The Italian Revolution

While nobody was looking, culinary America was invaded and completely occupied by a foreign cuisine. I’m not talking about the silent migration from the South, which produced that hybrid style known as Southwestern cooking. Nor am I referring to the much-heralded invasion of raw fish and lemon grass from across Western oceans that has produced the Pacific Rim phenomenon. Both these assaults on American sensibilities have been well documented. No, the real interloper in Dallas restaurant kitchens, as in all America, has an Italian accent.

I’m not just talking pizzas, though every new hamburger den offers them. Health food restaurants, Lebanese restaurants, even Mexican restaurants, all feel the need to serve a pizza surrogate. (At ZuZu, the tony Mexican fast-food chain, they call theirs a mollete, but a pizza by any other name. ..)

Even more insidious is the encroachment of pasta onto all our menus. Pasta salads- which the great Italian cookbook writer Marcella Hazan shamefacedly admits were probably her unwitting invention-have now replaced quiche as the ubiquitous luncheon food no real man will eat. Even such ail-American spots as Souper Salads offer three or four of them daily. As for hot noodle dishes, there can hardly be a restaurant in Dallas that doesn’t offer at least one daily pasta special.

And I’ll bet you thought the proliferation of grilled things that has overtaken our tables was related to that fine old Texas tradition of barbecue. Wrong. Real Texas barbecue is slow-smoked, not grilled. And did any real Texan ever try to barbecue a fish?

No, I’ll tell you where this mania to subject the denizens of the deep to the rigors of hot charcoal or mesquite came from. That’s right… Italy. I recall being puzzled at the specialties of a little trattoria I was taken tc in Rome way back in the 1960s: grilled scampi, grilled fish, grilled anything that came from the sea. Little did I know how characteristic-and prophetic-this meal was to be. Whereas the French prefer to saute or rapidly boil most foodstuffs, the Italians have been known to grill just about everything-not just seafood, but what little beefsteak they eat, vegetables of every description, fruit, you name it.

If this sounds all too familiar, that is just a measure of how thoroughly Italian concepts and techniques have taken over the restaurant business. I don’t just mean the old-fashioned Italian-American red-checked-tablecloth, meatballs-and-spaghetti descendants of Italian cuisine, or even the vaguely Northern Italian sort of restaurant (specializing in fettuccine Alfredo and quickly cooked scallops of veal) that came to the fore in the late ’70s, although Lord knows that both those kinds of restaurant are still opening here at alarming rates.

No, the real story about the domination of Italian sensibilities in our restaurants is unfolding on two different fronts. One is the large number of new restaurants that call themselves New American but in fact serve mostly pizza, pasta and grilled things. What are they but Italian restaurants in disguise, seeking to redefine American food in foreign terms? Nor is the Italian influence confined to those items already mentioned. Who in Dallas had heard of polenta 10 years ago? Now polenta is a staple at New American restaurants. Squid, raw meat sliced thin as carpaccio, unsmoked pancetta instead of bacon and fruity ices are just a few of the Italian things being served up at so-called American establishments.

The other newsworthy development is the blossoming of so many places that make large claims of authentic regional Italian cooking. (Properly speaking, all real Italian cooking is regional, since the peninsula only became a single nation fewer than 150 years ago and each section of the country has retained its own culinary heritage.)

Each of these movements has an interesting history. I think we can date the Italianiza-tion of New American in Dallas to the opening of Gershwin’s in 1984-an event that hardly seemed epoch-making at the time. Dallas had seen new wave (sometimes called California-style) pizzas before, initially at Adriano’s (now relocated and redubbed Acapella). But Adriano’s was considered an Italian restaurant. Gershwin’s was the first place to build a menu around pizzas, pastas and grilled things (especially seafood) and call itself New American. In only eight years, such places have become legion.

Now it has become almost impossible to distinguish one of these grill-style, more-or-less informal New American restaurants from the Italian grills that keep popping up. Let’s do a little experiment with regard to the most upscale and successful of these nascent Italian chains, Sfuzzi. What difference would it have made to Sfuzzi’s menu and food if, instead of riding the cresting Italian wave openly, it had called itself a New American grill and named itself, say, Fuz-zy’s? For that matter, what-if anything- distinguishes Sfuzzi from the many similarly chichi New American grills, like Beau Nash, Buffalo Club and Quadrangle Grille?

The answer to both questions is, not much. All these restaurants serve pizza, pasta and grilled things-at first glance their menus are interchangeable. I’ve managed to come up with some rules to distinguish the two supposedly different genres, but the ones I have produced are awfully subtle and far from infallible. Here goes:

New wave Italian restaurants serve lit tle saucers of fruity virgin olive oil to dip bread in, while New American ones put but ter on the table. This rule works the most consistently of all I’ve come up with, but it’s not much more than decoration, is it?

New wave Italian restaurants grill all kinds of vegetables, including odd ones like beets and rutabagas; New American estab lishments tend to grill only members of the animal kingdom. I thought this was going to be another foolproof, if shallow, distinction until I noticed that the menu of the Quad rangle Grille includes a grilled vegetable plate. Oh, well.

Grills that call themselves New Amer ican tend to camouflage their Italian nature by adding other ethnic influences-usually Mexican (lots of quesadillas on the menu) or, in the more ambitious places, Asian (Thai and Indian being the most popular at the moment). But then there are places like Parigi that seem largely untouched by these other cuisines.

4) New wave Italian restaurants offer tiramisu (the puddinglike melange of cake, mascarpone cheese and coffee) for dessert. New American ones don’t, mostly opting for Dallas’ longtime favorite, crime brulée. This rule seemed to hold up until we got back to Sfuzzi and were reminded that its dessert tray holds both tiramisu and creme bruiée.



IT MUST BE CONCLUDED THAT THERE is no hard and fast rule that demarcates the New American grills from Italian restaurants. Therefore, let us do another experiment and review restaurants that are Italian in everything but the name, except for Parigi which does have an Italian name, but considers itself New American.

Gershwin’s. The granddaddy of the New American grill phenomenon in Dallas has a menu that includes all kinds of Italian dishes that don’t even come under our categories of pizza, pasta and grilled things: fried cal-amari, prosciutto with fruit, Caesar salad, shrimp scampi, veal marsala and so on. Despite a few outside touches like quesa-dillas, this really is an Italian restaurant. Pizza has been relegated to the lunch and bar menus, but can be ordered in the evening by special request. The best dishes we sampled were a reasonably accurate, if overly spicy, version of the classic barbecue shrimp recipe of the famous New Orleans Italian-Creole spot, Pascal’s Manale, and a mellow chocolate Concord cake. 8442 Walnut Hill at Greenville Ave. 373-7171.

Quadrangle Grille. Pizzas here can be disappointing because they are built on a foundation of precooked focaccia rather than made from fresh dough. An order of angel hair pasta had to be sent back to the kitchen because it lacked the crab meat it was supposed to have (though it did have bountiful amounts of shrimp and mussels); when returned to our table, there was a substantial amount of crab, but the dish was still unexciting. I really mink this place does best with its sandwiches, salads and desserts (like the bourbon crepes with caramel sauce). The Italian items on the menu seem to be there only because that’s what identifies a restaurant as an American grill these days. Go figure. 2800 Routh St., Suite 180, in the Quadrangle. 999-9022.

Parigi. If you are judging just by the pizzas and pasta (Parigi can be a tricky call- there’s still the name to deal with), this can be one of Dallas’ great Italian restaurants. Pizza crusts are marvelously crunchy- is that cornmeal in the dough?-and the toppings offered for the build-your-own pies include such luscious things as a sweet-tasting onion confit and fresh mozzarella or goat cheese. The soul of Italy seemed to be captured in an order of linguini tossed with bits of Mediterranean olives, leeks, mushrooms, yellow cherry tomatoes and olive oil. Desserts are the only truly American thing about Parigi, with the best bets the splendid pies like lemon buttermilk and chocolate-coco-nut-macadamia. 3311 Oak Lawn. 521-0295.

Beau Nash. Since the Hotel Crescent Court’s dining room divided off its patio into the more exclusive and expensive Conservatory, the remaining sections of Beau Nash fit more comfortably into the New American grill category-and, like Parigi, it offers some of the best Italian food in town. The Beau Nash veal sausage pizza is available in the bar as well as the restaurant, and its braided crust and assertive flavor put it in the upper echelon of Italian pies. Angel hair pasta with crab meat-as you can see, this has become a ubiquitous concept-is sumptuous, with big hunks of Gulf lump crab, roasted tomatoes in the sauce and a drizzle of basil pesto around the sides for added complexity. Grilled halibut rounds out the trinity of Italian dishes masquerading as New American, perfectly done and sided with a salad of fresh herbs in a cucumber vinaigrette. 400 Crescent Court in the Hotel Crescent Court. 871-3200.

Buffalo Club. Though it offers all the Italian-inspired clichés we’ve been talking about, new chef Alan Rosenblatt’s food is the least Italian in taste. He’s really more into the Oriental influences that kitchen celebrities like Avner Samuels and Dean Fearing are exploring, producing such fabulous creations as stir-fried garlic lamb with fresh chilies and mint and very rare grilled tuna in a lobster curry sauce, Pizza and pasta dishes are wonderful-spicy shrimp pizza boasts Texas goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, and angel hair pasta, perfectly cooked, is anointed with cream and real prosciutto from Parma and surrounded by succulent medallions of thinly sliced, seared scallops. I fear the hipness and the noisy crowds at Buffalo Club have blinded us all to the fact that its cooking has ascended into the stratosphere of Dallas restaurants. 2800 Routh St., Suite 125, in the Quadrangle. 220-2465.



ALL THESE GRILLS PROVE HOW deeply the influence of Italian ingredients and techniques have permeated the style that has come to be called, for whatever reason, New American. But most of them still don’t have much to do with authentic Italian food. Only in the last few years has Dallas seen restaurants that try to capture the imaginative insouciance that marks real Italian cooking.

MoMo’s Italian Specialties and Massimo da Milano were perhaps the first Dallas establishments to try to teach us what Italian food is to the Italians. The menu at MoMo’s still reads like a textbook in its efforts to enlighten patrons as to the regional source and history of each dish. But execution doesn’t always match intentions, and some of MoMo’s food can be heavy. Those who know which dishes to order from MoMo’s menu can still experience wonderful meals. 9191 Forest Lane and other locations. 234-6800.

Massimo da Milano may be the most sophisticated and authentic Italian bakery anywhere outside the borders of the Italian republic itself. It produces fabulous breads and other baked goods. But Massimo’s attempts to expand to other locations and provide full-service Italian cooking have not been successes. 5519 W. Lovers Lane and other locations. 351-1426.

Three other newer restaurants have become the cutting edge of Dallas’ attempts to import genuine Italian sensibilities.

Pomodoro. The dishes here certainly sound authentic. But on a recent visit a squid risotto seemed nothing but boiled rice topped with squid and peas as an afterthought, and linguini verdi suffered from scrawny-looking, tinny-tasting shreds of crab meat, The pink-colored, tomato-and-cream sauce that coats so many of the pasta dishes, and topped even a dish of bay scallops baked in foil, doesn’t seem representative of the real Italian thing, either. Maybe the kitchen was undergoing an off period as it was gearing up to serve pizzas in its new subsidiary, Arcodoro. 2520 Cedar Springs. 871-1924.

Piccola Cucina. Dallas has had ambitious restaurants in all kinds of unlikely settings (gas stations, old folks1 homes, former undertakers’ parlors), so why not in an upscale clothing store at NorthPark mall? Piccola Cucina means “little kitchen,” and that’s the only trouble with the place. Although the man who designed the menu wrote a huge cookbook on the authentic food of Tuscany, about all the kitchen is really equipped for is salads and things grilled or baked in the oven. Most of the menu items offered as appetizers (mammoth salads of fresh fennel and arugula; a large assortment of grilled vegetables) are portions really too big for starters and are things that real Italians probably wouldn’t eat at the beginning of a meal, anyway. The pizzas are good, but there’s only a single pasta available at any one time-our sugo di vitello turned out to be a tomato sauce with big pieces of tender but stringy boiled veal, tasty but ultimately not very appetizing. The best things at Pic-cola Cucina are the desserts, including the inevitable tiramisu, a strawberry and chocolate tart and a more-Italian-than-it-sounds apple pie with raspberry puree. 1030 North-Park Center, Suite 330. 691-0488.

Mi Piaci. The most important evidence that Italian food now dominates Dallas dining the way Mexican and French did in tandem a decade or two ago is that we finally have an Italian restaurant-and what an authentic one!-that can stand with Routh Street Cafe, The Riviera and Actuelle at the summit of the city’s dining establishments. Mi Piaci costs somewhat less than its top-seeded peers but is at least as chic, in an offhand, casual way. Among its owners is a son of the previously mentioned Marcella Hazan, a guarantee of the purist and most authentic approach to reproducing a true Italian table. The Addison restaurant uses ingredients of the highest quality, from the most fragrant of olive oils and freshly shaved real parmigiano-reggiano cheese to sliced, raw artichoke hearts and hand-peeled roasted red peppers. The all-Italian wine list is an encyclopedic exploration of the vintages of the peninsula. Spectacularly imaginative and deftly executed pasta dishes will knock any eater’s socks off, and there are plenty of other genuine specialties-grilled and non-grilled-to explore. I’ve never, for instance, tasted another fish-and-shellfish stew as delicious as Mi Piaci’s winter offering of Brodetto di. Papi. Each element-lobster, jumbo shrimp, scallops, clams, mussels and fish-was cooked to a perfect texture, and the flavors melded exquisitely. My one doubt about the restaurant’s kitchen has been that its stewed dishes seemed slightly under-cooked. But the smothered lamb shank in white wine sauce has convinced me that the firm texture is a conscious choice, not a mistake; certainly the superbly garlicky beans served with the lamb are one of Dallas’ most delectable treats. Now that we have a truly great Italian restaurant in town there can be no doubt that Italian rules. 14854 Montfort. 934-8424.