, the three Mandola brothers, Vincent, Tony and Damian, will go on to open many of Houston’s most popular restaurants: Nino’s (Vincent), Tony Mandola’s Gulf Coast Kitchen (Tony), Damian’s (Damian), Carrabba’s (Damian), Vincent’s (Vincent), Pesce (Damian) and Pronto (Vincent).
 
1978 – Destined to become a favorite of astronauts and other NASA personnel, Frenchie’s in a dumpy strip center in Clear Lake opens by the Camera brothers from the island of Capri. Though misleading, the owners decide to keep the name of the previous establishment. Its counter service at lunch – and usually packed – while full service in the evening.
 
1978 – The faccia di vecchia dish served at Mandola’s Deli that opens near the University of Houston takes its name from its likeness to the gnarled face of an old woman. It is a version of the sfincione, a focaccia-esque dish from the Palermo area, the progenitor of the square Sicilian pizza.
 
1981 – Carmelo’s opens on Memorial near Dairy Ashford in west Houston. Carmelo Mauro, a native of the beautiful resort town of Taormina in Sicily, brings Continental-inflected and well-executed Italian-American dishes that quickly become a hit.
 
1982 – In the March issue of Texas Monthly is an article about Italian dining in Texas. It lists D’Amico’s and Villani at 2907 West Alabama as two of the three best Italian restaurants in the state. The reviewer thought important to add that “it seems that Dallas doesn’t need any more Italian restaurants, it just needs a few good Italian cooks.”
 
1982 – Sonny Bono – an Italian-American singer like Tony Bennett, if without the talent – opens an Italian restaurant called Bono’s on Woodway between Post Oak and Sage. A branch of his West Hollywood original, it lasts for several years.
 
1982 – In the fall of this year Carlo Molinaro, a native of Verona, starts a restaurant called La Trattoria on Westheimer just east of Voss. Serving broadly northern Italian trattoria classics along with a few American-friendly items, the restaurant is maddeningly inconsistent until its close at the end of 2010. Delighting regular patrons – including many ex-pats from Italy – it is too often indifferent in terms of both cooking and service.
 
1982 – Achille Epifani, originally from Taranto in the heel of Italy’s boot, opens Achille’s on Memorial between Wilcrest and Kirkwood. Having once cooked at the famed Giambelli’s on 50th in Manhattan – the first to have broken the $10 mark for a pasta dish in the country – he brings a customer-pleasing sense to his usually full-flavored preparations. It remains a neighborhood favorite for over fifteen years before Epifani decides to down-scale to a fast-casual operation and move west (to Eldgridge).
 
1983 – In the fall, John Flowers, originally from the Chicago area, opens Kenneally’s Irish Pub on Shepherd north of Westheimer. It, surprisingly, serves pizza, excellent pizza – thin-crust and vaguely Neapolitan. This was the original type of pizza served in Chicago, well before the advent of the deep-dish. Its pizza-maker trained at Nick & Vito’s in southwestern Chicago, one of the remaining bastions of this style.
 
1984 – Tony Mandola opens the self-named Gulf Coast Kitchen, his second restaurant at 1602 Shepherd. In early 1988 it moves to the River Oaks Shopping Center on West Gray. Best described as a regional seafood restaurant, it does serve some unique and popular items that combine Italian-American cooking with regional ingredients and flavors.
 
1985 – In their April issue, Texas Monthly notes that, “Joe Matranga, Owner of Texas’ Best Spaghetti Joint, gives out free postcards of himself as a valiant Greek warrior impaled on a bloody spear,” in awarding it the Best Restaurant Postcard.
 
1985 – On Smith Street in what would be called Midtown, Damian, Frankie and Vincent Mandola along with Ciro Lampasas and Johnny Carrabba, Sr. open Damian’s in the fall. It is soon to become one of Houston’s best-loved restaurants.
 
1986 – Ciro Lampasas opens his eponymous restaurant, Ciro’s, on the north side of I-10 at Campbell that becomes a Spring Branch favorite.
 
1986 – Aldo Cantania opens La Strada on a dicey stretch of Westheimer in Montrose. The California-style Italian food never draws raves, but its wild Sunday brunch becomes an institution. A second location opens in 1996 in the Galleria area. A fire shutters the original in 2002. It reopens in 2004, but never regained its former popularity. Both are closed by spring 2009.
 
1986 – With proprietors Damian Mandola and his nephew Johnny Carrabba, Carrabba’s opens in the site of a former adult bookstore on Kirby north of Richmond in December. The most expensive item on the menu is $9.
 
1987 – Backstreet Café’s Tracy Vaught invests in Prego, a failing restaurant in the Rice Village. It was one of the scores of restaurants nationwide that had used Wolfgang Puck’s Spago as its inspiration. The next year it becomes Italian-themed, more competent, and a favorite of the nearby soon-to-be-booming West University and Southampton neighborhoods.
 
1988 – In January, due to the phenomenal success of its Kirby original in the past year, Carrabba’s opens a second location near Briargrove on Voss near San Felipe.
 
1988 – Augie Vasquez, a native of Argentina who had worked with Nash D’Amico, opens Augie’s at 5901 Westheimer at Fountain View. Drawing on his Italian heritage and restaurant experience, he serves dishes found infrequently in Houston, including some of the over thirty pastas and an excellent version of mozzarella in carozza dished from an open kitchen. Though the Chronicle’s review noted that “this is one of those rare Italian restaurants where the meat and fish dishes rival the pastas,” the restaurant does not last but a couple of years.
 
1988 – The November issue of Texas Monthly raves about Damian’s grilled quail on polenta and its “fettuccine in Alfredo sauce adorned with dandelions… [with] moist grilled boned chicken breast.”  It garners two stars (out of three) making it one of the top seven restaurants in the state according to the magazine.
 
1989 – Tony Vallone opens Neapolitan-spiced Grotto in January. The food is excellent; not really authentic, but the execution and ingredients are top-notch. The flavors are properly distinct and vibrant, Italian rather than typically Italian-American. The scene rivals the food. Grotto is named one of the top new restaurants in the country by Esquire magazine in 1990.
 
1991 – On Lovett just off Montrose, Lynette Hawkins opens La Mora, occupying the spot of another Italian restaurant, Villa Borghese. Hawkins had lived in Florence and La Mora is the first of the area’s first Tuscan-themed restaurants that proves to strike a welcome cord among Houston diners.
 
1991 – Pino Luongo, the New York restaurateur that helped introduce and popularize Tuscan food in this country beginning in the 1980s, opens a restaurant in the Galleria area in August. Texas Monthly wrote a few months later that, “the most sophisticated Houston Tuscan restaurant is the largely undiscovered Piccola Cucina.”  Unfortunately, it remained that way and shuttered after a not-too-long tenure.
 
1991 – Tony Vallone opens La Griglia on West Gray just east of River Oaks in the fall. Esquire names it a best new restaurant in the country soon after opening. Less Neapolitan and maybe less Italian than his Grotto, it is similarly boisterous and stylishly casual, and quickly becomes a place for socialites and politicians. The restaurant remarkably remains so, two decades, and a change of ownership later.
 
1992 – In January an unpretentious spot dedicated to well-prepared Neapolitan style pasta dishes and somewhat odd, but popular, baked casserole creations opens a corner of the Pennzoil Building downtown. Called Buca di Bacco until the chain Buca di Beppe paid owner Vittorio Preteroti, a native of Capri and related to the family that runs Frenchie’s, to change. So, it has been known as Perbacco for years.
 
1992 – The first area Romano’s Macaroni Grill from Brinker International opens at 5802 Westheimer and is a hit. The very quaffable jug wines sold on the honor is a big reason. That original location is still open today. The chain began in Leon Springs, outside of San Antonio, in 1988.
 
1992 – In December two chefs from the famed Cipriani Hotel in Venice open Torcello at 2300 Westheimer, east of Kirby. Taking the name of the island where the hotel is located, its Venetian-inspired cuisine – including Harry’s Bar classics – is some of the very best Italian food that has ever been served in Houston, and its interior wins a local design award. The restaurant lasts for about a year-and-a-half, closing in 1994. It could be the address as Armando's, Dish, Two Chefs Bistro, and Beso – to name most of the ones which followed, each having abbreviated tenures.
 
1993 – In April Outback Steakhouse purchased a 50% stake in the cash flows of the two Carrabba's restaurants and entered into a 50-50 joint venture with the founders, Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola, to develop new locations. Houston’s version of Italian-American food and hospitality is poised to spread nationally. From soon after this, as most Houston restaurant-goers know, but it bears mentioning, the first two Carrabba’s locations – now just owned by Johnny Carrabba and family – are much better than the nationwide Carrabba’s Grill outposts.
 
1993 – Del Vecchio Foods is founded in Houston and produces a line of fresh Italian sausages that can be found at Spec’s and not enough other local outlets.
 
1994 – Anthony’s reopens at 4007 Westheimer in Highland Village (where Smith & Wollensky now stands), though it is not as Italian as it once was. The oft-decadent Italian-scented veal dishes remain excellent, though.
 
1994 – Using a far cheaper and less competent designer than Anthony’s – the odd Il Dio di Vin’ opens on the 7600 block of the Katy Freeway. The stuccoed interior is meant to resemble a grotto setting, but harkens more to the caves described in Christ Stopped at Eboli. The menu is entirely in some southern Italian dialect – Neapolitan, I believe – and the food is a mix of Italian-American and Neapolitan dishes done a little differently. The wine is inexpensive; the food is moderately priced, robustly flavored and usually terrific, especially the pasta dishes.
 
1994 – Nearby, also on the Katy Freeway, Tony Mandola's Family Table. It served giant Italian-American dishes meant for several, and meant to be like “going to grandma's house for Sunday dinner,” provided she was first- or second-generation southern Italian or Sicilian. The concept did not work for Houston, and it changed into another Blue Oyster Bar, which remained until the freeway expansion chased it north.
 
1994 – If not quite new, at least renewed, Anthony’s is named a top new restaurant in the country by Esquire magazine in October.
 
1995 – In January Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola purchased Outback’s shares in the original two Carrabba’s and modified the terms of the expansion agreement. The numerous Carrabba-named outlets grow to over 230 during the next fifteen years while the two initial locations remain amazingly popular.
 
1996 – Thai-born Somchai Rapesak who had cooked for La Strada for nearly a decade opens Crostini in a small house on Shepherd north of Westheimer early in the year. It grows to incorporate the then-trendy Southwestern ingredients and Thai flavors into American Italian cooking that works quite well. The restaurant has a successful dozen year run.
 
1996 – In March, two local Italian restaurant stars, Damian Mandola (Damian’s, Carrabba’s) and Lynette Hawkins (La Mora, Giacomo’s), marry, though the union doesn’t last.
 
1996 – Deep in the heat and humidity of August Arcodoro opens. It quickly becomes regarded as one of the best Sardinian-focused restaurant in the country (not that there are too many). Its Seadas Al Miele dessert – puff pastry filled with sweetened cheese, fried and drizzled with bitter honey – is “perhaps the oldest dessert in the world” according to an Italian food authority.
 
1996 – Villa Capri in Clear Lake – run by the family that owns nearby Frenchie’s – hosts the Italian head of state, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro.
 
1997 – In an April 11 review in the Houston Chronicle, Alex Truex writes, “Houston is blessed, but also cursed, by its plethora of upscale Italian restaurants,” proving definitively that he is no Robb Walsh or Alison Cook.
 
1997 – The restaurant with a bank vault run by a family from Rome, Ballatori’s, closes after a two decade run.
 
1998 – In April the Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” pokes fun at the name of the Houston restaurant Crapitto’s. It is the last name of the owner, by the way.
 
1998 – In the summer of 1998 Aldo El Sharif of the extravagant Aldo's – along with Marco Wiles – opens a wine bar called Osteria D'Aldo at 301 Main downtown.
 
1998 – With talented Alberto Baffoni a native of the Marche in central Italy manning the kitchen, Simposio opens on Richmond and Chimney Rock. It is named as one of the top new restaurants in the country by Esquire that fall, being praised by bringing to Houston “authentic Italian cooking.”
 
1999 – In July of 1999 the Houston Chronicle lauds La Griglia in a review, as “Marco Wiles brings glory back to the kitchen.” It is planned as a short time gig.
 
1999 – Arcodoro is awarded three stars out of four by famed Italian journalist Luigi Veronelli and his team in the The Best Italian Restaurants in America. Barely more than twenty other Italian restaurants in the country were rated as high.
 
1999 – Also that year, another Italian publication, the magazine La Cucina Italiana has a feature article about Tony Vallone citing him as one of the Southwest's best-known Italian-food gurus.
 
2000 –In January divino on West Alabama near Dunlavy opens. Though as much a wine bar at first – and a place with intelligently chosen and well-priced wines – it can probably lay claim to being Houston’s first trattoria. It serves basic, proficient cooking that aims for true Italian sensibilities, inspired from Emilia-Romagna.
 
2000 – In March Marco Wiles – who had worked locally for Tony Vallone, Antonio Mingalone and Aldo El Sharif – opens Da Marco, which sports an unusual all-Italian wine list, and is to become the most lauded Italian restaurant in Houston’s dining history.
 
2000 – Both Tony Vallone for Tony’s, and Alberto Baffoni of Simposio have recipes featured in John Mariani’s The Italian-American Cookbook published in 2000 that highlighted Italian-American standards and broadly Italian dishes from chefs like Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud and Ming Tsai. Vallone’s recipe is Capellini with Calamari and Shrimp (page 146); Baffoni’s is Potato Gnocchi with Wild Mushroom Ragù (page 196), “one of his masterful dishes” according to the author. Future Houston restaurateur Piero Selvaggio also has a recipe, Risotto with Corn (page 217).
 
2001 – In January the restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel downtown with talented Tim Keating heading the kitchen is rechristened Quattro, a contemporary Italian restaurant. Keating’s recent turn at the Four Seasons property in Milan makes this one of the most authentic Italian kitchens in the city.
 
2001 – Damian Mandola and Johnny Carrabba were asked to host the fourth season of the nationally syndicated PBS series “Cucina Amore.”   It spawns the cookbook, Ciao Y’All, possibly the closest tome that describes the Italian-themed cooking here. The hosts’ ebullient and irreverent style are such a hit they film two additional series featuring the cooking of Sicily and Tuscany – and companion cookbooks – in 2003 and 2004.
 
2001 – Just a year after it opens, talented sommelier Antonio Gianola joins Da Marco. He expands and greatly improves the all-Italian wine list to include a diverse, complementary and intriguing array of finds that help make the restaurant even more commendable. Gianola later goes on to Catalan as one of the opening partners helping to turn that into one of the city’s most exciting restaurants.
 
2001 – Nino’s (and Vincent’s, Grappino di Nino and later Pronto) Vincent Mandola is featured preparing his Veal Vincent on “Food Finds” on the Food Network.
 
2002 – Arcodoro’s Ravioli Arcodoro wins an international ravioli competition. Remaining on the menu throughout the restaurant’s tenure, these are good-sized ravioli filled with minced shrimps and scallops and wine must and finished with a flavorful seafood reduction.
 
2003 – Formerly just a wholesaler and a gelato maker to area restaurants, Nundini’s on N. Shepherd become known also as a retail import shop, sandwich purveyor and Houston’s first notable outlet for gelato and sorbetto.
 
2003 – In November Tilman Fertitta’s Landry Group purchases La Griglia and the two Grotto restaurants from Tony Vallone. That deal seems to stipulate that Vallone divest himself all but one restaurant. The Landry organization subsequently preserves these once interesting spots into amber, but these remain popular, if with a likely less discriminating group of patrons.
 
2004 – Distribution Amici Olive Oil – produced in Tuscany and owned by a Houstonian – begins from here. It is found at outlets like Spec’s and Leibman’s plus on-line.
 
2004 – Damian’s caters the All Star game held in Houston providing Italian food for Joe Torre and others while serving Caribbean-style food to the numerous Latin ballplayers on the American League roster.
 
2005 – Appropriately relocated to the former site of Maxim’s (once “the secure haven of the River Oaks plutocracy”) and featuring contemporary artwork from likes of the acclaimed Texas-bred artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jesus Moroles, Tony’s is named among the top new restaurants in the country by Esquire magazine. The French executive chef with the tough-to-pronounce Polish last name, Olivier Ciesielski, directs a kitchen staff that is capable of creating excellent Italian food.
 
2006 – In January Marco Wiles’ Dolce Vita opens on lower Westheimer. Seemingly using Mario Batali’s Otto in Manhattan as a template, Wiles goes far beyond that with his Italian-style pizzas fired in a wood-burning oven using a range of toppings inspired throughout the peninsula. It is easily the best pizzeria in Houston and encounters no serious contenders for years, if ever.
 
2006 – In Damian Mandola founds Mandola Family Winery south of Austin focusing on Italian varietals like Vermentino, Dolcetto and Montepulciano. TABC issues arising because of his ownership in dining or retail establishments – or a fallout with his partners according to another source – cause him to sell out to his partners. He still owns the attractive Trattoria Lisina next door.
 
2006 – Gourmet Sardina, an outlet for high quality Sardinian food products, is launched by Arcodoro’s owners Efisio and Lori Farris. The online shop offers artisanal products from Farris’ homeland that are quite different than those found in the typical Italian-American pantry. Bottarga, bitter honey and saba are a few of the high-end items that also include wine and olive oils.
 
2006 – The October edition of Gourmet listed Da Marco at number 29 among their list of top 50 restaurants in the country. Only three other Italians are placed higher – Babbo in New York, Vetri in Philadelphia, and Bartolotta di Mare in Las Vegas – not bad company, at all.
 
2007 – Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean Flavors of Sardinia from Efisio Farris of Arcodoro is published. It is likely the first Sardinian cookbook published in English. The New York Times listed it among “25 noteworthy cookbooks published in 2007.’’
 
2007 – Late in the year Ristorante Cavour opens in developer Giorgio Borlenghi’s posh Hotel Granduca. The executive chef is a Frenchman, David Denis. He infuses the flavors similar to his native Provence and Liguria to create a broadly northern Italian array of very well-crafted dishes. He proves that the French culinary tradition of stock-making marries well with Milanese-style risotto. For those that don’t know much about Italian history, the restaurant takes its moniker from Baron Cavour, one of the principal architects of Italian unification in 1861; the conquest of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and its incorporation into the Turin-based Kingdom of Sardinia.
 
2008 – In an article entitled “The Best U.S. Italian Restaurants” in the April issue of Forbes Traveler, John Mariani names Tony’s among the top dozen or so Italian eateries in the country. He writes, “in its new location, Tony's plays to a younger crowd that comes for rigorously authentic Italian regional cuisine and great wines.”
 
2008 – Also in April, Andrea Pintus, the longtime chef at lower Heights-area Patrenalla’s, and a native of Sardinia, opens his own restaurant with business partner, Luigi Campioni, on Westheimer and Dairy Ashford. Called Andrea’s is serves approachable Italian and Italian-American dishes that are a very good value.
 
2008 – In the heat of the summer, Russo’s Coal-Fired Pizzeria from the folks at the local New York Pizzeria chain opens in northwest Houston. Houstonians can get a taste of more pizzas cooked in the more traditional early New York and New Haven fashion.
 
2009 – Sicilian Village located in Friendswood begins distributing packaged olives from Sicily. These are available at Spec’s, Amazon.com and SicilianVillage.com.
 
2009 – Marco Wiles opens his third truly Italian restaurant along a short stretch of Westheimer, Poscol, in March. It takes its name from the term in dialect used for a main thoroughfare (Via Poscolle) in the northeastern Italian city of Udine, the hometown of Wiles’ family. Featuring small plates and inspiration largely from Veneto and Friuli, it sports another well-chosen all-Italian wine list. Texas Monthly names it and Valentino on its list of best restaurants to open in the state that year.
 
2009 – In September Houston hosts its first Italian Expo produced to highlight products from Italy. It is a boon to wine lovers, maybe too much so. Chicago is the only other city to host a similar event.
 
2009 – Lynette Hawkins gets back into the game in September with her Tuscan- and  Venetian-inspired small plate spot Giacomo’s on Westheimer west of Kirby. From the start, it features a very well-chosen and well-priced all-Italian wine list that seems to cover every corner of that country. It evolves to become one of the city's most reliable and best-value dining destinations, regardless of cuisine.
 
2009 – Legendary Piero Selvaggio – whose Santa Monica eatery Valentino was long regarded as the best Italian restaurant in the country – opens his third branch in Houston’s modern Hotel Derek near the Galleria. The restaurant is a new concept for Houston, an Italian ambition and credibility previously found elsewhere in this country just in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and one spot in Philadelphia. A veteran of Valentino’s Las Vegas operation, the talented Cunninghame West heads the kitchen here, doing an excellent job with an approachable version of Selvaggio’s inspired takes on alta cucina. James Beard Award-winning chef Luciano Pellegrini occasionally comes to town from Sin City to aid with special dinners for some added culinary power.
 
2009 – Stella Sola by one of the city’s top toques, Bryan Caswell, along with partner Bill Floyd opens in the Heights in November 2009. Influenced by the meaty robustness of some northern Italian cooking, its name translates to “Lone Star” (or “Lonely Star”) in English. One of Caswell’s early cooking stints was at Damian’s. He later cooked with the talented Rocco DiSpirito well before DiSpirito’s televised Italian-American restaurant nightmare, “The Restaurant” in 2003.
 
2010 – In April, Tuscan Renato De Pirro, an alumnus of Pierro Selvaggio’s Las Vegas restaurants and previously the Executive Chef at Osteria del Circo, the Maccioni’s family refined and well-regarded trattoria in the Bellagio Hotel and Casino, takes over the kitchen at Ristorante Cavour, bringing a more properly Italian taste to the menu at this upscale establishment.
 
2010 – Ciao Bello, another Vallone enterprise that had opened a year earlier in a space once occupied by La Strada, is named among “11 More Restaurants You Don't Want to Miss” by Esquire in 2010. It will become known for its zesty flavors among Roman-style thin-crust pizzas, pastas, Gulf-oriented seafood and meaty Italian-American-inflected preparations in an attractively casual and comfortable but very stylish setting that has long been a Vallone signature. Also in 2010, Vallone’s Caffe Bello takes over the original address of La Strada in Montrose, but struggles for traction in an evolving neighborhood.
 
2010 – In December Amici in Sugar Land closes. It seems competition from a recently opened Olive Garden nearby might have played a factor. This does not reflect well on Fort Bend residents.

2011 – Pizaro's opens in a strip center on Memorial in west Houston serving Neapolitan style pizza, the most truly Neapolitan that Houston has thus seen. Proprietor Bill Hutchinson puts his “Verace Pizza Napoletana” certification as a  Pizzaiolo to good use, and the bare-bones spots draws customers from around the area including a number of Italian ex-pats.  
 
2011 – In an area deficient in quality fresh Italian sausage, you can purchase it at the two Carrabba's owned by the family, though you will likely have to call ahead. The piquant, flavorful sausage is made by Johnny Carrabba, Sr., and unusual for Italian sausage elsewhere, but consistent with Texas, it contains a fair portion of beef.
 
2012 – Valentino, the best Italian restaurant that ever was in Houston, cannot overcome the very difficult location in the Hotel Derek and shutters. A shame, as proprietor Piero Selvaggio never got to do all he wanted to with the restaurant including becoming more adventurous with the offerings and expanding its wine list to at least a substantial of his Santa Monica original that has one of top handful of wine lists in the country
 
2014 – Inspired by the Italian heritage of executive chef Ryan Pera, Coltivare opens in January on White Oak in the Heights offering seasonal American-Italian fare including distinctively bready pizzas along with pastas and larger preparations in a casual, no reservations setting that seduces most local food critics.
 
2014 – Giancarlo Ferrara, the executive chef at Arcodoro for over a decade, opens Amalfi on Westheimer west of the Galleria in the same strip center as The Palm. Highlighting the dishes and flavors of his native Salerno, down the coast from Naples, that should be familiar to most American diners along with some items and techniques from his stops in the Veneto and at a French restaurant bearing two Michelin stars, the restaurant quickly becomes one of the top Italians in the city.
 
2015 – Now sporting the descriptive phrase, “Naples Influenced. Milan Inspired. Houston Cherished,” Tony’s celebrates its fiftieth year in business.
 
2015 – Pizaro's opens a second location on Montrose and West Gray. It later expands its menu to include New York style and Detroit style pizzas. The latter, a version of the Sicilian pan pizza created in Detroit soon after the Second World War, has been trendy addition to pizza joint menus across the country.

2017 – Across the street from the ballpark, Astros owner opens Potente, an upscale, expensive Italian-themed restaurant that eventually gets the skilled Danny Trace who was the executive chef at Brennan’s, and at the estimable Commander's Palace in New Orleans before that, as its top toque.
 
2017 – Chef Mark Cox of Mark's fame begins consulting at Fratelli's, an Italian-American restaurant in Spring Branch that began as a franchised offshoot of the original Fratelli's on 290. His work improves the food and the restaurant's profile, which becomes a favorite of an older set of west Houston customers.

2017 – After 36 years in business, Carmelo’s closes after Christmas brunch. Owner Carmelo Mauro, a steadfast member of the Houston restaurant community was both the former president of both the Texas Restaurant Association and the Greater Houston Restaurant Association.
 
2018 – Arcodoro, the upscale Sardinian restaurant in the Galleria that drew loyal patronage from ex-pat Italians and other Europeans closes in February after nearly two decades in business.
 
2018 – In April, the Italian wine and food publication Gambero Rosso names Amalfi as the best fine dining Italian restaurant in Houston, Sud Italia, with Maurizio Ferrarese in the kitchen, as tops for traditional cuisine, the Dallas-based chain Cane Rosso for pizza (quite surprisingly, and maybe a bit grudgingly according to the person I spoke with from Gambero Rosso), and Poscol for having the best wine program among local Italian restaurants.
 
2018 – In July, J.J. Watt asked his 5 million-plus followers on Twitter for the best Italian restaurant in Houston. The clear favorite of the 2,000 or so respondents was, very oddly and depressingly, Olive Garden, of which there are over twenty locations in the Houston area, which is also depressing to learn.
 
2018 – Tanglewood’s neighborhood Italian restaurant from Tony Vallone, Ciao Bello, closes rather suddenly in August, a couple of weeks after sibling steakhouse Vallone’s does so in Spring Branch.
 
2018 – In November, chef Maurizio Ferrarese, who won deserved plaudits at Quattro and Sud Italia, is hired to take over the kitchen at Ristorante Cavour.


I’ve got to write that through a coincidence of fate, I was born in the Italian North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco and afterwards belonged to the same parish in Bergen County, New Jersey as the mother of Frank Sinatra, whom I was told reliably purchased kegs for church functions. I was the local editor for the Zagat Survey for several years until Google did away with those positions and, possibly more pertinently, is the author of the ebook From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione: The Story of Italian Restaurants in America that is available on Amazon.

An artistic creation from Ristorante Cavour

​I just read something in the New York Times about the opening of new restaurant in Midtown Manhattan that was described as a “traditional Northern Italian restaurant, which serves dishes like linguine with white clams and chicken scarpariello.”  The former is a classic Neapolitan dish and chicken scapariello is an Italian-American dish, also with roots in Naples.  The writer, Florence Fabricant, is quite experienced and quite a good food writer so I assume that the above reference was done tongue-in-cheek.  And that phrase “Northern Italian” still gets bandied about on restaurant signage and websites, if less so these days. 
 
This piece is adapted from my eBook, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione: The Story of Italian Restaurants in America.  I care more about the semantics of this than most.
 
“Northern Italian” became a buzz-phrase.  It got diners excited.  Immensely enjoyable, distinctive regional cuisines have long existed in northern Italy.  As an amalgamation, it started being promoted, if not delivered, by at least 1970 in New York.  “Where is the grand tradition of the North? I have two years searching for it and my exploration weaves a trail of mournful disillusion,” a lament at the top of Greene’s lengthy article.   Some of the first press about the food of northern Italy came from Craig Claiborne, who introduced and championed Marcella Hazan in his space in the New York Times in 1970.   A native of Emilia-Romagna, she was conducting cooking classes in her tiny Manhattan apartment at the time.  The big boost came with the success of Hazan's first cookbook Classic Italian Cooking in 1973.  “Hazan's effort to convey authenticity elbowed aside the older efforts,” concerning Italian food, according to Nach Waxman, the owner of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a Manhattan bookstore dedicated to culinary matters.   That and subsequent volumes were influential both for cooks and diners.  “Northern Italian” was not only something fresh, but something that was more seemingly more genuine.  Soft pastas made with egg by hand, something Hazan championed, certainly appeared to be more authentic than spaghetti from a box that had been the pasta staple for decades. 
 
A few years after Hazan’s success, in 1977 Giuliano Bugialli’s, The Fine Art of Italian Cooking was published and sold well, helping establish Bugialli as respected instructor and popular author.  It focused on the cooking of Florence and Tuscany under the heading of “Italian.”   A contributing subtext in these books – seemingly somewhat intentional based on the title – was the belief that northern Italian food was more advanced and sophisticated.  Those northern regions were more prosperous and were home to the highlights of the Renaissance, after all.  And, its cooks were not quite the swarthy immigrants of yesteryear, towards whom there might have still been a bias in some quarters.
 
There was, and even still remains, a lot of confusion among the food writers and dining public as to what “Northern Italian” means.  Geographically, it meant the areas north of Rome, excluding Abruzzo to its northeast (that region had been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies whose capital was Naples).  Florence Fabricant of the New York Times gave the widespread understanding in 1977 as, “by local definition, ‘northern Italian’ signifies restaurants of some elegance that go lightly on the marinara, serve fettuccine, tortellini and scampi and do not feature meatball or pizza.”   This is what these restaurants portrayed, and what the public was to believe, but it was not really northern Italian.  In the 1990s this still meant in practice, “very little more than fresh pasta made with eggs, appearing in place of…commercial pasta, and cream and butter substituting for olive oil and tomato in the sauces.”   A few dishes were usually done in this heavier fashion, but the biggest effort for a restaurant in transforming itself a “Northern Italian” one was the cost for new signage and menus advertising the billing. 
Mimi Sheraton, the New York Times restaurant critic in 1981, reviewed Salta in Bocca, a “pleasant north Italian restaurant” that nearly garnered three stars in which the “recommended dishes” are almost a greatest hits collection of the southern Italian-American restaurant kitchen:
 
“Baked clams, mussels Riviera, roast peppers with mozzarella cheese, minestrone, pasta e fagioli, fettuccine casalinga, spaghetti carbonara, spaghetti al sugo, capelli d'angelo with seafood, linguine with white clam sauce, tortellini gratinati, fettuccine all'Amatriciana, fried squid, red snapper Livornese, scampi fra diavolo, chicken piccata, chicken scarpara, veal Genovese, veal paillard, osso buco, veal cutlet Milanese, veal cutlet Fiorentina, grilled veal chop, fried zucchini, sauteed escarole, zucchini with tomatoes, rugola salad, cheesecake, zabaglione, cheese and fruit platter.”
 
Though the veal cutlet sported the “Milanese” and “Fiorentina” modifiers, the tortellini and osso buco were probably the only preparations to be found anywhere north of Rome.  This lack of understanding was typical, and continued for a couple decades even among avid diners in the biggest markets.  But, patrons and reviewers, too, liked the new dishes.  These were something different and even novel, though “Northern Italian” also seemed to mean “more expensive,” that was good for the restaurateur.
Authentic northern Italian food was actually to be found in New York by the 1960s, at the reinvigorated Barbetta featuring a refined version of the robust cooking of Piedmont.  This was a singular and upscale anomaly.  Located in the theater district in Manhattan, it was founded in 1906 and given a makeover by the daughter of the founder.  In “1962, she was determined to make Barbetta more Piemontese than ever, adding such typical dishes as fonduta, carne cruda, bagna cauda, bue al Barolo, and introducing white truffles and Piemonte's traditional white truffle dishes,” according to the century-old restaurant’s website.   Other, and truly northern Italian restaurants, were to join Barbetta in Manhattan in the 1980s. 
Though much of it was marketing or misinformation, there was some truth to this “Northern Italian” fare advertised beyond Barbetta.  Fior d’Italia in San Francisco had been serving it even two decades longer than Barbetta.  As mentioned above, some of these Manhattan-based restaurateurs were from northern Italy, some, like Giambelli had actually worked in restaurants in the north of Italy.  They did serve some dishes from their home areas, if often in a richer fashion than at home.  The majority of the menu – and certainly the overall style – was still better described as Italian-American, albeit sometimes immensely enjoyable Italian-American.

Guinea hen at La Subida in Cormons, Italy, one of the best restaurants in northern Italy.  This dish was terrific.

​Barbera is not the wine that I grew to really enjoy some years ago with food, mostly Italian-themed food.  The wine now is different: it’s bigger, bolder, and more alcoholic.  The food that pairs well with it with more than a little different, too.
 
Years ago, Barbera wines – made entirely from the Barbera grape and mostly all in the region of Piedmont northwestern Italy – were made in very high quantities and drank in copious amounts in northern Italy.  It was a fairly light-bodied wine with a bit of cherry fruit, very low tannins, a bit of Italian earthiness, and a plentiful amount of acidity, its more noticeable characteristic.  Barbera was a wine that screamed out for food.  In fact, I rarely enjoyed the wines without something to eat.
 
In the past quarter century or so, Barbera has seen a number of changes, driven by the desire to improve the quality, most notably for the Barberas in the Asti area.  Many of the growers began lowering yields to do that.  Clones from a university in nearby Turin during the 1980s added more ripeness, lower acidity, and more phenols (these include flavonoids that can affect the mouthfeel and color of the wine; tannins are one).  Malolactic fermentation began to be used that drove down the acidity.  Then oak aging grew, though much less new oak is used now than 10-15 years ago, much better to highlight the distinct character of Barbera, and welcome improvement in my mind.  In the field, locations for the vineyards got better.  This was much more the case in the Asti region, as for Barbera d’Alba, the best vineyards go to Nebbiolo, mostly for Barolo and Barberesco.
 
And, very significantly, “everyone has to worry about global warming and its effect on alcohol levels,” which was a common refrain I heard in my several days around Asti on a trip sponsored in part by consortium for the wines of Barbera dAsti a couple of months ago.  The impact of the increasingly hotter planet has especially been felt in the the past 15 to 20 years, and Barbera, seemingly more so than other varietals, is especially susceptible to the growing alcohol levels.  In fact, of the all the Barberas I sampled there and since returning home, the lowest alcohol level I’ve had has been 13.5% and that was just once or twice.  As much wine, I like to enjoy several glasses, and the difference between a wine that’s 12.5% and 15% can be felt a little too much for my taste.
 
Though the alcohol levels have risen appreciably, Barbera has made incredible strides in the last 10-15 years to paraphrase one of the speakers during my recent sojourn to Barbera-land.  The wines are more serious, richer and some can age quite nicely.  I still find that Barbera is more readily enjoyable in both of their major styles than Nebbiolo.  Barolos take time, Barberesco and even the Nebbiolo di Langhe, do, too.  The two different styles for Barbera d’Asti and for Barbera throughout is aging in stainless steel and aging in oak.  The former produces lighter wines with more fruit and more noticeable acidity; these are the wines reminiscent of the way the most Barbera used to be produced, just with higher quality – and more alcohol.  The oak-aged ones will often have a tannic bite and a bigger body.  These are wines that can age and might need four or five years to really enjoy.  Both can exhibit the ripe fruit of raspberry and blackberry, and plum in hot vintages, cooking spices, and underbrush, and also leather with oak-aging.
 
As for foods, is more than an easy pairing for pizza and simple pasta dishes, and the oak-aged ones, Barbera d’Asti Superiore, will be too big for my tastes for most pizzas.  Both styles wines go well with the classic agnolotti del plin, with or without shaved fresh white truffles, and the Superiore went better with their Piedmontese version of pot roast that was the main course for most of the meals.  Back home, there is more eating and drinking that I need to do.  While Barberas and the lighter versions still are not hefty enough to pair enjoyable with steak or lamb, the Superiores might do a good job.  These might even be a great pairing for the classic Texas beef brisket.  We’ll see.
 
But, in any case, Barberas remain very good values.  You can find a wine, which will be invariably well-made, usually for under $20 while the Superiores will run a few dollars more but rarely over $30.  These are definitely well worth picking up if you drink wine primarily as accompaniment to dinner, though Superiores, with a generally more rounded taste, can often be enjoyed solo, and so more appealing to non-Italians.  And, the USA is the biggest export market for the wines of Barbera d’Asti, so we are enjoying them in profusion. 

​To paraphrase that boisterous British bard of the pre-millennium, Billy Idol, Moscato d’Asti might be enjoyed best when it’s dancing by itself.  With its bright bubbly character, it does dance.  In the flurry of pairing recommendations that I solicited from winemakers when I was in the Asti area last month, on a trip partly sponsored by the Asti DOCG consortium, one of them told me that Moscato d’Asti is really best as dessert, by itself.  This was somewhat echoed by a writer for Jancis Robinson’s website who spoke at the Asti event.  I confirmed the solo approach last night with a post-prandial glass from a not-the-most-highly-regarded producer that had been sitting in my refrigerator for over a week after opening.  It turned out to be nearly perfect for me in a satiated state about an hour before bed.  The wine was sweet, but not cloyingly so like all Moscato d’Asti’s because of their high acidity, and just what I was in the mood for.  I imagine I will be so in the future, and feel the need to start purchasing Moscato d’Asti on a regular basis.
 
Some of the suggestions for pairing I had heard during the trip: included: cheeses though not aged ones, salami, gorgonzola dolce, even when in a pasta or risotto with pears, possibly with pork with prunes, soy sauce, spicy dishes, Chinese dishes, as the Chinese like the sweetness Moscato.  From the Asti consortium’s website: “it’s canonically paired with…dry pastries…. pastries that are not stuffed with jelly, cream, or custard etc.…. it’s also a great wine for pairing with fresh fruit.” Justin Vann, a proprietor and acclaimed wine guy at Public Services in downtown Houston, told me that Lay’s potato chips, in their especially greasy original form, might be the best match.
 
I tried it with several things when I returned home, including the Lay’s potato chips, which actually did go better with the wine than the raspberries, blueberries, chocolate cookies, raisins, various cheeses, and at least a couple of other dessert-like items, but the Moscato d’Asti was clearly the most enjoyable by its lonesome for me.
 
I recommend giving it a try if you enjoy a little sweetness. Moscato d’Asti has between 120 and 130 grams of sugar per liter.  Lot’s a lot, and more than tawny port or Coca-Cola, which has about 105.  But, again, because of the substantial acidity that most sweet wines, and sweet beverages in general don’t have, Moscato d’Asti can be somewhat refreshing sweet finish.  Based on my recent experience, it can last for at least a week in the refrigerator sealed with something like a Vacu Vin that I used.  Even with its low alcohol content of around 5%, two people might not want to finish a bottle after dinner most nights.  Most nights.

Moscato d'Asti wines after harvest on a cool morning at the end of November.