Latest news with #Parmigiano-Reggiano
Time Out
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Sydney has scored a golden-hued Italian restaurant with a former Clam Bar chef
Martin Place keeps getting better and better with the arrival of Rovollo, a new family-run Italian go-to by the team behind Mille Vini and Rosie Campbell's, now open on the ground floor of Harry Seidler's skyscraper. The 75-seat restaurant and wine bar, which offers indoor and alfresco seating, brings old-school hospitality, a standout, golden-hued dining room and the warmth of Italy's lively eateries to the drinking and dining hub, joining nearby heavy-hitters Aalia, The International and Cabana Bar. Expect fresh, handmade pastas – like the signature pici carbonara served tableside from a gigantic Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese wheel, then topped with crisp nuggets of guanciale, a canary-yellow yolk and pecorino snow. Plus, a 250+-strong wine list – including 25 by-the-glass options – and a standout dining room featuring a hand-painted ceiling mural swirling with terracotta, honey and amber tones that looks like a flowing sarong worn in the European sun. Andrew Wallace, Esper Group director, says: 'We want the care and love we're pouring into the venue to be felt by our guests, so that when they're here, they're doing more than just consuming a meal. 'We want to take them on a journey where they feel welcome, know they will receive elevated yet personal service, and create memories each time they visit,' he adds. Rovollo's kitchen team is also impressive, with executive chef Cami Feliciano (ex- Seta) and head chef Zane Buchanan (ex- Clam Bar, Fish Butchery) creating a menu of Italian classics, beautifully done. Think housemade focaccia, golden arancini and a must-order yellowfin tuna crudo amped up with pickled tomatoes. Other highlights include vongole spaghetti with chilli butter and zest, an 800g steak of the day served with your choice of sauce, and a 24-layer dark chocolate cake with a warm rosemary-infused berry compote. Cocktails are no afterthought. Try the bright and citrusy Amalfi, made with grappa and finished with a salted limoncello blue foam. Or The Napoli: a freezer gin- or vodka-based Martini with charred focaccia vermouth, burrata whey, basil and tomato oil. Rovollo's $115 per person set menu includes four antipasti dishes, a pasta or protein, sides and Rovollo's tiramisu spoon. Go for that, I reckon. These are the best Italian restaurants in Sydney. Looking for something to wash it all down with? These are our favourite bars in Sydney right now.
Vancouver Sun
09-07-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
This is the must-try dish at Vancouver's new Italian restaurant, Folietta
Where: 1480 Nanaimo Street, Vancouver When: Dinner, daily; brunch on weekends Info: 604-253-4021 | You should try the focaccia with fresh ricotta and black truffles, the server suggested. That really should have been a command. The plump individual focaccia, topped with bright, fresh ricotta, a showering of black truffle bits, and drizzles of olive oil is that kind of wonderful. This was at Folietta, a newly opened Italian restaurant on Nanaimo Street. I've watched it take shape from across the street at To Live for Bakery and Cafe, where I break for a coffee and pastry when I'm in the area. The chef overseeing Folietta is Bobby Milheron, the uber chef for the Wentworth Hospitality Group's expanding restaurant assets — Tableau Bar Bistro, Homer St. Cafe and Bar, Maxine's Cafe and Bar, and now Folietta. Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. In this role, Milheron has stepped back from cooking but misses it. 'I purposely dress a little better so it forces me to stay away from cooking,' he says. 'I love being there but to be effective, I have to have eyes on everything.' Milheron began developing the Folietta menu a couple of years ago when work started on The Grant condo building by Amacon, a development company operated by the same family that runs Wentworth. Folietta, on the ground floor, therefore, is modern with a spiffier-than-usual look for East Van thanks to the serial restaurant design team at Ste. Marie Studio. The space stretches from counter seating with a view into the kitchen, to the dining room and finally to a step-up level bar and lounge. The place was abuzz, mid-week. A semi-enclosed patio will open imminently. The menu offers salads, antipasti, primi (pastas), secondis (mains) and contornis (side dishes). Focaccia has won a category of its own with different toppings. The one my server had recommended was tasting the soul of Italy. Next visit, I will drool over the focaccia with a mini-tasting menu of fresh mozzarella — buffalo mozzarella, burrata and crescenza. 'Folietta is all about sharing, just like in Italy,' says chef de cuisine Imtiaaz Patel. 'We've drawn from regional traditions but added a Vancouver lens through local ingredients and seasonal creativity.' He learned a thing or two about pasta at Autostrada and Livia and has also worked at A-lister Boulevard. Pastas are house made with a fresh nutty flavour to which sauces love to cling, just so. Lamb neck trottole con agnello (a spinning top pasta shape from Campania) was lightly sauced with the braising liquid, white wine and saffron. Tender pulled lamb and fresh peas tumbled from the curls and tunnels of the pasta and Parmigiano-Reggiano added salty umami. Bucatini al cacio e pepe pasta, had something extra going on. It was whey from the kitchen's house-made ricotta, incorporated into a sauce with some pasta water, Parmigiano-Reggiano and peppercorn. My favourite pasta was a seasonal spot prawn ravioli, beautifully crafted with a foamy prawn-forward sauce, made with prawn head flavour, celery, mushrooms, shallots, tomatoes, deglazed with vermouth and cooked down with cream. The fleeting prawn season done, the ravioli has switched to a doubleheader (doppio ravioli) with morel mushrooms in one half and stinging nettle filling in the other. For quality control and a quest to improve, the kitchen keeps a daily record of the amount of water used, drying time, humidity, and cook times for the pasta dishes. Milheron's choice to go the extra step of making ricotta in house goes back to his wedding in Italy two years ago. A nonna at the villa where he and his wife stayed showed him how to make her spinach gnudi. 'After our honeymoon, I tried making it and it turned out funny,' he says. The problem, he found, was the ricotta. 'To get that texture we had to make our own. Sheep's milk ricotta has a short shelf life and is difficult to manage, importing it,' he explains. 'We end up with a beautiful whey byproduct and the lactic acid adds another dimension to the pasta sauces. It adds more layers.' That gnudi is served with brown butter, hazelnuts and sage. Share plates included deep-fried squash blossoms filled with scallop mousse — a pivot from the oft-used ricotta filling. A nice pivot at that. While asparagus is still in season, they offer a three-way dish — raw, grilled and breaded, and deep-fried and, very nonna, served over a bed of that fresh ricotta with prosciutto cotto for a hit of salty umami, and a soft-boiled egg. It's a lovely party in the mouth with just the sort of flavours I like to hang with. If your table wishes to do a full Italian, then say yes to the ragu alla Napoletana — a platter loaded with pork shank braised in sugo, a traditional tomato sauce, meatballs, sausages, the bitter Italian leafy green friarieli, and rigatoni, enough to feed four. 'It's a showstopper,' says Milheron. There's also the sumptuous bistecca Fiorentina, a 32-ounce dry-aged porterhouse with roasted garlic and salmoriglio, a close cousin to chimichurri. It also should feed four although single diners have made mincemeat of it. Olive oil cake is my kind of ending — light, simple, and tasty. Poached rhubarb and whipped mascarpone, and a drizzle of Salt Spring Island olive oil infused with Sicilian orange completed it. The wine program, developed by GM and sommelier Miguel Arrais, ranges the length and breadth of the Italian boot, with a smattering of BC selections to round out the list. A fun choice is a Chianti — branded with the Folietta name — that comes in the traditional one-litre 'fiasco' bottle in a retro straw basket ($87). Beverage director J-S Dupuis provides an extensive selection of Italian spirits like amari, vermouths and liqueurs as well as grappa and vino dolce. And of course, a variety of negronis, including negronis on tap ($15). The cocktail program can't be missed either. While the main spirits range the globe — gin, mescal, pisco, rum — there's always an Italian ingredient in the mix to bring it back home. The team behind Suna tea products had a brilliant idea. They sell green and black powdered teas with a boost of marine collagen (good for skin, nails, joints) and whey protein, ready to shake into a cold or hot latte. The flavours are ceremonial matcha, Earl Grey, Hojicha and 'Royal Milk' with Assam black tea. I just wonder why it's taken so long to make black tea powder, like matcha? The nutritional value is much better than infused black tea. Holts Cafe at Vancouver's Holt Renfrew has partnered with Suna to offer some desserts incorporating the tea powders. For more about Suna, check them out at . miastainsby@
Vancouver Sun
01-07-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
Hintonburg pasta shop makes an unusual Ottawa poutine — and it's a hit
1314 Wellington St. West, Hours: Monday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, closed (Store); Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (X-Press Counter) Accessibility: Wheelchair-accessible entrance Before it became a customer favourite, the gnocchi poutine at Parma Ravioli began as a roadside memory between father and daughter. Carlo Zucconi, co-owner of Parma Ravioli, knew the gnocchi at his pasta shop in Hintonburg was good — so good that many local Italian restaurants bought it wholesale. But the idea to load it with cheese and gravy came from thinking back to summer visits at the family cottage. Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 'My daughter Elisa always loved poutine,' he said. 'When she was younger, we'd get fries from a pataterie in Masham . One day I said, 'You know what, why don't we do a version?'' The result was a pan-fried potato dumpling, golden on the outside and light in the middle, topped with curds, mozzarella and gravy. 'We had an overwhelming response. Everybody who tried it loved it,' Zucconi of the best-selling comfort food . Inside the Wellington West store, the dish has become a Canadian-Italian fusion that respects certain rules. 'You can't call it poutine unless there's gravy,' Zucconi said. 'Otherwise, call it something else.' Even his brother Giuliano — a traditionalist and the shop's lead chef — came around after tasting it, he said. The family comes from Parma, a gastronomic region in Italy known for prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano. 'If you don't know how to cook up there, they probably ship you out,' laughed Zucconi. Carlo was born in Canada, his brother in Italy, keeping their shop true to technique, but unafraid to improvise at times. The poutine isn't the only deviation from Italian canon. Parma Ravioli also sells chilled pasta dishes and pizza variations that might receive side-eye from some nonnas. 'In Italy, pasta salads are kind of a no-no,' Zucconi said. 'Same with pesto on pizza. But people love them here.' Still, the shop's reputation rests on foundational dishes like meat lasagna and fresh pasta made without filler. Zucconi estimates their gnocchi is 80 to 90 per cent Yukon Gold potato, mixed by hand in a process he compares to 'how moms make it.' Large-scale commercial producers, he said, rely on machinery and potato flakes, which yield a denser result. 'You're going to get that harder, almost bullet-texture type gnocchi,' he said. The shop sells about 200 kilograms of gnocchi a week, even in summer. At one point, when their machine broke down and they briefly supplied gnocchi made in Montreal to fill the gap in production, a regular customer noticed the difference immediately. 'It was the first time anybody came back and said, 'what did you do to your gnocchi?'' Zucconi recalled. The frozen gnocchi has a following, too. At checkout, one longtime customer was restocking her freezer with bags of gnocchi and cannelloni. She has been buying Parma's gnocchi for more than 20 years — long before it was available frozen — and makes the trek from downtown when her supply runs low. 'It's velvety,' she said. 'I don't know if they roast their potatoes, but it holds the sauce better.' She used to make ricotta gnocchi from scratch. These days, she doesn't bother. The potato version from Parma Ravioli is her go-to, especially when guests are coming over. Everything at Parma is made with a strict four- to five-day rotation window for retail items. The staff includes up to 25 people during peak seasons, supplying three business streams under one roof: retail, wholesale and a hot Express Counter. Their lasagna, cannelloni, sauces and even salad ingredients are all made in-house. The eggplant parmesan is gluten-free, the pasta fillings use minimal breadcrumbs and the meat is prepared the same day it's delivered. People like that we're here, that it's consistent, that it's good. The business was founded in 1984, and Carlo and his brother bought it a decade later. He was in construction at the time, and Giuliano had just closed his restaurant. 'I was finding it physically hard,' Zucconi said. 'Your body takes a hit (in that business). This was a chance to build something together.' They supplied Farm Boy during its early days, expanding slowly but deliberately over the years, and resisting pressure to scale up or franchise. 'We didn't grow too fast. There's more of our love going into it (today) because we didn't get swallowed up,' he said. The gnocchi poutine has been on the menu for almost a year, and word of mouth keeps bringing in new customers. 'I think people like that we're here, that it's consistent, that it's good,' said Zucconi. He recommends newcomers take a full lap of the store. 'It's not big, but walk the U,' he said. 'Don't just go straight to the lasagna. There's stuff you'll miss. Maybe it's the fresh sauces or the frozen fig ravioli. Maybe it's the gnocchi.' Odds are, it's the gnocchi, perhaps with a ladle of gravy on top. smisenheimer@ For more smart picks and offbeat stories from around the city, subscribe to Out of Office , our weekly newsletter on local arts, food and things to do.
West Australian
28-06-2025
- General
- West Australian
The New York Times recipe: Chilli crisp fettuccine Alfredo with spinach
It was already past seven one night this autumn when my high schooler and I finally turned away from our screens to figure out dinner. Slumped on the kitchen stools, we were too physically tired to sit up and too mentally exhausted to imagine eating anything other than fettuccine Alfredo. 'It's a meal where I don't have to think,' they said. 'It's just easy and creamy.' As I swiped open a delivery app, I convinced myself that we should have a weeknight treat. Then I saw how much the price had jumped. Raised in a home where we could buy name-brand cereal only if it was on sale (ideally buy one, get one free), I couldn't bring myself to tap 'checkout'. I had the ingredients and calculated that it would be less than $10 to make two servings, a small fraction of what delivery would have cost. Also, fettuccine Alfredo doesn't travel well; it would have congealed into a pasta brick by the time it arrived. So I made dinner — not for the love of cooking or with a spark of mindful motivation, but because it would be cheaper and taste better. In 20 minutes — most of that time is waiting for water to boil — tender noodles can end up coated with Alfredo sauce. Eaten hot off the stove, the creamy pasta is all comfort yet feels light, less fleece robe and more silk pyjamas. (The longer it sits off the heat, the heavier it gets.) Sometimes that easy cheesiness is all you crave. The one-note flavour is the reason Alfredo is so soothing, but some days, you want a full chord. It doesn't take any more time to swirl crispy chilli oil and wilt spinach into the sauce, but they add heat and freshness that play well together. The greens break up the monotony of noodles and make fettuccine Alfredo feel more like a complete one-dish dinner. In this recipe, crispy chilli oil, a spicy, oniony Chinese condiment that you can buy or make, intensifies when sizzled in butter before cream tempers its heat. Tossing in Parmesan heightens its savoury umami, and swirling it all with al dente pasta ties together the seemingly disparate flavours into an immensely satisfying, meatless meal. Yes, those additions are far from the original, which you can still try at Il Vero Alfredo in Rome. In the restaurant's offering — Le Vere 'Maestosissime' Fettuccine all'Alfredo on the menu — freshly made noodles are tossed with local butter and aged Parmigiano-Reggiano. But the terms 'Alfredo' and 'Alfredo sauce' have come to apply to countless forms of creamy, cheesy white sauce. That can be interpreted as the demise of the dish or its rise to the culinary canon (or as an exemplar of organic branding). It is what it is. Alfredo works great with a range of additions, and it turned out to be the ideal pasta canvas for the firecracker crunch of crispy chilli oil. This astoundingly simple meal — it doesn't even require any chopping — tastes as complex as anything you'd order from a restaurant. And it proves that you don't necessarily need a jolt of inspiration to make something that tastes inspired. You just have to cook. Swirling crispy chilli oil, a popular Chinese condiment, and spinach into fettuccine Alfredo gives you an immensely satisfying, meatless one-dish dinner. The firecracker crunch of the chilli oil intensifies when sizzled in butter before cream tempers its heat. Parmesan heightens the sauce's savoury umami, and pre-grated cheese works just fine here. This astoundingly simple meal — it doesn't even require any chopping — comes together in under 30 minutes but tastes as complex as anything you'd get at a restaurant. Recipe: Genevieve Ko Ingredients: Salt 4 tbsp butter 1 to 2 tbsp crispy chilli oil, plus more to taste (see Tip) 1 cup heavy cream 450g dried fettuccine 1 150g package baby spinach ¾ cup finely grated Parmesan, plus more for serving Preparation: Step 1 Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Step 2 While the water heats, melt the butter with the crispy chilli oil in a very large skillet or Dutch oven over low heat. Whisk in the cream and keep warm over low. (It should steam, not bubble.) Step 3 Cook the fettuccine until al dente according to the package directions. Use tongs to transfer the noodles to the cream mixture, reserving the pasta water. Add the spinach and turn with tongs until the noodles are well coated. Step 4 Add the Parmesan and toss, still over low heat, until the noodles are slicked with a creamy sauce, adding a spoonful or two of pasta water if needed to loosen the sauce. Divide among serving dishes and top with Parmesan and more crispy chilli oil, if you'd like. Serve immediately. Serves 6 Total time: 25 minutes Tip: You can make crispy chilli oil easily at home or buy it in supermarkets or online. It varies in spiciness, so adjust the amount to your taste. For this dish, try to add more of the solids than the oil to the sauce for the most flavourful dish. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2022 The New York Times Company
Los Angeles Times
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Alba's Spaghetti al Limone
Print Recipe Print Recipe June 4, 2025 This spaghetti al limone is for lovers. Start the sauce by browning butter with crushed garlic — just until it smells like sweet hazelnuts — then add lots of lemon juice and zest and a showering of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Adam Leonti, the chef of Alba in Hollywood, calls this dish made for two 'date-night spaghetti.' Video: Watch Adam Leonti make his lemony spaghetti 1 Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. 2 In a large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat with the crushed garlic and gently brown the butter until it smells sweet like hazelnuts, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and moving quickly add the lemon juice, zest, parsley, black pepper and espelette to the butter. The lemon juice will stop the butter from continuing to brown. Set the pan aside. 3 Cook the spaghetti: Bring the pot back to full boil. Cook the pasta until al dente, approximately 9 minutes (read instructions on box for individual pasta makers' times). When the pasta has been cooked, remove from the water with tongs, reserving the cooking water, and place the spaghetti in the reserved limone-butter pan, with the addition of a 1/2 cup of pasta water. 4 Return the sauté pan with the sauce, pasta and addition of pasta water to medium heat. Reduce the sauce with the spaghetti in the pan. When the spaghetti and sauce begin to look thick and creamy, about 5 minutes, add the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Turn off the heat and season with salt to taste. Serve immediately.
