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Feature Article
from the March/April issue, Pizza & Italian Cuisine
Secondi Piatti
Italian entrées good enough to push pastas out of the limelight
by Abbie Jarman
At an Italian restaurant in the United States, it’s hard for entrées to compete against the pasta contingent. Americans like their noodles, and rarely do diners here order both a pasta and an entrée, as they do in Italy. The concept of primi and secondi just doesn’t translate.
And anyway, a pasta dish is much more profitable than a center-of-plate cut of meat for an entrée, so as a restaurateur, you really can’t complain about schleping lots of pasta.
But the entrées are where chefs can really show off their skills. Many Americans are traveling more, and have experienced true Italian cuisine. They are ready to be intrigued and satiated by entrées beyond chicken Parmigiana.
Italian, as it should be
Dino Bugica was working at the Fairmont Kealani in Maui, Hawaii, when he visited Taverna Santi in Geyserville, Calif., while on vacation (www.tavernasanti.com). “I said, wow, they have all these neat things on their menu, just like in Italy. This is what I should be cooking.” In due time, Bugica, who previously spent seven years in kitchens, butcher shops and chocolatiers throughout Italy, found himself in the Taverna Santi kitchen as executive chef.
Taverna Santi evokes the feeling of a classic Italian tavern. Located in the California countryside, it attracts destination diners as well as locals from this winemaking region. The menus follow the seasons, focusing on hearty braised dishes from Northern Italy in the winter and lighter, grilled dishes from the South during the summer. Bugica sources much of his product from local producers as well as the restaurant’s own garden, and the staff makes pasta, Italian liqueurs, gelato and salumi in-house.
Taverna Santi is unapologetically Italian. “The two chefs before me were really true to themselves. I think they pushed it ... this is who we are, this is what we make. Love us or hate us. It’s the Italian way,” says Bugica.
The secondi piatti at Taverna Santi includes simple classics such as bistecca alla griglia: rib-eye steak with Gorgonzola and watercress salad and garlic rosemary fries; and galletto sotto mattone: chicken cooked under a brick with delicata squash, Brussels sprouts, pancetta and chickpeas.
But it’s the special events where Bugica is able to get really traditional. Every spring, Taverna Santi features a classic Roman braised baby lamb dish that regulars have come to anticipate like the change in weather. Bugica sources lambs that are about 3 to 4 months old from Cindy Callahan of Bellwether Farms in Valley Ford, Calif., who also supplies the restaurant with fresh cheeses and vegetables. Callahan herself delivers the lamb, and from there, Bugica chops them into sections, keeping the bones in. He seasons the pieces well and sears them in butter and extra virgin olive oil. He then sautés onions, adds white wine, garlic and sage, returns the lamb to the pan and then braises the meat until tender.
Bugica recommends cooking the hindquarters separate from the more tender pieces to ensure even cooking. Once done, he plates one chop, one piece of leg and a piece of shoulder per serving. Accompaniments vary, but some of his favorites include salsa verde, fava beans and baby artichokes (confit or sautéed), soft polenta from Anson Mills and gremolata.
Due to the age of the lamb, the meat is very sweet, with a slight gaminess and very little fat. Because it is so lean, Bugica recommends watching the cooking time and temperature closely.
When the lamb is on the menu, about one to two months each year, Bugica will sell 30 plates during the weekend and 30 during the week. “Everyone buys it because they think, ‘I better eat it now,’ because in one month, it’s gone. That’s all she wrote.”
Bugica also has fun with the restaurant’s Sunday Supper Club. For this monthly event, the kitchen crew chooses a specific region or food theme to build the menu around. The most recent menu highlighted the Umbria region with a head-to-tail pig menu. Bugica worked with free-range, acorn-fed pigs to create such dishes as potato and leek soup with braised pork belly and cracklings, rigatoni with pork ragù and Parmigiano, and roasted porchetta rubbed with herbs and spices and served over Umbrian lentils with greens and pancetta.
The dinner cost $45 per person, including wine pairings for each course, and 75 people attended. (They cap the Supper Club at 100 seats.) In order to keep walk-ins from going elsewhere, they also offer a bar menu for those who don’t want to partake in the Sunday Night Supper Club.
Bugica notes that about 75 percent of his diners order pasta on a typical, non-Supper Club night—as is the American way. But pasta has a much better food cost than a choice cut of meat; even meat sauces on pasta typically use lesser cuts or trim pieces. Despite the labor costs of making pasta in-house, it is still a profitable part of the menu for Bugica. But by keeping the portions small, diners are encouraged to order pasta and an entrée, such as in Italy.
“We tell our servers, if it’s a four-top, to split the ravioli,” says Bugica. “Do it as a middle course, and then go on to an entrée. Our menu is really set up like that, for our waiters and the customers to have that ability.”
Spiced up Italian
While Bugica sets Italian cooking back 75 years—as Taverna Santi’s motto states—chef Frank Triola lets the flavors of the region permeate his dishes at Azzarelli’s in Houston (www.azzarellis.com). “My menu is Italian-based, with a flair of New American and Southwestern,” he says. To Triola, the cuisines complement each other well, and while he does offer the classics like chicken Parmigiana, the rest of his secondi piatti are a surprising blend of Italian dishes with Southwest flavors.
One of Triola’s favorite food pairings is berries and chiles. The combination appears on a grilled rack of lamb with blueberry, jalapeño and mint reduction, and a wild boar chop with a raspberry-serrano sauce.
“I love berries, and I think they are a really neat way to make a sauce,” he says. “I like the sweet and the hot; they hit different parts of the palate.”
Triola explains that he uses a lot of trial and error when coming up with inventive sauces such as these—not only with the ingredients in the sauce itself, but also with what protein it is paired. “Some sauces you can cross, like Marsala: It’s good on chicken or beef—but put it on fish and it’s horrible.”
Other secondi piatti at Azzarelli’s include buffalo rib-eye with a trio of Marsala, Gorgonzola and wasabi sauces, grilled chicken breast covered with herbs, sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese topped with a balsamic vinaigrette, and Sicilian-style pork chops. Triola covers the chops with Italian breadcrumbs and douses them with a mixture of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper before baking.
Triola also practices the technique of stuffed chicken breast. For the chicken “Triola,” one of his most popular dishes, he sautés spinach and mixes it with Italian sausage and mozzarella. He then stuffs the mixture in chicken breasts and bakes them in the oven, finishing the dish with a Marsala cream sauce. Triola also makes a chicken dish stuffed with artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, mushroom and spinach, topped with a three-cheese sauce.
Diners at Azzarelli’s order a mix of classic pastas and inventive entrées. “I’ll have a couple come in, and the husband will order a buffalo rib-eye, and the wife will order the Camilla’s lasagna. Very rarely do I have people come in [and order] two lasagna dishes, or what not. It’s a mixture.”
Proper translation
It’s one thing to move to another country and cook the cuisine of that land. It’s something entirely different to move across the sea and continue to serve the food of your mother country. Alessandro Passante, general manager at Naima in New York City (www.naimanyc.com) was born and raised on the island of Capri, where he owned a restaurant before moving to New York in 1998. After a stint at a French restaurant, he came aboard at Naimi when the restaurant opened in 2005.
With the availability of products from all corners of the world, Passante has no problem keeping the menu at Naima authentic, but he did have to adjust to feeding Italian food to Americans. “You have to compromise a little, but not too much. Especially when you go with traditional things, because you want to give them a taste of the traditions of your country, town or island.”
Since moving to the United States, Passante has seen a change in how Americans order and eat Italian cuisine, especially as the number of Americans traveling to Italy increases. “I would say their requests for changing things on the menu is definitely less than it was before. From my perspective and experience.”
Passante notes that most diners order pasta as their main course over the secondi piatti—roughly 60 percent, he estimates.
“Obviously the check at the table will be 20, 30 dollars less, but the profit in the long run, it’s giving you more revenue,” says Passante. While food costs may be better, because of the high cost of center-of-plate meats and the fewer orders, you don’t want to have expensive cuts going bad in the walk-in. Order wisely to avoid product waste.
Naima’s secondi piatti are classic, unadulterated dishes, such as roasted chicken with potatoes and a mixed salad, grilled sausage with broccoli rabe and oven roasted potatoes, and osso buco with saffron risotto.
“We tried to have a little twist [on our entrées], but we went back to the roots and kept it traditional, which is what we like,” says Passante. One dish Passante wishes Americans would embrace more is rabbit—a staple in many parts of Italy. He serves it occasionally as a special, cooked with fresh herbs, white wine and mushrooms.
Like Taverna Santi, Naima’s menu changes seasonally, focusing on the regions of Italy that fit the current season. Passante and the kitchen team are about to change the menu to feature the cuisine of Campania, which includes Capri and Naples and is characterized by fish, pasta and fresh mozzarella.
Pastas may translate to more profit, but entrées define your restaurant and your chef. Show off your skills, and celebrate your favorite regions of Italy with unique entrées—be they classics undiscovered on this side of the Atlantic, or fun twists inspired by your own part of the country.
Photos, from top: Sicilian-style pork chops, covered with Italian breadcrumbs and Parmesan, from Azzarelli's, Houston; Herbed lamb loin with roasted tomatoes and eggplant, from the American Lamb Board.
