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I don’t look at Massimo Riccioli of Rome’s la Rosetta and see only a truly great chef. I follow his outsized gestures, expressions and whimsy and see a comedian, a throwback to the stars of classic Italian cinema. I imagine a first-name celebrity: Say only Massimo and it can mean only Riccioli.

I was deeply disappointed by the news that Massimo had left Massimo, the glitzy London restaurant and oyster bar at the ritzy Corinthia Hotel. But I am grateful that before returning to Rome he revealed to me a secret to his culinary stardom as well as a hope for the future.

So what secret did I learn from the consummate Italian seafood chef who, though a fusspot for simplicity, can’t manage in the kitchen with only one all-purpose fish stock?

Did I ask him why he bothers matching fish stocks to the specific fish they enrich (e.g. a mackerel stock only for mackerel dishes?)  No, I am not about to stock my fridge with a variety of single-fish fish stocks, no matter how convincing his reasoning.

Did I ask him about his sublime formula for pasta al nero di seppia (in cuttlefish ink), as the slideshow above might lead you to guess? No, I assumed the zesty tang from the sprinkling of grated Pecorina Romano did the trick, in open defiance of the no-cheese-with-seafood rule, and did not prod any further.

I chose instead to direct my question to his creative vision:

Where, Massimo, did you get your eyeglass frames?

Massimo smiled, pulled the blocky black frames from his face and examined the printing on the inside of their temples. The act was pointless and Massimo knew it. The tiny inscriptions are impossible to read without glasses. The frames, he revealed, were knockoffs of a model by a famous British designer.

As I scribbled his answer word-for-word Massimo realised he’d made mistake which, back home in Rome, might have dire consequences.

“No, no, no,” he said. The frames were in fact originals from Mondelliani (Via dei Bergamaschi 49, Rome). Mondelliani co-founder Rosaria Riccioli is, in addition to being Rome’s first name in eyeglass design, Massimo’s sister.

Her brother the chef/comedian hopes to be back in London, possibly to prepare simpler, trattoria fare. But at the moment his greatest wish of all is that his sister Rosaria does not see this post.

Designer Mike Abrahams

Mike Abrahams of the London design consultancy Abrahams attended several BurgerMondays and SpagWednesdays and was struck by the easy links made amongst strangers thrown together at shared tables. (What people will do to get their hands on a drippy, two-fisted bacon cheese burger!) In creating a pop-up logo Mike sought to represent young&foodish as the sum of these new connections.

Choosing to work with the Frankfurter Highlight font mostly because he couldn’t resist the foodish name Mike printed paper placemats each containing a single character from Y-O-U-N-G-&-F-O-O-D-I-S-H.

Photographer Paul Winch-Furness

At six consecutive pop-ups, including the 10th of November debut of WichThursday, the food and restaurant photographer Paul Winch-Furness took playful portraits of diners holding up – or goofing with – their lettered placements. He also encouraged the diners to self-assemble for group shots spelling out words, gibberish or fragments of either.

Designer Myra Murtagh

Mike’s colleague Myra Murtagh turned these images into two versions of the animated pop-up logo seen at the top of this website since November. The collaboration of Mike, Paul, Myra and all the obviously proud models who posed with their lettered placemats will run for just a few more weeks.

All photos by  Paul Winch-Furness

slideshow photos by Paul Winch-Furness

Great fan though I am of Polpo, Polpetto and their new sibling sensation Spuntino, Wednesday the 13th of April was probably not the best night to be dining at any of these madly popular restaurants in London’s Soho. That’s because Spuntino head chef Rachel O’Sullivan and group chef Tom Oldroyd took that afternoon and night off to prepare 350+ meatballs for my SpagWednesday meatballs and spaghetti pop-up dinner (see photos above by food photographer Paul-Winch Furness) at the Gray’s Inn greasy spoon Andrew’s.

Rachel and Tom sent out heaping plates of spaghetti and meatballs with wedges of focaccia to 66 SpagWednesday twirling slurpers who did with it what SpagWednesday twirling slurpers do: They ate like kids and dined like princes.

Although some Italian purists insist you shouldn’t serve bread with pasta, piling starch upon starch, the Spuntino chefs concluded that the far greater crime would have been to leave a roomful of urbane Londoners with traces of homemade tomato sauce on their plates but no bread with which to mop it up. The only viable alternative would have been for diners to use their fingers, which, though hardly unheard of at young&foodish pop-ups, is perhaps not the preferred medium.

Don’t miss out on the fun at my next pop-up. Join the young&foodish community now and as a member you’ll receive email alerts about upcoming SpagWednesday and BurgerMonday pop-ups as well as advance booking privileges.

…in a place like this…

Yet when Hugue Dufour, the French-Canadian chef-proprietor of the M. Wells Diner in Queens, New York, asked me if I’d ordered his silky-smooth parsnip soup with the sautéed foie gras topper I was surprised anyone would regard this accessory as optional.

“On ne vit qu’un foie“, I replied, a play on the French expression on ne vit qu’une fois – “you only live once.” What I essentially said to Dufour was that “you only live one liver” (wasn’t that the original title of a James Bond film?) and so I would pay the $10 supplement so as not to squander the opportunity. I don’t know what he thought of my pun, but he did reward me with this…

Eat like a kid, dine like a prince.

What’s for dinner tonight?

If it’s Wednesday and you’ve just watched the classic American TV ad above, for the first time or thousandth time, you know it’s spaghetti day. And if your heart beats for pasta, like Anthony Martignetti, its 12-year-old hero, I would expect you to run, not walk, to the inaugural SpagWednesday pop-up on February 23th. Francesco Mazzei of London’s L’Anima will be preparing his definitive version of spaghetti alle vongole.

The Prince Spaghetti ad was shot on location in Boston’s North End in 1969, when the old neighborhood was still the old neighborhood, which is to say, thoroughly Italian. The Prince brand was founded there in 1912 by three Sicilian Immigrants at a store at 92 Prince Street.

“Anthony! Anthony!” a mother yells out her apartment window.

Her scream was loud and long enough – the spot ran nationally for 13 years – to, as Billy Baker noted in a wonderful Boston Globe article marking the ad’s 40th anniversary, place “Anthony!” alongside “Stella!” from A Streetcar Named Desire, “Elaine!” from The Graduate and “Adrian!” from Rocky in the American pop pantheon.

Whenever I hear anyone shout the name Anthony I know it’s nearly time for spaghetti. It doesn’t matter which one: Anthony Trollope, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Anthony – they all make me hungry. Likewise, the spaghetti doesn’t have to be from a Prince box. Truth is that as much as I loved the Prince ad my mother never cooked with any of its pastas in our Queens, New York apartment, back when the old neighborhood was still the old neighborhood. Prince Spaghetti, Prince Charles, Prince Charming – she wouldn’t open the door to any of that lot.

Sadly, one response was a few characters too long and a few days late for consideration. It arrived in a Facebook message from Marcella Hazan, the high priestess of Italian cooking in American kitchens and a few British ones, too. Fergus Henderson cited Marcella and her Essentials of Italian Cooking as one of three food writers and books which greatly insired him: “Life in the kitchen changed with the arrival of Marcella Hazan’s classic Italian cuisine”.

So tell us, Marcella, why do you love linguine vongole?  

Dear Daniel,
 

I am sorry I haven’t been able to respond sooner. I have grown weary of rapturous and adjective rich food prose. How do you communicate the thrill of a sunset on the Gulf of Mexico to someone who has never seen it? Linguine ( I prefer spaghettini) with vongole is one of the pinnacles of culinary wizardry. To understand it you need to know the sweet, peppery, tender, tiny clams from either of Italy’s main seas, the viscosity and depth of central Italian olive oil, the firmness of high quality Italian pasta, and you must have experienced the light sure hand of a Neapolitan cook in the dosage of garlic and peperoncino. When you already know all these things, all you need to do to stir raging longings is to pronounce the words, linguine (I prefer spaghettini) con le vongole.
 

Buon appetito.

Marcella