Mario Carbone’s name gives him away. As one third of the trio behind Carbone – New York’s legendary, celeb-magnet restaurant – he’s a driving force behind a collective growing obsession with Italian-American cuisine.
What began in Greenwich Village in 2013 as a knowingly theatrical take on New York City’s mid-century red sauce joints has grown into an international brand. It’s expanded to outposts in cities like Miami, Dubai, and as of last year, London, inside Mayfair’s luxe Chancery Rosewood hotel. This week, Mario is in town to launch two new additions: lunchtime service, and a sunny outdoor terrace. With that comes lighter, brighter dishes including spring pea cappellacci and spaghetti puttanesca.
London, he says, has always felt familiar. “London has always felt very at home to me,” he says. “I think these two cities are so similar.” The New York chef-restaurateur lights up when talking about the capital’s dining scene: the “great renaissance of the pub food”, the “true chef experience” at Dorian, and a pizza joint in Chelsea that he says might just make the best Roman pizza he’s ever had.
We asked him where he likes to eat in London and New York, and what he thinks sets Italian-American food apart.
Is there anything happening in London’s restaurant scene that’s getting you excited at the moment?
I feel like there’s been a great renaissance of pub food, and I think The Devonshire has been one of the main catalysts. Dining at places like The Devonshire and The Fat Badger – I love this style of restaurant. They do what’s a seemingly simple thing, which, to me, is complex because there’s nothing to hide behind. There are no tricks here and I love places like that.
[In terms of what I order], I seek out what’s their area of expertise. Like here, at The Devonshire, it’s dry-aged beef. To have a Guinness and a dry-aged cut of beef here, cooked over the live wood downstairs, is about as perfect an experience as you could have.
What is Italian-American food, and apart from Carbone, do you think anywhere else in London is doing it well?
Italian-American food is based on the recipes of southern Italy, because a large amount of southern Italians came to the northeast of America. You’ll find a mashup of Neapolitan, Sicilian and Calabrese recipes … mashed up into new formats.
The recipes over the last 150 years have evolved into a cookbook that’s ours and is somewhat unrecognisable to an Italian. [For example], when the southern Italians migrated to America, they found inexpensive protein, so a small meatball in Italy became a much bigger meatball in America, and sometimes you get these comically sized dishes. It became a cartoony-type cuisine that I’ve tried to reign in a bit in my time cooking it.
I think it’s just starting to be recognised as a subsector of Italian food, so to me it’s a relatively new idea for London. [The city] obviously has some great regional Italian food, but nothing that’s that region that I’m from. That’s why we’re proud to be a torchbearer for it, because we are from its place of origin and trying to bring it here. I think it’s a new idea and I think people are really into it.
If you’re only visiting London for a day or two, where are you going for dinner?
I would recommend basically any of the JKS restaurants, because you can’t really go wrong. Obviously, Gymkhana is very hard to get into, but Brigadiers, Berenjak and Hoppers – all the others – in their portfolio are fantastic. If you want really spicy southeast Asian food, do Speedboat Bar.
I had a fantastic meal at Dorian. I went for dinner, and the way that I described it to other people was: it’s a true chef experience. It reminds me of the original Torrisi restaurant that we opened, where you just go in and leave control to the chefs. You ask: ‘What are they serving tonight?’ ‘What’s tonight’s menu?’. I think it’s harder and harder to find that now because to run a restaurant like that takes real courage.
What’s your go-to in London for a quick meal?
I had some of the best Roman pizza I’ve ever had in Chelsea at a place called Marta. They do focaccia di recco which you have to be an expert to make. It’s a white pie made up of two layers of pizza dough: you roll out one pizza dough, add soft white cheeses like mozzarella and robiola, and then you roll out a second pizza dough that’s super thin, lay it over the top, cut holes in it so that it can breathe, seal it, and then cook the whole thing. It’s almost like a super thin cracker sandwich. It’s really spectacular. I think that places like this are very flexible: they can be your night out or a quick thing and you keep it moving. It’s a great neighbourhood amenity.
You want to go all-out – where are you booking in London?
I would do something like The Savoy Grill, something that’s contemporary – with it being Gordon [Ramsay]– but it has so much history. If I wanted to put a suit and tie on and have a beautiful meal, that’s one of those places that I think about.
I’m always nostalgic that I never got to eat at [Marco Pierre White’s former restaurant] Harvey’s. I’ve become somewhat friendly with Marco, and I’ve never eaten his food, though I’ve always wanted to.
Where do you go to eat if you’ve got friends in London who you want to impress?
That’s a hard question. To find how to impress a local, try to take them someplace they don’t know. You might want to find something like Franco’s on Jermyn Street. It’s an old-school kind of mom-and-pop Italian restaurant. The menu changes very frequently.
Again, it reminds me of being a character in a theme. That’s how my brain works – it makes me imagine being the owner of a fashion brand that has a store on Jermyn Street, who goes there every day for lunch. They sit outside, and the owner lets them smoke cigars afterwards. To me it was built for that reason – for the bustling Jermyn Street and its owners and well-to-do customers. As a cigar enthusiast – and London being one of the great cigar cities in the world, if not the greatest – that is a cigar-friendly patio. So it’s always nice to have that in my repertoire, and why it has a warm place in my heart.
Where else do you like to smoke cigars in London?
I’ve become very close friends with the Sautter cigar family, which is Laurence Davis and his son. So I always go to Sautter on Mount Street, and I’ve got a little Mount Street routine. If it’s an afternoon and it’s nice out, you buy a cigar at Sautter, then go walk to Marchesi, which is three doors down. They make my favourite panettone in the world. Now, panettone, usually you have to wait till Christmas – but they sell it by the slice all year long, so you can go in, get a coffee and a single slice of panettone. You’ve got three of the great things in the world in your hands, and then walk into the back of Mount Street Gardens, which is just the nicest little hidden garden – it’s like it’s enchanted – and sit there and spend the next hour in euphoria. That’s my Mount Street day.
Do you have a favourite place for drinks?
I’m not a huge drinker, but I had great drinks at Dorian, my last meal there – they care a lot about their drinks, which is really nice to see.
I love a Guinness at The Devonshire. Give me a theme: let me dress up; let me get into character. I love a theme, and that’s why [the owner, Oisin Rogers] makes me so happy.
Dukes is also an easy one for a Martini. I know there’s a two-drink limit, but I can only have one. I’m a gin [Martini] man in front of Alessandro [Plazzi], because I feel like that’s the way to go. Under normal circumstances, probably closer to a vodka man.
Where are your bucket list dining destinations?
I don’t know if I’m going to make it on this trip, but Clare Smyth’s new place Corenucopia. She’s got a Dover sole fish and chip at her new place that looks unbelievable.
I want to try the Neapolitan pizza being made in Tokyo. There’s a subsector of the style that is Tokyo-style, and there are a few places that are high-level execution. Ideally I would link up with an expert on the ground – a sort of Anthony Bourdain type character of Tokyo – and let them build out a food tour.
If someone was visiting New York, what's a perfect day out in terms of dining?
You should definitely start your morning with a bagel. We [the Major Food Group] have a place called Sadelle’s where we make our own. If you’re a smoked salmon person, you can go down that route, or just have a simple cream cheese bagel.
At some point during the day, you’re going to need to have some pizza. I could recommend a lot of places, but my top three? There’s Lucali in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. The owner is a very close friend of mine. He does a very old-style, large-format New York Neapolitan thing, which is, to me, where we started. That’s a sit-down dinner experience. For a single takeaway slice, Joe’s is the quintessential New York slice of pizza. I would then send you to L’Industrie for a bit more of a contemporary version on the New York slice of pizza.
Before dinner, you’re going to go down to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and you’re going to have a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli. It’s enormous, but it is unequivocally incredible. It has been great for over 100 years, and it’s worth every penny. It’s unquestionably New York. It’s a style that was born there. It’s a flavour that reminds me of that city, and I think it’s something you can’t really get anywhere else.
When I’m travelling and I go to a city, I try to have something that’s theirs, so, at night, selfishly, I would say Carbone is one of the options. We are a New York-Italian restaurant, so the style of food that we make is born in that city.
Otherwise, I would say Peter Luger Steakhouse, which is one of the oldest steakhouses in New York. It’s an old German-American chophouse – another quintessential New York experience.
