I first encountered the traditional Italian pasta sauce Amatriciana in The Classic Pasta Cookbook, a 1993 book by Giuliano Hazan. My father got his hands on a copy. Whether it was a present or he bought it, I don’t know. It had the squarest title and the squarest cover I’ve ever seen on a cookbook. It could have been put out by Scholastic as a pasta guide for kids. But my father, who was just then entering his late-in-life self-reinvention as a cook, loved it and made many dishes from it. After a while, I tried it out and quickly found that the recipes were simple and solid and easy to follow. Moreover, the book contained good versions of every type of pasta sauce you could want, from the traditional (bolognese, alfredo, pesto, carbonara, etc.) to the unfamiliar.
One of the unfamiliar, at least to me, was Amatriciana. But as it contained tomatoes, pecorino cheese and pork, it immediately caught my eye. That, and the similar—and similarly unfamiliar—arrabbiata became my favorite recipes in the book. The recipe for Amatriciana called for bucatini. Luckily, at the time, I happened to live around the block from a place called Latticini-Barese. Nearly one hundred years old, the shop was primarily in the business of selling mozzarella, which they made fresh daily. But they were also one of the few Italian goods shops in New York were you could buy bucatini. (The thick, hollow noodle is now ubiquitous, but hard to find then.) So, I made the Amatriciana recipe often over the years.
Turns out, I made it wrong. Traditional Amatriciana—which was created in the town of Amatrice in northern Lazio, but is closely associated with Rome—is made with guanciale, an Italian cured meat product prepared from pork jowl or cheeks. Hazan’s book called for pancetta and pancetta is what I had been using. I learned of my error only recently, while talking to the new chef at Lupa, a restaurant in Greenwich Village. The chef, who is from Rome, boasted that, while most Italian restaurants in New York made Amatriciana with pancetta, his was made with guanciale.
Well, damn.
It’s humbling to find out that you’ve been making a dish you love incorrectly—for twenty years.
Hazan’s recipe called for onion and butter as well, which are also apparently Amatriciana no-no’s. (It also had red pepper flakes, which I like and am keeping.)
There was a bright spot to all this confusion. I was scheduled to soon visit Rome, where Amatriciana is as common as cheesesteaks in Philly. Seriously, every trattoria serves a version, along with other Roman pasta staples like Cacio e Pepe, Gricia and Carbonara. We went to a suppli place—suppli being the deep-friend Roman street food, sort of like croquettes filled with rice and cheese—and among the flavors were Amatriciana, Cacio e Pepe and Carbonara. (Cacio was best.)
So, it was decided that Amatriciana would be ordered at every trattoria we went to, to compare and contrast. We got lucky in our contrasting, snagging reservations at three top trattorias in Rome: Armando al Pantheon and Roscioli Salumeria, both culinary institutions in the Centro Storico, and Trecca, a newer place on the outskirts of Rome. (Thanks to Kristina Gill, Katie Parla and Ian Lauer for their recommendations.)
Along the way, I learned about Gricia, which I had never heard of, but is apparently the direct antecedent to Amatriciana. This sauce is composed of black pepper, pecorino and guanciale. So the inventor of Amatriciana just threw some tomatoes in there. Good move. By now, Amatriciana has outpaced Gricia in popularity and notoriety, so much so that Gricia is sometimes referred to as "Amatriciana Bianca."
Roscioli Salumeria really is a salumeria. And it was still in operation while we were dining. We sat at a table flush against a refrigerated counter filled with cheese and meats, and customers felt comfortable ordering groceries over our heads while standing inches from us. I was so glad we didn’t encumber them.
Mary Kate valiantly ordered the Gricia while I got the Amatriciana—that is, after we had polished off various cheeses, meats, anchovies, bread and butters and such. Roscioli has a nice way of going overboard with the cheese. Grains of pecorino were scattered on the edges of the bowl that contained my pasta. They used mezze maniche for the pasta, which resembles a stubby rigatoni. The pasta was perfectly al dente; in fact, I did not encounter anything but perfectly al dente pasta during the trip. The three flavors in the sauce melded seamlessly into a warming whole. I had nothing really to go on, but it felt like benchmark Amatriciana. Nothing flashy, nothing ostentatious. Just the dish itself.
Armando al Pantheon is just a stone’s throw from the monument in question. It’s been open since 1961, but feels older. They have nine tables, limited hours and don’t always answer the phone, so there are lines. We were fortunate enough to get a reservation through a friend. Actually, two reservations. (Sorry.) We were going to pick between the two reservations, but after the first meal, we decided to just keep the other one. C’mon, you’d do the same.
Even given how good the food is at Armando, I’d say a full fifty percent of the attraction is the space. It’s small and quiet. The kitchen is clearly visible from all points in the restaurant. The ceilings are high and there is memorabilia on the walls, but not too much. The tables and chairs are nothing fancy; I saw them without their tablecloths and I would have passed them by if they were at a stoop sale. It feels a bit like a club. If it had to compare it to a New York restaurant, it would be Rao’s, which is another place that is hard to get into; is snug, old-fashioned and cozy; and where the food is unnecessarily cheap and of a high quality.
On our first visit, Mary Kate got Gricia again, on the recommendation of the waiter, and I got Cacio e Pepe, which was good, though I could have used a bit more pepe. (The best Cacio e Pepe I’ve ever had remains what I had at Tony May’s much-missed San Domenico in New York.) All the while we were eating our pasta, bowl after bowl of Amatriciana sailed by, destined for other tables. Clearly, we had made an error. We corrected it the next time, splitting an order of the popular Amatriciana, which was made with rigatoni (again, perfectly al dente), thick crisp chunks of guanciale and plenty of pecorino. I love pasta, but sometimes a whole serving is too much. The split portion was the perfect size, particularly since we were planning on ordering secondis.
(Our many orders of Amatriciana also gave me the opportunity to nail down the pronunciation, which my tongue has always stumbled over. I’m pretty good with Italian, but them six syllables are a mouthful.)
So, I kinda pulled a chronological fast one on you with this post. Armando was actually our last meal in Rome. Our first was Trecca. But I didn’t want to lead with the kicker. I saved Trecca for last because it was best. Everything about it was best, including the Amatriciana, hands down. Trecca is what is called a Neo-Trattoria in these parts. Which means they do the old dishes, but with a fresh perspective. There’s a lot of offal on the menu. And we ate a offal lot of it.
But, about the Amatriciana. It arrived in a big salad bowl. It was not made with rigatoni and any similar pasta. It was made with bucatini, just like in Hazan’s book. So that set it apart. The pieces of guanciale were larger and much crispier, which was wonderfully pleasing. There were chunks of tomato of varying size throughout. (They had been squeezed by hand, I discovered later.) It was a reinvention of the dish, while staying absolutely true to it. I’ve mentioned that all the pasta we had at the three places was perfectly al dente. But somehow the pasta at Trecca was more perfectly al dente. I can’t explain it. It was just perceptibly better. It could not have been improved on.
The chef at Trecca is Manuel Trecastelli. I learned a few things about how he makes his Amatriciana from an interview with Vice. He used to be skeptical of bucatini, saying "They were soft and slimy: then I rediscovered them and I realized that the secret is that they must be rough, perfectly cooked al dente and with a tight hole." Regarding the guanciale, "We cut the bacon wide and thin, so it becomes crunchy. We put it in a hot pan, then we remove it and put the lard aside, which we then adjust the sauce. We also like the mushy pieces , which make it more imperfect." And, damn, if he doesn’t put a little onion in the pasta, just like Hazan, because “it makes it sweeter.” Furthermore, there is pecorino in the sauce, as well as sprinkled on top of the pasta at the end. And the pasta is cooked three-quarters way through and then finishes cooking in the sauce.
Armed with all this new practical information, I plan to attack the dish anew this summer and to make up for my twenty-year transgression. I won’t approach Trecca’s Amatriciana. But I can get nearer.
Odds and Ends…
Brooklyn Bar Covent, the sprawling bar convention, will take place June 14 and 15 at Industry City. Expect to see nearly everyone in the New York cocktail industry, and plenty of guests from the rest of the nation and the world. Seminars will be led by the likes of Don Lee, Lance Winters, Dale DeGroff, Valentino Longo, Derek Brown and Briana and Andrew Volk … The Good Fork, the much-missed Red Hook, Brooklyn, restaurant that shuttered during the pandemic, will reopen as the Good Fork Pub… Cocktail writer Emma Janzen is having a big week. The Way of the Cocktail, which she wrote with Chicago bar owner Julia Momose, won a James Beard Award on Sunday. And The Bartender’s Manifesto, which she wrote with The Violet Hour founder Toby Maloney, comes out on Tuesday, June 14… Cocchi, the venerable Italian company that has given us Cocchi Americano and a variety of great vermouths, has come out, after many years experimentation, Cocchi Vermouth di Torino Extra Dry. The recipe is new, and the name is “a very precise indication of the content: all the relevant ingredients for this vermouth come from Piemonte and have a strong bond with our region. The wine used for this vermouth is Cortese, the same grape used for Gavi DOCG. The Artemisia Absinthium, is 100% from Piemonte mountains. The aromatic profile is characterized by Menta di Pancalieri, a local variety of peppermint, and lemon, traditionally used to garnish vermouth in our region.” Cocchi wants you to drink it as a wine, and it does drink well that way. But you know me. I’ll be putting it in Martinis.
Perhaps we will have to extend our NYC wanderings to include some Roman-centric spots? I am now intrigued. And hungry.
When planning our food destinations for the portion of our honeymoon in Rome, I kept referring back to this piece when booking reservations. Of the three, we managed to secure an evening at Trecca and were blown away. The Amatriciana and Trippa alla Romana were fantastic. As a testament to the tripe in particular, my wife, who normally hates offal dishes, kept stealing off my plate in addition to decimating hers. Wonderful piece and the food was well worth the trip. Thank you!