{"id":11403,"date":"2026-01-27T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/how-carbone-put-the-red-sauce-joint-on-the-world-stage\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T15:01:00","slug":"how-carbone-put-the-red-sauce-joint-on-the-world-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/how-carbone-put-the-red-sauce-joint-on-the-world-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"How Carbone Put the Red Sauce Joint on the World Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story starts with mass migration. In the late 19th century, economic conditions in Southern Italy had deteriorated and millions of Italians set sail for America in search of opportunity and the gold-paved streets of which they\u2019d been told. Many settled in the northeastern United States, sometimes strictly segregated by region. In New York\u2019s Little Italy, Sicilians lived on Elizabeth Street, Calabrians on Mott.<\/p>\n
The newly settled immigrants did their best to cook familiar foods with the ingredients available in this unfamiliar country. Their children did the same, and then their grandchildren. Dish by dish, Italian American cuisine was born, a hybrid culinary tradition that has become inextricably woven into our country\u2019s foodways.<\/p>\n
By midcentury, Italian American enclaves in major cities were dotted with red sauce joints. You know their aesthetic, even if you\u2019ve never been to one: red-and-white checkered tablecloths, empty Chianti bottles with a candle stuck in them, meatballs so large they dominate the plate.<\/p>\n
Growing up in Queens, chef Mario Carbone was steeped in this cuisine and culture. \u201cMy homeroom was alphabetical,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt took an entire row of guys to get through \u2018car.\u2019 Cardona, Caruso, Carbone\u2026.\u201d Today he is a partner in Major Food Group with Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick and chef at the restaurant which bears his surname.<\/p>\n
It was while cooking together at Manhattan\u2019s Torrisi Italian Specialities that Carbone and Torrisi met Zalaznick, then a regular diner with a lot of opinions on Italian American food. Mainly, Italian American food was already so beloved that diners paid to eat there even when the food was mid. \u201cI like eating at these places so much because of the way they feel and the way that I feel when I\u2019m there,\u201d Zalaznick says, \u201cthat I don\u2019t even care about the fact that the lamb is overcooked.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo one\u2014I mean no one\u2014who wanted to be a great chef in New York would ever consider tying their name to Italian American food,\u201d Torrisi remembers. \u201cIt simply got zero respect in the fine dining world.\u201d But Carbone would change that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Carbone and Torrisi saw an opportunity to make their cooking personal. \u201cThis is our opportunity to talk about who we are and not cook the food of our mentors or the chefs that came before us,\u201d Torrisi says.<\/p>\n
But when the partners began thinking about reimagining\u2014or reinvigorating\u2014the red sauce joint genre in the mid-aughts, they faced an uphill battle. The restaurants they remembered, once charmingly homey, had become staid, outshone by the $17 artisanal burgers and molecular gastronomy spots that dominated popular food culture at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSerious\u201d chefs were cooking French and New American food, or else focusing on regional Italian food. In 2012, the year before Carbone opened, former New York Times<\/em> restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote, \u201cItalian American cuisine is not beloved by the arbiters of good taste, who celebrate risotto alla Milanese but ignore baked ziti, garlic bread, spaghetti and meatballs and lobster fra diavolo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one\u2014I mean no one\u2014who wanted to be a great chef in New York would ever consider tying their name to Italian American food,\u201d Torrisi remembers. \u201cIt simply got zero respect in the fine dining world.\u201d But Carbone would change that.<\/p>\n\n
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Illustration by Ian Woods<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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