CACIO E PEPE NO-RECIPE RECIPE
The simplest pasta–on the surface–has only three ingredients, but it’s all about balance and temperature. As a format, spaghetti, tonnarelli, rigatoni and mezze maniche are all classics. No penne, fusilli or egg pasta if you want to respect tradition (but not everybody does, even in Rome!). Then you need pecorino cheese–not too aged, grated–and aromatic black pepper. The rest is art. The procedure does not permit mistakes: boil the pasta until al dente in lightly-salted water, and just before draining, set aside some of the cooking water. In a bowl, mix the grated cheese with pepper and an equal amount of cooking water, not boiling, until it becomes a cream: if the water is too hot (above 70°C) it will make the cheese stringy; if you add too much, the cream will be too loose. Toss pasta with the sauce, and serve immediately with more pepper and grated cheese.
FROM UNRELIABLE LEGEND TO A CREAMY FUTURE
Unreliable legend has it that the dish was invented by shepherds, during transhumance of cows and sheeps, who brought their own cheese to the pastures. The story is questionable for two reasons: for sure, shepherds had cheese, but black pepper was quite an expensive ingredient, and dried pasta was not a common staple food all over Italy yet–especially not as camp food! After WWII, with rising wealth and industrialization, these ingredients became more accessible, and the Italian cooking and recipes we know today started to become more and more daily habits, rather than special dishes for holidays and celebrations. Cacio e Pepe is just one plate inscribed in this evolution of Italian food. Certainly it was a dish of cucina povera that became a classic tavern recipe in the postwar period, but it is said that the pasta was served very dry, not as creamy as we’d like it today, so that customers would order plenty of wine to wash it down. Perhaps this is just another legend and tavern cooks simply wanted to cut costs, corners and time. What we can say for sure is that today people love a creamy sauce instead, and the challenge is to find who makes the creamiest version–in Rome, all around the world and on social media.
CACIO E PEPE GOES VIRAL
The internet loves an only-three-ingredient recipe. This (which makes Cacio e Pepe deceptively simple) and the cheese + carbs combination are essential parts of the secret of its media success, along with the fact that it can be made anywhere in the world with any pepper and any cheese. Plus it’s vegetarian, inclusive, comforting, inexpensive and particularly Instagrammable. Cacio e Pepe is the perfect formula for being able to become one of the most cooked Italian recipes in the world: according to New York Magazine, it was the coolest pasta dish of 2016, and at that time, its popularity was only just beginning. Cacio e Pepe has been elected the “Italian dish of the year” for Gambero Rosso’s Top Italian Restaurants 2022 Guide dedicated to the best Italian restaurants in the world, and you only have to check Google Trends or browse Instagram and TikTok to discover the rising popularity of #cacioepepe. Pasta? Not only that, because the cheese + pepper combination lends itself well to all kinds of twists, and ends up every day on pizza, burgers, bagels, taralli or in omelets: everything can be cacio e pepe. Even in its native town.
CACIO E PEPE IN ROME
Cacio e Pepe is a must try dish when in Rome, but lucky you, because it’s almost impossible to find a restaurant that’s not cooking it, from a classy Michelin Star to the cheapest osteria. Everyone in Rome really makes it, and every place boasts of making “mejo cacio e pepe de Roma” (“the best cacio e pepe in Rome”). Here are the ones that really do.
Right in the center, da Luciano is a restaurant well known for its pasta guru chef Luciano Monosilio and the pasta factory inside. They produce homemade rigatoni, with which their Cacio e Pepe is made. At Antica Pesa, in Trastevere, the sauce, on classic spaghetti, is super whisked and so creamy; at Da Felice, in the Testaccio district, the pasta arrives on the table unseasoned, covered by a cloud of pecorino cheese and is stir-fried tableside with quick, precise, hypnotic movements: the Oscar-winning director and actor Roberto Benigni, a regular at the restaurant, even dedicated a poem to it, prominently displayed on the wall. You can also eat the dish at Roscioli’s, legendary delicatessen and kitchen, but with a homemade egg tonnarello version–the same recipe that will also be found in NYC at their new restaurant in Greenwich Village.
A “BLACK AND WHITE” CACIO E PEPE
To enter a black and white movie, and feel like Gregory Peck or Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, there is only one spot in Rome and it’s on Tiber Island. Trattoria Sora Lella is a legendary restaurant owned by the heirs of Elena Fabrizi, aka Sora Lella–a cook, actress and popular face of the Italian Dolce Vita. Not in the same way as Sophia Loren or Gina Lollobrigida though: Sora Lella was a typical woman of the people, curvy, older, with a strong Roman accent. She was the sister of famous actor Aldo Fabrizi, which is why she ended up on theater stages and in many movies from the 60s and 70s. She debuted at 43 years old; acted under the direction of Monicelli, Dino Risi, Ettore Scola; alongside Totò and Alberto Sordi; and in the 80s she became well known all over the country thanks to her comedies. Every Italian remembers her as a sort of a national granny, an icon of Italian and Roman identity. Since 1959, she’s cooked tonnarelli cacio e pepe in her trattoria with mint, her personal twist, and this is how you still taste the pasta at Sora Lella nowadays, from her grandson’s hands that now run the restaurant.
TWISTS ON THE CLASSIC
Not just mint: everyone has their own little twist, like Japanese chef Kotaro Noda, who at his Bistrot 64 uses aromatic and potent Sarawak black pepper. Michelin-starred chefs have obviously tried their hand at the recipe, elevating it to a gourmet dish through both technique and ingredients. In Rome, at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant La Pergola, chef Heinz Beck makes it with lime-marinated shrimp; on Lake Garda at Lido 84, chef Riccardo Camanini cooks it in a bladder, using a classic French technique; Errico Recanti at Andreina restaurant in Loreto, Marche grills it over the fireplace and seasons it with seven peppers. Mathias Perdomo in Milan stuffs it into a raviolo, while Massimo Bottura in Modena makes a risotto with the flavors. At Rome’s Il Maritozzo Rosso they have made a cacio e pepe maritozzo, and those like Stefano Callegari at Sbanco have made a cacio e pepe pizza, but no one–if it needs pointing out–dares to add oil, butter, or worse yet, cream!
