BY JANEL BLADOW | Have you ever wanted to spend a year wining and dining your way through Italy? More things than just time and money constraints put that dream to rest. There is also the waistline to worry about.
Now, almost all the concerns are taken out of the equation — except, perhaps having to add extra notches on your belt.
Acqua Restaurant and Wine Bar (21 Peck Slip) launches “Flavor of Italy” this week. A menu of authentic dishes from one of the 20 regions of Italy will debut every other week throughout the coming year.
In addition to its regular menu, ingredients imported from Italy along with fresh, homegrown goods will be prepared in recipes indigenous to each region. Chef Ivan Beacco, new to Acqua this year, wanted to share some of the dishes he grew up eating as a child in Italy with his New York customers.
“Italian food is so different, depending on where you are in the country,” he explained to the Downtown Express. “I grew up in Trieste, in the north. The food is German-influenced, with cold cuts, cream-based sauces and, of course, our favorite meat — pork.”
It was a surprise to him how much diners at Acqua knew about the foods and wines of Italy. Beacco previously worked at restaurants in Union Square, the Village and Queens.
“I love this area,” he said. “It’s such a different experience. Customers have way more knowledge of classic Italian cuisine than other places I have worked.”
For this reason, he came up with the concept of a tasting tour of the 20 regions of Italian and has created 20 menus of appetizers, pastas, salads, main courses — and, naturally, desserts based on recipes that originated in the area.
The tasting menu ($48) consists of four courses and a glass of wine of regional grapes. The menu is also available à la carte.
“We’re starting from the south and going north, to match the climate. So we go from the islands to the Alps,” said Beacco.
The tour begins this week with the best of the island of Sicily through Sept. 9. Then from Sept. 17 – 23, the foods of Sardinia are featured, followed by a week of Calabria cuisine (Oct. 1-7) and the rich fare of Puglia (Oct. 15 -21).
“Sicily and Sardinia are close, but the particular ingredients are so different,” he explained. “In Sicily, there is a wide array of seafood from sardines to shellfish. Sardinia has mountains, so more goat and vegetable sauces are used.”
Sicilian calamari is a special this week, while in two weeks, Beacco has prepared a Sardinian recipe of roasted goat shank with porcini sauce, new potatoes and sautéed chicory, as well as Sebadas, Sardinian turnovers filled with fresh pecorino, orange zest and served with organic honey. Calabria week sees hand-rolled short pasta with spicy Calabrian sausage, peppers and sheep’s milk ricotta.
“Each region has a very complex sense of identity, tradition and way of living,” he said. “The idea is to emphasize traditions and introduce diners to genuine dishes, too often changed over the years.”
