Enzo Fargione - chef of Teatro Goldoni
"The only interest my family had in food," jokes Enzo Fargione, executive chef of Teatro Goldoni, "was by eating it." It's not the whole picture, though, because then he goes on to say that his mother is an "excellent, excellent cook." When most young boys preferred to stay in bed on Sunday mornings, Fargione confesses he liked to get up to see what she was cooking.
Back in Washington and ensconced on K Street's restaurant corridor after a couple of years in Florida, Fargione had been instrumental, first time through, in the culinary successes of Galileo, Barolo and Atrium, either as chef or co-owner.
"For me cooking isn't a job, a way of making a living," says the Turin native, "but it's like a painter who sees colors combine together to form a shape." He has a deep respect for traditions in Italian food. But he likes to put together ingredients that can give a personal twist to a classic dish, using both colors and flavors to provoke a diner's appetite, presenting them on the plate with a juxtaposition of shapes and surprising textures. "I like to shock. But I'm also very traditional when comes down to taste."
He arrived at Teatro Goldoni a year ago and set about transforming its menu - still a work in progress, he says - to take the restaurant to the very top. As a regular chef at the James Beard House it seems unlikely he won't achieve his goal. It is to bring the absolute essence of Italy to Washington in food that's deep with flavor and while appearing familiar in description will nevertheless surprise. In step with the name of the restaurant, his approach and presentation can be theatrical. If you sit at the bar, for instance, and order a Pannacotta, it might come not as a dessert but as an appetizer flavored with Gorgonzola and served with candied celery, Parma prosciutto and polenta crackers.
He misses his country very much, particularly its produce. "Every time I travel, I like to buy one of everything. It makes my mother crazy. She lives very humbly and I fill up the fridge - but with very simple food. Tomatoes! When you cut them, you walk 20 feet to the table and you can still smell them. Every corner in Italy there are special products you can get excited about. In Italy," he says wistfully, "it's very rare for you to have a bad meal."
His father was Sicilian and growing up Fargione spent many summers there, eating bottarga, freshly caught tuna and fruit picked straight off the trees. He's a big fan of Italy's artichokes, "Very intense flavor, very bitter, fibery. Here, they are very good. But you can't compare geological conditions, they're very different." So he compensates by cooking them with ingredients that will go well with them to point up their flavor, as in a purée he does with artichokes and black olives.
He arrived in the States very young and straight out of Italian culinary school, to take up a job in a restaurant that hired him to serve prime Italian food. But instead it turned out quickly to be a spaghetti-and-meatballs place that would do nothing for his career. So he called his professor to say he was coming home. The professor persuaded him to get in touch with another of his ex-students, Roberto Donna, in Washington, who was looking for cooking staff for Galileo. Fargione realized after a couple of months there that he had fallen in love with the American way of life. So at 17, despite the fact that he missed (and still misses) the Italian life-style "tremendously", he elected to stay. Italians, he says proudly, "are smarter than [people] anywhere else in the world - they put family first! Try to go shop in Italy between 1 and 3 - everything shuts down! I went to a shop that was closing in five minutes. The owner said, Can I come back tomorrow! In the US, it's work, work, work. Produce, produce for consumers."
Still, he admires Americans' pride in their physical well-being, in the attention they pay in being healthy. He loves to work out himself - as a way to benefit physically as well as to give his mind a break. "But," he says again, "I miss Italian life terribly - the excitement of the little things I grew up with, going to the market fish stands and seeing the shrimp jumping, the fresh eel. As a kid, things like that get stuck in your head like going to a circus. Here, you take a kid to Safeway to see the lobsters in the tank. That's as far as you can go."
In the 20 years he's been in the States he says he's witnessed a huge change in the American palate. "Back then, you could serve a dish of pasta with a cooked sauce made three months prior then frozen. Nowadays the customer would probably throw it over your head."
He attributes the difference to increased travel abroad, to chefs from other countries trying to bring the authenticity of their own cuisines to local tables, and to television and magazines. "I can't thank food magazines, the Food Network, food programs enough for spreading around knowledge about every kind of cooking. How many people these days buy tinned ravioli?"
He's equally enthusiastic about the spread of restaurants across the economic spectrum, from fine dining to pizza places, making eating out affordable for everyone. His girlfriend calls him both a pleasure and a pain to eat with. So long as it's the best quality possible, he's as happy to eat a piece of fine cheese, a slice of excellent Italian salami with a good glass of wine as he is to go to The Inn At Little Washington, or eat with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry or Per Se. Fargione says he has the same goal as Patrick O'Connell and Keller. "I'm trying to give you, my guest at my table, a memory. I succeeded if I give you something to remember - something of mine you were able to carry away with you."
Teatro Goldoni is located at 1909 K St NW, 202 955 9494.
Back in Washington and ensconced on K Street's restaurant corridor after a couple of years in Florida, Fargione had been instrumental, first time through, in the culinary successes of Galileo, Barolo and Atrium, either as chef or co-owner.
"For me cooking isn't a job, a way of making a living," says the Turin native, "but it's like a painter who sees colors combine together to form a shape." He has a deep respect for traditions in Italian food. But he likes to put together ingredients that can give a personal twist to a classic dish, using both colors and flavors to provoke a diner's appetite, presenting them on the plate with a juxtaposition of shapes and surprising textures. "I like to shock. But I'm also very traditional when comes down to taste."
He arrived at Teatro Goldoni a year ago and set about transforming its menu - still a work in progress, he says - to take the restaurant to the very top. As a regular chef at the James Beard House it seems unlikely he won't achieve his goal. It is to bring the absolute essence of Italy to Washington in food that's deep with flavor and while appearing familiar in description will nevertheless surprise. In step with the name of the restaurant, his approach and presentation can be theatrical. If you sit at the bar, for instance, and order a Pannacotta, it might come not as a dessert but as an appetizer flavored with Gorgonzola and served with candied celery, Parma prosciutto and polenta crackers.
He misses his country very much, particularly its produce. "Every time I travel, I like to buy one of everything. It makes my mother crazy. She lives very humbly and I fill up the fridge - but with very simple food. Tomatoes! When you cut them, you walk 20 feet to the table and you can still smell them. Every corner in Italy there are special products you can get excited about. In Italy," he says wistfully, "it's very rare for you to have a bad meal."
His father was Sicilian and growing up Fargione spent many summers there, eating bottarga, freshly caught tuna and fruit picked straight off the trees. He's a big fan of Italy's artichokes, "Very intense flavor, very bitter, fibery. Here, they are very good. But you can't compare geological conditions, they're very different." So he compensates by cooking them with ingredients that will go well with them to point up their flavor, as in a purée he does with artichokes and black olives.
He arrived in the States very young and straight out of Italian culinary school, to take up a job in a restaurant that hired him to serve prime Italian food. But instead it turned out quickly to be a spaghetti-and-meatballs place that would do nothing for his career. So he called his professor to say he was coming home. The professor persuaded him to get in touch with another of his ex-students, Roberto Donna, in Washington, who was looking for cooking staff for Galileo. Fargione realized after a couple of months there that he had fallen in love with the American way of life. So at 17, despite the fact that he missed (and still misses) the Italian life-style "tremendously", he elected to stay. Italians, he says proudly, "are smarter than [people] anywhere else in the world - they put family first! Try to go shop in Italy between 1 and 3 - everything shuts down! I went to a shop that was closing in five minutes. The owner said, Can I come back tomorrow! In the US, it's work, work, work. Produce, produce for consumers."
Still, he admires Americans' pride in their physical well-being, in the attention they pay in being healthy. He loves to work out himself - as a way to benefit physically as well as to give his mind a break. "But," he says again, "I miss Italian life terribly - the excitement of the little things I grew up with, going to the market fish stands and seeing the shrimp jumping, the fresh eel. As a kid, things like that get stuck in your head like going to a circus. Here, you take a kid to Safeway to see the lobsters in the tank. That's as far as you can go."
In the 20 years he's been in the States he says he's witnessed a huge change in the American palate. "Back then, you could serve a dish of pasta with a cooked sauce made three months prior then frozen. Nowadays the customer would probably throw it over your head."
He attributes the difference to increased travel abroad, to chefs from other countries trying to bring the authenticity of their own cuisines to local tables, and to television and magazines. "I can't thank food magazines, the Food Network, food programs enough for spreading around knowledge about every kind of cooking. How many people these days buy tinned ravioli?"
He's equally enthusiastic about the spread of restaurants across the economic spectrum, from fine dining to pizza places, making eating out affordable for everyone. His girlfriend calls him both a pleasure and a pain to eat with. So long as it's the best quality possible, he's as happy to eat a piece of fine cheese, a slice of excellent Italian salami with a good glass of wine as he is to go to The Inn At Little Washington, or eat with Thomas Keller at The French Laundry or Per Se. Fargione says he has the same goal as Patrick O'Connell and Keller. "I'm trying to give you, my guest at my table, a memory. I succeeded if I give you something to remember - something of mine you were able to carry away with you."
Teatro Goldoni is located at 1909 K St NW, 202 955 9494.
Posted on Tuesday 05th May 2009 in
Chefs
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