Vito Racanelli Jr., owner of Onesto Pizza & Trattoria and V. Catering & Events, has just inked the lease for the old Carondelet Grill space, securing the spot at 8000 Carondelet Ave., in downtown Clayton for a southern Italian restaurant.
The menu at the yet-to-be-named restaurant will focus on “wholesome, simple, rustic cuisine” from southern Italy, Racanelli said. “It’s everything I love: Neopolitan tripe braised with onions and olives and topped with bread crumbs, focaccia made from potatoes, pastas from Southern Italy.”
Many dishes will be inspired by food Racanelli grew to love in his adolescence when he spent summers in Italy helping the family businesses. “I’m taking a lot of good cuisine from my mother,” he said. “She’s from Calabria. Everyone on mom’s side is a butcher – going back five or six generations; the butcher shop is still there. My father is from Bari. On my father’s side, they are all farmers. They grow almonds, olives, grapes. They have pear orchards.”
Comparing the new restaurant to Onesto, Racanelli explained that Onesto is “like what you see in restaurants where I ate at as a kid growing up in New York City: American Italian. [The new restaurant] is more ‘mom’ flavors: braised pig skin, eggplant parmesan made on top of the stove like my grandmother made it, zucchini flowers. Anchovy and pancetta will be mainstays that I will make myself.” The wine list will also have a southern Italian focus.
Being that Racanelli grew up in the pizza business, you can bet there will be a pizza oven at the new locale as well. “It’s straight old-school wood burning, no gas line,” he said, adding that he isn’t trying to mimic Neapolitan pizza. “I’m just serving what I like.”
Although Racanelli hasn’t finalized the name for the 50- to 60-seat restaurant, he says he’s leaning toward Mad Tomato. “I’m kind of a kid at heart. It’s a playful name. I collect toys, comic books. And I call my daughter ‘The Mad Tomato.’ I keep going back to that name.”
Schedule permitting, lunch- and dinner-goers will be able to taste Racanelli’s from-the-Italian-hearth-and-heart fare some five months from now – on Valentine’s Day.
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This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2010.