Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant

MEETING ON CHRISTOPHER STREET

The first time I met Rita Sodi was in the spring of 2008. Her restaurant, I Sodi, had been open for a month or two, and I was lucky enough to find myself seated at the bar for a late solo dinner. I ordered her baccelli di fava and a risotto di asparagi from a small, handwritten menu. Twelve seats away was the chef and owner herself, enjoying a plate of carciofi fritti and a negroni. Little did I know that one day we would marry and work side by side in our neighborhood restaurants. Rita, as I would later learn, arrived in New York City in 2006 with a mission to share the food she grew up eating in Barberino di Mugello, near Florence, Italy. She found a spot on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village and at the age of forty-five began a chaotic adventure as a restaurateur and chef. At that time, Christopher Street was a delight of gay bars (and a gay pet store!), sex shops, pizza by the slice, and nail salons. Two years later, I Sodi would open its doors as a thirty-seat ristorante Toscana, purposefully unadorned, the interior and furnishings made from an old American barn and Carrara marble, and featuring simple Florentine dishes complemented with a list of well-stirred negronis. I ate at I Sodi at least five more times before I had the courage to introduce myself. I finally decided to drop by one afternoon with a couple of pints of perfectly ripe Tristar strawberries from the Union Square Greenmarket. Rita approved—at least of the strawberries. I got to know her by hanging out with her in her kitchen in the afternoons. I was struck by how peaceful it was, the methodical pace of peeling asparagus, the quietness broken only by the rhythm of knives mincing mountains of onions, carrots, and celery, and then there was the sweet aroma of the sugo di carne slowly cooking away. All of which brought me right back to the days I spent learning to cook in a celebrated café in Reggio Emilia, a small town in northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. Three years there and three years in Rome, all with the hope of mastering the basics of Italian cooking—something Rita, an instinctive cook, seemed to have learned at birth. We had so much in common for two completely different people.

By summer, our lives were entwined with the ups and downs of caring for our restaurants and an occasional respite at Rita’s home on Via del Carota outside of Florence. We were naive but compelled to keep going—and we survived the painful early days of uncertainty, when our restaurants were new (mine, Buvette, opened in early 2011), and the later, bruisingly busy days together as we expanded and joined forces. I still stop by often at I Sodi to peek into the pots and taste the sugo de carne, while around the corner on Grove Street, Via Carota, the restaurant we opened together, has grown with each season. JODY

BUILDING ON GROVE STREET

Bagno a Ripoli rises in the southeast of Florence. I lived there, on Via del Carota, for fifteen years while I worked as a producer for fashion houses before moving to New York City. My home was a restored seventeenth-century stone villa, with gated gardens, centennial olive groves, and a view of the Fiorentine hills and a sliver of Brunelleschi’s fifteenth-century cupola. The kitchen, my favorite part of the house, had a wood-burning hearth to cook in and a ten-foot chestnut table surrounded with English chapel chairs. Our restaurant Via Carota in New York City is inspired by the many moments Jody and I spent at this table and the meals we cooked together there.

Jody jokes that we opened Via Carota on Grove Street so we could actually see each other. I was struggling the first years, working long days and nights at I Sodi—cooking on the line, opening the restaurant in the mornings, and closing it every night. I was learning by trial and error, trying desperately to figure out this new restaurant-cooking thing. Jody was cooking around the corner on Grove Street at Buvette, her tiny French gastrothèque that never seemed to shut. It was all hard work, and her jest was not far from the truth.

We had less and less time to spend in Italy. Our home on Via del Carota was now left to caretakers and gardeners. So, while Jody was away in Paris opening the Buvette in South Pigalle, we agreed to sell the home in Italy and sign a lease on a shuttered Thai restaurant down the block from both of our Greenwich Village restaurants. We did not know what to expect of our collaboration. We had no name or specific plans—we only had our time in Italy. We knew we wanted to recreate our experience there, the place we loved most with the food we relished most. If we were lucky, it could be a place full of life where people would feel welcomed and nourished. RITA

As much as we want to remember these beginnings, we also knew Via Carota would forge new paths. For us, that meant holding on to certain culinary traditions, while taking risks and creating our own. Jody is more experimental, building on years of experience in pursuit of distinct classic dishes. (To this day, many of her trademark recipes, dating back to the mid-1990s, remain staples at the New York City restaurants where she first developed them.) Rita is a purist. She sticks to tradition, and she cooks instinctively. The food we create at Via Carota is the offspring of our different approaches and personalities.

For Via Carota, we imagined a world where we could be free from the formality of traditional restaurant dining. We rarely order what others consider a main course when we eat out. We prefer a table full of vegetables. Not that we don’t enjoy a beautiful grilled fish or few slices of steak; it’s just that we always want more vegetables, more tastes and textures. We crave antipasti, salads, beans, and vegetables. They are the triumphs of the season, each emphasizing one ingredient. Importantly, they are also for sharing. Spooning some thinly sliced artichokes or borlotti beans with farro onto your tablemate’s plate and then spooning the same onto your own is an intimate experience.

We want Via Carota to transport you to another place and time, where we have breathed in the rustic beauty and uncomplicated flavors. When you sit down in the restaurant’s birch chapel chairs at the wooden tables, it’s visceral. Some of these same chairs traveled from our home in Italy to our home in the West Village. We reclaimed decades-old wood from gymnasium floors and commissioned the craftsman Warren Muller to create his unique lighting throughout, one from vintage milk bottles. All of it is to complement and enhance your experience at Via Carota.

And over time, people have made Via Carota their own, a neighborhood spot where they can share a pile of fritti and a spritz, or warm up with a piping hot cacio e pepe lasagna. People come to our place because there is nothing dictated, you can eat how you want to eat here. Routinely, our guests ask us: Can we have the recipe? How did you make that?

Hence, we decided to write a cookbook, so that both regulars and those who have never had a chance to visit the restaurant can prepare some of these dishes at home.

Is The Via Carota Cookbook a vegetarian cookbook? Maybe a better description is “vegetable forward.” As at our restaurant, where our guests can choose from an abundance of seasonal fruits and vegetables—asparagus, artichokes, beans, beets, carrots, lettuces, melons, plums, and tomatoes—we are providing many notes and recipes here about some of our favorite vegetables and fruits that will fulfill you and fill your table throughout the year, from spring and summer to autumn and winter. They can be served solo or with pasta. Many dishes are an ideal companion to marinated chicken or roasted pork. There are also recipes for a slow-roasted lamb and a mixed seafood grill.

Use this book to create your own meals around the produce available to you, to eat how you want to eat. The vegetable-centered approach is more important now than ever. We believe it’s good for us and for the planet. We’re adapting all the time, and we encourage you to do the same. While we often talk about breaking with tradition in our cooking, eating a vegetable-focused diet is, in fact, traditional.

Via Carota food is simple. The ingredients are at its core. Some of these recipes require more understanding and work, while others you’ll commit to memory after a few times. And as every seasoned cook knows, you have to taste as you go, using all your senses. We hope you will explore and experiment and play with this cookbook, and that you will make our recipes your recipes.