Home Food & Wine The Hungry Palate Vivande serves up Southern Italian fare with heart and soul

Vivande serves up Southern Italian fare with heart and soul

Written by Susan Dyer Reynolds, Northside Editor

Friday, 30 September 2005

In coaching readers to cook “real Italian,” Middione, author of Food of Southern Italy and the host of Carlo Cooks Italian on the Learning Channel, offers recipes full of charm ... Middione’s concern for ingredients and techniques and his emphasis on “eating for the sheer joy of it” combine to create the sense of essential Italian food, la very cucina. —Publishers Weekly, in a 1996 review of Middione’s book, La Vera Cucina: Traditional Recipes from the Homes and Farms of Italy In last month’s first annual Best of Northside Food issue, I pronounced Vivande Porta Via chef/owner Carlo Middione “one of the Northside’s most underrated chefs” and it got me thinking that, as many times as I had eaten at his restaurant for sheer pleasure, I had never actually reviewed it. I grew up with a Sicilian grandfather who knew his way around a stove and a mother who inherited that trait (and passed on his recipes), so it takes a lot to impress me when it comes to southern Italian cuisine. Several years ago, I mentioned to a friend from Italy that I hadn’t found a restaurant in San Francisco that could live up to the rustic, home-cooked fare of my childhood, and she swore she had just the place – a hidden gem run by a renowned Sicilian chef. I hopped in the car expecting to end up at a hidden gem in North Beach but ended up at a hidden gem in Pacific Heights instead, where I experienced true southern Italian cooking that even my grandfather would have loved. Considering Middione’s talent, it’s surprising just how hidden a gem Vivande is. When my Italian friend said he was renowned, she wasn’t kidding – he is the author of a number of respected cookbooks, including The Food of Southern Italy. Published in 1987, it was the first American cookbook to focus on the regions south of Rome, and it won the prestigious Tastemaker Award, now known as the James Beard Award, in the international cooking category. His reputation as an expert in Italian cookery also led to a television show, Carlo Cooks Italian, which first aired on the Learning Channel in 1994. The Italian government recognized Middione in 1998 with L’Insegna del Ristorante Italiano, an award for establishments abroad that demonstrate superior Italian culinary achievement – only 18 restaurants in the United States received the designation, and Vivande was the only one in San Francisco. When Middione and his wife, Lisa, opened Vivande in 1981, most Americans still thought that an Italian dinner consisted of spaghetti and meatballs. For 25 years, Middione has quietly and humbly turned out authentic, traditional regional dishes like pollo al mattone and frittata di verdure using only the freshest local and highest quality imported ingredients. Middione never bowed to trends like low-fat or lowcarb – he just kept making food the way his Sicilian immigrant parents, both in the restaurant business before coming to America, taught him. Somewhere along the way, what he was doing became a trend – the olive oil and seafood based “Mediterranean Diet” caught on, as did restaurants that celebrated regional Italian cuisine like Delfina, Quince and A16, garnering critical praise and generating lines of eager diners outside the doors. For me, southern Italian cooking is comfort food incarnate. What defines “southern Italian”? Every region has a “flavor print,” with key ingredients that characterize each dish. In southern Italy, you will find sweet tomatoes, oregano, basil, parsley, crushed red pepper and fennel, as well as sweet, sour and salty accents like raisins, olives, capers, citrus and anchovies. Cheeses including ricotta, provolone, mozzarella, and mozzarella’s sexier cousin, burrata, are southern staples. The approach to eating that made the Mediterranean Diet a hit with the health conscious – more seafood, legumes and vegetables than meat – is notable. The south also gave us arguably the most famous Italian import – spaghetti – which is preferred to the rice and polenta of the north. Extra virgin olive oil, rather than butter and cream, is the favored fat, and many sauces and stocks begin with what my mother called “Grandpa’s Holy Trinity” – garlic, onions and oregano – but always used sparingly so as not to overpower the delicacies of the dish. If all of this sounds familiar it’s no surprise since America’s vision of Italian cuisine was largely shaped by immigrants from the south, including Sicily. At Vivande, you will find all of these flavors and traits in recipes that range from light and crisp to bold and rich. One of the most important components of the menu is the fettuccine, made fresh daily from durum flour, semolina and eggs. Each ribbon is perfectly even in tone and is paper thin, yet strong enough to emerge from the boiling water intact and al dente – supple and tender, yet chewy in the best sense of the word. Fettuccine con salsiccia ($14.75) arrives in a rich, slow-cooked sauce of bell peppers, garlic, tomato and white wine studded with fresh hunks of Middione’s famous fennel sausage (he grinds, seasons and stuffs the sausage using a family recipe from Sicily that he can trace back to 1847). The bright red tomatoes are ripe and sweet while the skin of the bell pepper, charred from the grill, lends a smoky accent that also works well with the licorice hint of the fennel. On our first visit, the nightly special was fettuccine con vongole ($15.75), a pasta concoction that can make or break an Italian restaurant in my eyes. Middione’s version is classic – fettuccine tossed with garlic, white wine and a generous amount of Manila clams and flecked with fresh parsley. I usually prefer littleneck clams because Manila clams can be tough and tasteless with mushy insides, but their sweeter flavor (due to more glycogen, the carbohydrate found in clams) makes them a better match for the dish. To my delight, these were some of the best I’ve had – fresh, juicy and tender. Even the abductor muscle, which I like to pull from the shell as a little treat, came off without effort. I feel the same way about mussels as I do about Manila clams – they can be tough and tasteless with mushy insides. Most restaurants overcook them, which also leaves them dry and chewy. Vivande’s cozze al zafferano ($9.75) is a heaping bowl of plump, succulent Mediterranean mussels steamed just until they open, which is key, in white wine, garlic and saffron. We chose the pollo al mattone ($17 ) as our first entrée – boneless chicken breast marinated in rosemary, garlic and sage and seared on the grill under weights. The name translates loosely to “chicken with a brick,” and it’s one of Middione’s specialties – he drizzles the skin with a balsamic reduction, which creates a crisp, caramelized exterior that helps to keep the meat beneath moist during the cooking process. The most spectacular entrée is the scrigno di venere or Venus’ jewel box ($19), which comes in the form of a beggar’s purse resembling a giant dim sum dumpling. A sheet of billowy pasta is nestled in a bed of creamy besciamella (béchamel) sauce and filled with spinach tagliolini, parmesan cheese, peas, imported rosemary ham (cooked ham that has been coated in fresh rosemary leaves) and more besciamella. The pasta is then pleated as you would a crostata to create the “purse” and tied at the top with strands of chive. Cutting into the plate-filling purse releases the heady aroma of the rosemary ham as the steaming mixture oozes out. The first bite was so good it made my eyes roll back in my head. The scrigno di venere is a true signature dish that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else – Middione created it over three decades ago after seeing something similar at a now-closed restaurant in Bologna called Il Pappagallo. The lunch menu at Vivande varies slightly with a few simpler pastas in place of the bigger, richer entrées. It is here that you will find the most comforting dish from my childhood, aglio e olio ($12.25). Some kids got meatloaf; I got pasta lightly coated with extra virgin olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes and sprinkled with fresh parsley. Rarely seen on menus because it appears so unimpressive, aglio e olio is actually easy to ruin, with success based on the quality and perfect balance of the ingredients. The garlic should be just golden, the pasta al dente and a tad slippery – not wet – from the oil, the chili flakes evenly distributed to add the right touch of heat and the parsley should be Italian (or flat-leaf) parsley, which has a more robust, peppery flavor than the more common curly leaf variety. I sometimes make it at home for breakfast and add an overeasy egg which cooks when mixed with the warm pasta, but my aglio e olio is nowhere near perfected like my grandfather’s, my mother’s, or Middione’s. For a small charge, the kitchen will do a half portion or a split, which allows you to sample more than one pasta. I also recommend the romana ($12.25), a heavenly sauce of cream, butter and parmesan, the carbonara ($11) with pancetta, eggs, parmesan and black pepper and another Middione trademark, pesto with oysters ($14.50). I know it sounds strange, but it works – plump, juicy oysters, breaded and fried crisp, surround a pile of fettuccine in fresh pesto. The strong flavor of pesto often overpowers anything it’s paired with, but the equally strong minerally flavor of the oysters stands up to it with gusto, and a spritz of fresh lemon lightens the dish and gives it some tang. Middione is also well-known for his desserts ($6.95), including what I consider to be the best cannoli in The City and a scrumptious creation made with layers of sweet almond meringue filled with zabaglione cream and chocolate, then covered with toasted almonds and chocolate curls. The meringue has a cloudlike softness but is just a touch chewy, and zabaglione is something I could drink from the container (though my kickboxing trainer would not be pleased). My dining companion loved this dessert enough to order it both at lunch and at dinner and enthusiastically pronounced it “the best dessert ever.” Since the beginning, Vivande has housed a wonderful gastronomia in front of the trattoria offering items to go like lemon or rosemary roasted chicken, house-made pates, salads, sauces and pastas, and a selection of cheeses and meats. They recently added a wine bar offering glasses and featured flights from their small, hand-chosen list of Italian wines. I’ve always felt that Italian wines are a terrific value, and the wine bar gives you the opportunity to trip through northern, central and southern Italy while nibbling on antipasti piccoli piatti. Vivande is a casual spot, with ceramic pig heads and Italian masks lining the brick walls and tables set cozily close together. Service can be inconsistent but seems better in the evening. Our dinner waiter was knowledgeable and charming and always there when we needed him, while our waitress at lunch could barely be bothered to drop the plates on the table and was obviously edgy to end her shift as late afternoon approached. Still, in a city filled with fancy smancy restaurants and challenging, trend-setting cuisine, it is wonderful to have a place like Vivande and a chef like Carlo Middione who honors his heritage and cooks with his heart and soul. Not-to-miss dish: The dramatic and delicious scrigno di venere is a dinner menu must, while the deceptively simple aglio e olio makes for a satisfying lunch. Vivande Porta Via:2125 Fillmore Street near California Street. (415) 346-4430. Lunch menu served daily from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., dinner menu served daily from 5 to 10 p.m.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 26 November 2006 )