At a recent virtual wine dinner at Roma in Houston, befitting the wines from a top Barbera producer in Piedmont, the first course, the antipasto, was veal tonnato.  It was easily my favorite of the three courses that night.  Veal tonnato is a classic cold veal dish in a tuna sauce usually served as a starter, which I have long really enjoyed.  For those unfamiliar with the preparation, veal and tuna might seem an odd combination, but it is actually a wonderful pairing.  If you enjoy canned tuna, in a mild form, and mayonnaise, you will like veal tonnato.  Served chilled or almost room temperature, it works well during summertime.

With the often very warm weather throughout much of the year, veal tonnato would be a welcome sight nearly year round at many Italian restaurants in Houston, but it is rarely found.  There isn’t much veal on Houston Italian restaurant menus, for one.  And, veal in tuna sauce might seem a little obscure to many.  Not only here; veal tonnato has not really found too often on Italian menus around the country.  Looking at around 650 Italian restaurant menus over the years, veal tonnato showed up on just 4% of them.  The dish is a specialty of eastern Piedmont and that’s also found in the adjacent region south of Milan.  The cuisine of that area, lauded in Italy, hasn’t been found at too many restaurants here.  It’s shame that it’s tough to find when heading out.  You might need to make it yourself:
 
Veal:
 
Veal round or shoulder – 1 ¾ pound
Carrot
Onion
Celery stalk
White wine vinegar – 1 tablespoon
Olive Oil – 1 tablespoon
Salt – 1 teaspoon
 
Sauce:
 
Canned tuna, drained – 7 ounces
Anchovy filets, drained – 3
Capers, drained and rinsed – 2 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon for garnishing
Egg yolks, hard-boiled – 2
Olive oil – 3 tablespoons
Lemon – 1
 
Cook the veal:

1. Tie the veal with string.  
2. Add the veal, carrot, onion, celery stalk, vinegar and olive oil to the pan.
3. Add enough water to a deep pan to cover the veal, add the salt and bring to a boil.
4. Cover the pan and simmer over a low heat until the veal is tender, about two hours.
5. Turn off the heat and allow the veal to cool in the stock.

 
Make the sauce:

1. Put the tuna, anchovy, capers and hard-boiled egg yolks into a food processer and process for about 30 seconds.
2. Add in the olive oil, the juice of the lemon and about 3 tablespoons of the stock from cooking the veal and then turn on the food processors for about 15 seconds more.  The sauce should have the consistency of freshly made mayonnaise.
3. Untie the veal and slice fairly thinly.  Spoon the sauce over the veal.  Garnish with the remaining capers.  Refrigerate for at least a few hours before serving.

 
Adapted from The Silver Spoon cookbook.
 

A more artistic version of veal tonnato at a restaurant at the Enoclub restaurant in Alba, Piedmont a couple of years ago. Maybe a little bit blurry because of all the wine.

​I was on a webinar the other day about how restaurateurs are rethinking the fine dining model during the disruption caused by the pandemic.  One of the panelists was the owner of the Il Gattopardo Group of Neapolitan-rooted restaurants in New York and the chairman of the Gruppo Italiano, which promotes authentic Italian food products and dining, Gianfranco Sorrentino.  He made an assertion that struck a chord: “Nothing can replace the experience of dining at a busy Italian restaurant.”  Something that is not currently available in New York, or here.
 
Though I have greatly enjoyed busy, quality restaurants of all stripes over the years, maybe there is something special about busy Italian – and also Italian-American  – ​restaurants at dinnertime: the oft-gracious and gregarious owners and staff, that there is wine at every table, the greater volubility, and the seeming pleasure of the patrons, maybe more so than at other types of restaurants.
 
The comment made me think of some of the more memorable or enjoyable times at a “busy Italian restaurant” over the years.  Grotto in Houston, during its glory days in its original location in the early 1990s when it garnered some national attention, was a go-to first date place for me for years with its usually excellent, vibrant Americanized Italian fare that drew on owner Tony Vallone’s familial ties to the Naples area in always bustling, festive setting aided by slightly bawdy murals and in an atmosphere that I found eminently comfortable. It also drew plentiful numbers of patrons with a lot more money and taste than I had at the time, leading me to believe I knew more than I did about dining Italian-style.
 
Without the same type of style, though as busy, or busier, was Cunetto House of Pasta in St. Louis where I traveled for work later that decade.  It was packed each of the few times I went, usually having to wait with an appropriately stiff drink or two in the homey, somewhat tacky (or just Midwestern) bar area before proceeding to the dining room that was invariably filled with pasty and plus-sized St. Louisans to fill up on wonderfully over-sauced and tasty plates of Italian-American pastas or tender, succulent pieces of veal along with the din of diners doing the same, happily. 
 
Il Latini in Florence was recommended by the owners of the pensione where I stayed along with a couple friends and it initially seemed that it might have been a tourist trap as we waited in with other visitors in a queue for a table, but the food and experience were terrific – excellent versions of the robust Tuscan classics including an entire roasted rabbit on a spit that evening and well-made, too-easy-to-drink vino rosso della casa served in fun 1 ½-liter fiaschi – and all for a comparative song.  There is a reason why it has long been a Bib Gourmand selection in the Michelin guide, and a wise detour for a couple of hours of gastronomic fun while in Florence.
 
Maybe a year or two after that initial visit to Il Latini, my brother and I were in New Orleans for a pre-wedding celebration for our other brother.  That first evening we ended up at the very popular Eleven 79, a Creole-accented Italian-American that shuttered a few years ago.  The visit to a prime table in the middle of a very crowded, boisterous dining room, courtesy of a connected local, was prefaced by an arguably obscene number of drinks, in typical New Orleans tourist fashion, and possibly helped in the enjoyment of the crawfish bisque and tender, excellent veal scallops cooked with spinach.
 
On a first night in another city some years later, Sorrento, La Basilica was the busy Italian restaurant that my family and I visited to great luck.  Sitting in one of the numerous tables in a small piazza adjacent to the restaurant, both the Neapolitan classics, especially the pastas and preparations with local shellfish, and the atmosphere, were excellent.  The wine, beginning with a top-notch Prosecco from the Cartizze region and then a fair amount of local Fiano and Greco white wines, aided it all.
 
The most recent of the most enjoyable visits to a busy Italian restaurant was to the least Italian of these.  It was a couple of summers ago, again with my family, to Franceschetta 58 in Modena, the sibling to the high-flying Osteria Francescana, which had just been named the best restaurant in the world for a second time.  Its cuisine, somewhat reflective of its staff, was wide-ranging and not necessarily all Italian.  No matter, it was in Italy and a lot fun.  And, I had a really tasty pasta dish – Abruzzese-style chitarra spaghetti with bread crumbs and an anchovy sauce – in any case.  The visit was particularly memorable, in large part, because we nearly didn’t eat there at all, arriving late in the lunch hour without a reservation and with ten people.  Initially turned away, the very accommodating front of the house folks, eventually found room for us, scattered in several tables in the small dining room.  The closeness of tables and the conviviality of the guests from around much of the globe and the waitstaff made for a memorable visit complemented by interesting, mostly all delicious fare.
 
These are first of the visits that come to mind.  Yes, there does seem to be something about “a busy Italian restaurant.”

Paccheri with local seafood at La Basilica in Sorrento

​This past summer, Marco Wiles, the owner of Dolce Vita put its property on lower Westheimer up for sale, which would have meant that Houston’s best pizzeria – easily its best pizzeria since its inception in early 2006 in my mind – would be shuttering.  I wasn’t even sure that it was still open until a co-worker alerted to the fact that it was.  I had to visit at least one more time.
 
It was as tasty as always last night, with the Neapolitan-inspired pizzas featuring a flavorful and thin crust somewhat charred on the bottom and topped with a judicious and thoughtful, often vibrant, mix of very good ingredients.  Both the Taleggio that’s topped with plentiful arugula, thinly sliced pears, along with the noticeable aroma truffle oil, and the Calabrese, a slightly artisanal take on the pepperoni pizza, were more than satiating.  Paired with a very reasonably price rosé from the Veneto, and a lively setting, it was quite an enjoyable dinner.
 
We had to ask the waiter when the restaurant was closing, hoping for some more time for at least another visit.  Surprisingly, he replied that it’s not.  Seemingly, Wiles could not get the price he wanted and decided to keep Dolce Vita going.  This is great news.  In what turned out to be very dispiriting research into the city’s margherita pizzas, Dolce Vita was the best I had, which further confirmed its primacy among the local pizza joints.  With an engaging wine list, cocktails, and very well-done dishes beyond pizzas, it’s really much more than a pizza joint.  But, I’ll continue to go there for the pizzas.
 
Dolce Vita
500 Westheimer (between Taft and Montrose), 77006, (713) 520-8222
dolcevitahouston.com

On a recent tour of the Italian city of Pavia and its environs, a tour mostly meant to publicize its charms for tourists, I was surprised that the restaurant chosen after our visit to the area’s tourist highlight, the impressive Certosa di Pavia, was not the long-standing Michelin-starred one just a mile away.  Instead, it was one called Cascina Vittoria.  After the meal, it was clear that it was a more appropriate choice, and was likely at least as good. The meal was excellent and was the best meal of my weeklong stay in Italy, a week of dining fairly grandly.
 
Whereas the acclaimed Locanda Vecchia Pavia ‘Al Mulino’ was described as “Cucina Creativa” (creative cooking) in a recent Michelin guide and reinforced in the less reliable Fodor’s, Cascina Vittorria proudly offers more locally rooted cuisine, if done in a sensible contemporary fashion at times.  And done terrifically.  The lunch we had there was like a meal I had at Brennan’s in Houston in 2015 when Danny Trace was heading the kitchen.  I had three different items or preparations that were the best of each type that I had ever had.  At Brennan’s it was strawberries – sourced from a small farm in Louisiana during the height of the season – soft shell crabs, and Lemon Meringue Pie.
 
The delicious surprises at Cascina Vittoria began at the start of the meal, with the bread service, with plump, moist-looking squares of focaccia.  I thought that this was a bit odd. Focaccia is something that I hadn’t associated with the region of Lombardy where we were.  But Pavia is just an hour-and-a-half by train to Genoa, the capital of coastal Liguria, and the land of focaccia as much as it is that of pesto. Expectedly soft, a touch oily from the fragrant, light olive oil, the bread was very fresh and absolutely delicious with a long, very pleasant taste.  I had to force myself to eat three (or four or five) pieces before the first real course of the meal.  I do like focaccia, quite a lot, in fact.  I ate it daily, more than daily, during the near-week I spent on the Ligurian coast some years ago, including buying about half a pan of it studded with a few sprigs of rosemary for a light lunch during a few-hour drive.  It made for a memorable, savory crutch before dinner.
 
That had been my focaccia of memory. The version we had at Cascina Vittoria was better, and better than all of the excellent focaccias I had in Liguria, and elsewhere. The chef, Giovanni Ricciardella, came out to explain the focaccia, for which he was very proud.  The flour for it is milled on the property, which is more than a restaurant, and is 100% whole grain.  Spurred on by a starter with more than a few years to it, the bread is baked in a wood-fueled oven.  No herbs are used in the bread, just some salt and olive oil.  That’s certainly all that was needed.
 
Then came the antipasto course, Millefoglie di melanzane e le tre consistenze del parmigiano: cald-freddo-croccante.  This is essentially an eggplant flan, an involved flan with the delectable Parmigiano served in three states: crispy, as a sauce, and ice cream, and so three different temperatures and textures.  Complemented with excellent tomatoes and mozzarella and other complementary ingredients, this imaginative and quite involved culinary exercise succeeded grandly.  It was absolutely delicious and quite interesting when more than one of textures and textures was combined in a bite.  This was certainly the most intricate eggplant dish I’ve ever had, and it was also the best.  Probably not surprisingly, the menu showed that it was the Piatto firma dello Chef, the chef’s signature dish. 
 
After the secondo, the main protein-centered course, the chef returned to describe what we would be having for dessert.  It was to be something that’s never really served at restaurants, but made sense as Christmas was not too distant and we were just south of its home, Milan, panettone. It was especially appropriate because the restaurant and chef had won acclaim for it earlier the year as one of the best versions in Italy from the leading Italian paper, the Milan-based Corriere della Sera, and also because they were selling the panettone.  At least a couple of my travel-mates bought one.  If I had room to spare in my suitcase, I would have, myself, even at €35, more than three times what I typically dole out for one, as I did yesterday.  As wonderful as their panettone was – simply much more vibrant, fresh-tasting, with noticeably better and more compelling ingredients than usual – it was probably worth more than what they were charging.
 
It was an excellent meal, through and through, highlighted by the very best versions of focaccia, an eggplant dish, and panettone that I’ve ever had.  Cascina Vittoria is worth a detour if you are in the Milan area with a car, and the chef told me that about 70% of their patrons come from the big city.  Smart folks, or least ones with fine palates and a few euros to spend.
 
Cascina Vittoria
via Roma, 26, 27010 - Rognano (Pavia)
+390382923772
cascinavittoria.it 

The Millefoglie di melanzane ​at Cascina Vittoria

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.