Looking at Italian restaurant menus across America today, the dish at number nineteen among the most popular is a raw one, beef carpaccio. After some renewed popularity, it is found in as many as a third of Italian restaurants, beef carpaccio features very thin slices of chilled raw meat of high quality – and free of unattractive connective tissue – that is lightly dressed in a mayonnaise-based sauce. Famously created at the famous Harry’s Bar in Venice by its owner Arrigo Cipriani in 1950 for a finicky regular aristocratic patron, the dish is named after the Venetian Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio whose work was being exhibited in the city at the time. The assertive color of the dish reminded Cipriani of the reds in Carpaccio’s canvases. Almost always served as an antipasto, a version of the original beef carpaccio is the one usually found at restaurants. But other meats, fish and shellfish, and even fruits and vegetables have also garnered the name.
Though beef carpaccio is just raw meat accompanied with a simple dressing that includes bottled Worcestershire sauce, it is regarded a chic dish. The thinness of it certainly helps. And greatly aiding its stylish, fashionable image was the opening in late 1985 in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel off Central Park of the Harry Cipriani restaurant. This was somewhat of a replica, menu included, of the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice. Encouraged and then staked by wealthy Lord Charles Forte – originally a poor boy from a small town southeast of Rome – Harry Cipriani in New York quickly became a trendy celebrity hangout. Splashy guests, big checks, struggles with co-owners, openings and closings, and indifferent reviews, ensued in the next twenty-plus years of the Cipriani clan operating in Manhattan, but the restaurant was another example that an upscale Italian can be as trendy, extravagant – not to mention snooty – as any French place.
Carpaccio in its original beef form began to appear on menus elsewhere in America in earnest in the 1980s following the publicity of the restaurant and its signature dish transplanted to the media capital of New York. Its continued popularity is also due to its lightness and relatively mild flavor. It works well to start a meal for most, satisfying without being filling. Plus, beef carpaccio is not very difficult at all to assemble and serve.
Beef carpaccio at one of the Cipriani restaurants
Though beef carpaccio is just raw meat accompanied with a simple dressing that includes bottled Worcestershire sauce, it is regarded a chic dish. The thinness of it certainly helps. And greatly aiding its stylish, fashionable image was the opening in late 1985 in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel off Central Park of the Harry Cipriani restaurant. This was somewhat of a replica, menu included, of the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice. Encouraged and then staked by wealthy Lord Charles Forte – originally a poor boy from a small town southeast of Rome – Harry Cipriani in New York quickly became a trendy celebrity hangout. Splashy guests, big checks, struggles with co-owners, openings and closings, and indifferent reviews, ensued in the next twenty-plus years of the Cipriani clan operating in Manhattan, but the restaurant was another example that an upscale Italian can be as trendy, extravagant – not to mention snooty – as any French place.
Carpaccio in its original beef form began to appear on menus elsewhere in America in earnest in the 1980s following the publicity of the restaurant and its signature dish transplanted to the media capital of New York. Its continued popularity is also due to its lightness and relatively mild flavor. It works well to start a meal for most, satisfying without being filling. Plus, beef carpaccio is not very difficult at all to assemble and serve.
Beef carpaccio at one of the Cipriani restaurants
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