North American chefs dress up pasta with saucy new spins on Bolognese

Nation's Restaurant News, April 8, 2002 by Florence Fabricant

Italian cities identify many familiar dishes. Veal Milanese, a breaded flattened chop, or cutlet, and saltimbocca alla romana, Roman-style scaloppine with sage, come immediately to mind. Bolognese is another.

Bolognese is shorthand for ragu alla Bolognese, a long-simmered, meat-based pasta sauce that's usually served over fresh egg tagliatelle or filled tortellini. And it's one of a handful of recipes that actually have been codified and registered by the city of Bologna, one of Italy's gastronomic capitals.

But that hasn't stopped chefs, both in Italy and America, from coming up with their own variations. And at the head of that line stands Alfred Portale, the chef and co-owner of Gotham Bar & Grill in New York. In the mid-1980s, not long after he took over the kitchen of what was a struggling restaurant, actually an early prototype for the now-popular American brasserie-style operation, he began serving what he called lobster Bolognese sauce over fettuccine. He knew what he was doing.

"I put a spin on the concept of Bolognese and devised this decadent sauce, loaded with lobster, cream and herbs," he says. "It's thick enough to coat a flat noodle like fettuccine."

His recipe starts classically enough, with carrot, onion, celery and garlic cooked in olive oil, with just a bit of tomato paste added. Then he adds lobster carcasses and lobster juices, along with stock and white wine, straining and reducing until he has a concentrated base, to which he adds cream and diced, par-cooked lobster meat.

It's worth noting that a Bolognese ragu is not a tomato sauce and calls for just a few enriching spoons of tomato paste. A little cream is added to a Bolognese sauce to help bind it. And it's also worth noting that while a final dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano on a traditional meat ragu might be acceptable to some purists, there's none on the lobster.

Except that there is proportionately more cream, and he adds lobster instead of meat, his interpretation doesn't stray far from the classic. And the idea has taken off around the country, especially since the publication of "Alfred Portale's Gotham Bar & Grill Cookbook," Doubleday, 1997, which included the recipe.

For example, Zemi in Boca Raton, Fla., has a Maine lobster Bolognese served over potato gnocchi and dressed up with wild mushrooms and truffle oil. Caral Restaurant and Uva Bar in Anaheim, Calif., uses the idea of the sauce with shrimp and spoons it over scallops instead of pasta for its grilled scallops with a rock shrimp Bolognese that includes roasted artichokes and a saffron vinaigrette.

But even without the seafood, variations on the Bolognese are cropping up. At Cozmo's in San Francisco, for example, herbed potato gnocchi come dressed with a portobello mushroom Bolognese, truffle oil and Pecorino Romano, for a mixture of Rome and Bologna.

At Bellucci in New York, gnocchi are served with a classic beef and veal Bolognese sauce. Similarly, Montebello in New York has gnocchi Bolognese on the menu.

At the new Fiamma in New York the chef, Michael White, formerly at Spiaggia in Chicago, makes fresh, wide, green pasta ribbons and serves them with a traditional, densely meaty Bolognese sauce. Nipotino in New York serves a classic tagliatelle Bolognese.

Nick & Tony's Italian Chophouse in Cleveland opts for penne, a better choice with a Bolognese, and uses the sauce with lasagna as well. Mazzini in Berkeley, Calif., also serves lasagna Bolognese.