ITALIAN AMERICAN FOOD AND THE ART OF LONGING

CARBONE COMES TO DALLAS. PREPARE TO FEEL STRANGELY HOMESICK.

BY DIANA SPECHLER

Chef Mario Carbone. Photograph courtesy of Carbone.

Carbone Meatballs. Photograph courtesy of Carbone.

Carbone Spicy Rigatoni. Photograph courtesy of Carbone. C hef Mario Carbone wants to make you nostalgic—hence the creation of his eponymous restaurant, an homage to New York’s old southern Italian immigrant neighborhoods: “Witness the woolly mammoth that was mid-century Italian American.”

He’s talking about Carbone. He’s also talking about his great-grandparents, who left Italy for New World opportunities; and his grandparents, who instilled a love of cooking in him; and his parents, who raised him in Queens. He’s talking about a generations-long assimilation story that, like many assimilation stories, juxtaposes pride and loss. “Southern Italians came to this country for opportunities,” Carbone says. “And it worked. My grandparents spoke broken English. My parents were first generation. Italians assimilated. They’re American now. But this Italian American thing is dying. Nostalgia is absolutely essential.”

After spending the last nine years opening his Michelin-starred restaurant, under the umbrella of Major Food Group, in Manhattan, Miami, Las Vegas, and Hong Kong, the 42-year-old chef is setting up shop in Dallas’ Design District. Now you, too, can bear witness to those bygone Italian American kitchens, where espresso was served with lemon peel and “dry pasta was life.” (Fresh pasta was the domain of wealthy northern Italians.) “I’m not interested in innovation,” Carbone says. “We make food southern Italians made in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s in New York. We’re doing a period piece. We set the stage. When you step in, you’re an extra.”

If one’s goal is culinary theater, one may as well appoint Ken Fulk to the role of set designer. A full-blown rock star in the interior-design world, and a master of color combinations and over-the-top décor, Fulk embodies the southern Italian ethos of “abbondanza” (abundance). “Ken would dip you in gold,” Carbone says. Opulent touches, including porcelain statues from the 300-year-old Ginori 1735 in Italy, lend the space a classic elegance. But while a theatrical “period piece” engages the eyes and ears, Carbone offers a full sensory experience: Smell garlic simmering in butter, hear Frank Sinatra and young Tony Bennett piped through the speakers, let servers sporting burgundy tuxedoes equip you with oversized menus and wine lists. Traditional antipasti, simple pasta recipes, and earthy Chiantis meet a few dishes that bend the rules of period purism.

Consider the meatball. At least, consider the “softball-sized” concoctions that red-sauce eateries sling in New York and Chicago that are not, in fact, an Old World staple. “In southern Italy,” Carbone says, “people had no money, no land. Meat was expensive.” Southern Italians might have occasionally enjoyed “pingpong ball-sized” polpettini, but when they arrived in America, they found that cattle was plentiful, meat inexpensive. The new landscape and its resources spawned the recipe we know today—ample portions of ground beef, breadcrumbs, spices.

At Carbone, however, milk-soaked bread (called panade) replaces breadcrumbs. In terms of size, Carbone meatballs lie somewhere between polpettini and the standard Italian American restaurant version. “Baseballs,” Carbone says, “not softballs.”

To the layman, Carbone meatballs look and taste like any delicious red-sauceItalian restaurant version—a successful assimilation. Without asking the right questions, you’d never know the meatball’s history, how it grew, how it adapted.

If to assimilate is to romanticize an imagined future, to wax nostalgic is to romanticize the past—a past that, sometimes, is also imagined: We dance to music written before we were born. We choke up over a lover’s old photo album. There’s a word for the feeling, coined by John Koenig in his book, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: “anemonia”—nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.

“You didn’t grow up the way I did,” Carbone says, “but you can step foot into that exact moment. This is my nostalgia, my upbringing. I’m giving this experience to people who didn’t have it.” P