Class-A Amatriciana, the favorite Roman tomato and pork pasta, is rare. (Exhaustive research since the early ’80s has uncovered only three restaurants.) Places will either use pancetta (pork belly, aka bacon) instead of the finer guanciale (pork jowl). Or use rigatoni instead of bucatini. Or have chefs who are members of the deranged “Amatriciana sauce must contain onions” cult. You get the idea . . tweak any one of these variables and this dish is only standard good Italian food. Get them right though . . . ahhh!
Well Simone, and his family over at Trattoria Vecchia Roma, is part of Rome’s class-A Amatriciana -making Triumvirate, and prepares it perfectly each time.
Then he lights the dish on fire.
“WHA . . ?!?!” I’ve bounced straight out of my chair 2′ into the air. “My bucatini!! YOU’RE KILLING THEM!!”
“Sta’ fermo e guarda,” (Cut it out, and look.) he says impassively, mischievous grin forming off one side of his face. He has just dropped a perfectly good plate of Amatriciana and some highly flammable liquid into the fire-stained and crusty hollowed-out crater of a 50 lb. form of pecorino romano cheese, lit it all on fire, and is now busy scraping the slowly melting cheese with a fork, “tossing” the pasta. (I count at least two dozen US health and fire codes being broken in all of 10 seconds.)
Madman, messing with perfection like that! Until you taste it though . . . and thank the universe for the occasional maverick.
Trattoria Vecchia Roma, Via Ferruccio, 12 b/c. Tel.06-4467143. Closed Sundays (Near Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele)
– Contributed by GB (see bio), Editor, Italian Notebook.
