TGIFOOD

PASTA ROYALTY

The King of Carbonara in the kitchen at Scala Pasta

The King of Carbonara in the kitchen at Scala Pasta
King Luciano Monosilio’s signature carbonara. (Photo: Supplied)

The latest darling of the Cape Town food scene has collaborated with chef Luciano Monosilio, known as the King of Carbonara. Monosilio promises to serve up his pasta al dente.

Italy’s youngest Michelin-star chef, Luciano Monosilio, aka The King Of Carbonara, has collaborated with the latest darling of the Cape Town food scene, Scala Pasta. 

The slogan is “Not your mamma’s pasta” so right away you know it’s going to be out of the ordinary, dishes you won’t find anywhere else in the Mother City. It’s also going to be properly al dente, which is something to which we South Africans are still a bit resistant.

An informal survey – in other words, all the people I’ve mentioned it to in the past month or so since I learned about Scala Pasta opening on September 15, 2022 – has revealed that everyone in Cape Town already knows about it. Open a week now, quite a lot of them have been inside (fully booked for weeks in advance) but for those who haven’t, here’s the lowdown.

Scala is in Church Street in the city centre. As you enter, there’s a dining area on ground level to your right, but when you descend the steps (“scala” in Italian) into the cave-like depths you’re entering another world. The entire room is painted black, air ducts are exposed, and bright marigold-yellow napkins add pops of colour on the marble tables. They’re printed with “Not your mamma’s pasta” on one side, “Everything you see I owe to pasta” on the other, a famous quote from Sophia Loren. At the end is the kitchen, brightly lit like a stage. For it is a theatre, and it’s more than a mere kitchen. It has one of those fancy charcoal ovens that cost about the same as a small house. At one end is the Pasta Laboratory, where leftover bits are rolled together and mixed with truffle to make a lollipop to welcome you and whet your appetite.

Inside Scala Pasta in Church Street, Cape Town. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

Another accepted way to do that is with a Negroni. There are three to choose from: Classic (Bombay Sapphire gin, Martini Rosso, Italian Bitters), White and Orange Blossom. I had the Classic, served in a squat glass with one big cube of clear ice. My teetotaling friend had one each of the booze-free cocktails. We had the best table in the house, slightly elevated and close to the action on the pass. We could also survey all the other diners. Lunchers? We’d squeezed in somewhere between the two and those still lingering were from lunchtime. Once they cleared out, promptly at 6pm, the first dinner seating filled the place almost instantly. At one point, I rolled my eyes because the people at the next table had apparently brought their ring lights with them to take quality selfies. Not true. They are actually the table lights which you remove from their stands and use to take flattering pics of yourself and your food. It’s all about the ’Gram, baby. Does anyone even say that any more?

The Scala Pasta concept is something different, being based on sharing. So you can begin with antipasti, then go on to three to five pasta dishes per couple (recommended). If you prefer to pop in for Aperitivo Hour (4pm – 5.30pm Mondays to Sundays but not First Thursdays), there’s cicchetti – snacks and side dishes – and I just love saying the word now I know how to pronounce it. Things like Italian olive and potato focaccia, grissini sticks; Burrata, cherry tomato, focaccia croutons with oregano; Mascarpone and potato cappuccino, and other light and easy nibbles.

We did two antipasti – melanzane, and a great big fat squishy burrata, taken to new heights with a touch of dill.

The pasta dishes are all served at the same time. The friend is vegetarian so we ordered all three options. One: Pici cacio e pepe. This is literally pici pasta (hand rolled thicker-than-spaghetti, made with only flour and water, no egg) with cheese (lots) and pepper (also lots). Simple and superb. It’s what I love so much about Italian food, that sparsity of ingredients all done exceptionally well.

Tortelli, coal-roasted tomato, burratina, black truffle. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

Two: the charcoal oven comes into play with the oven-baked pacchero (thick pasta tubes) filled with smoked ricotta and capped with rustic tomato sauce. This leads up to three, my favourite: tortelli with burratina and black truffle. It bears mentioning I like this one best, because of course I also had to sample the carbonara. By all accounts, no ordinary carbonara. It’s created by Luciano Monosilio, who is known as The King Of Carbonara, and he collaborated with restaurateurs Paolo Carrera, his first cousin Anthony Protoulis and Anthony’s best friend Niko Tiftikidis, to open Scala Pasta. The trio also owns Hacienda, Burger & Lobster, and Iron Steak, all of which you can see from the street outside Scala.

Oven-baked pacchero, smoked ricotta, rustic tomato, grana. (Photo by Bianca Coleman)

“We have been working together since 2016 when we came together to open up Burger & Lobster. The three of us love concept stores which are unique and different. We try to open not just your regular restaurant but something that is fun and memorable. We share the same values and ideas. You can see each of our stores are very unique based on the offerings and how we do things,” said Carrera, who has known Monosilio for 15 years.

“We met when he came and spent time down here in Cape Town. We have become very good friends over the years and have met up multiple times either in Rome or in Cape Town. He even came to my wedding in Florence,” said Carrera. 

“I have been wanting to do an Italian concept – but the right concept. There are many great Italian restaurants in Cape Town but I wanted to do something different, not just another Italian restaurant. I am very passionate about Italian food and wanted to really represent it in a unique way. 

“Luciano and I wanted to collaborate for years but needed the right concept, time and location. Over the years pasta bars have become very popular in Milan, London and New York. I love the idea of sharing pastas and only specialising in pasta. What better person than the ‘King Of Carbonara’ to collab with? His knowledge on pasta is amazing, from making it to cooking it. We are not an Italian restaurant, we are a pasta restaurant!”

Luciano Monosilio plating his carbonara at Scala; Adriaan Coetzer, head pasta maker in the Pasta Laboratory, looks on. (Photo: Supplied)

Monosilio, now 38 years old, was Italy’s youngest Michelin-star chef when he was 27. “I have always experienced Michelin as a distant dream when I started my career as executive chef, but just nine months after opening the restaurant, Pipero al Rex, I received this prestigious recognition when I was 27,” he said. “So instead of seeing it as a point of arrival since I received it at a young age, I saw it as a starting point to do better and better to achieve more and doing something good also for the people around me.

“The Michelin star gave me the opportunity to travel a lot for work and introduce myself to many wonderful chefs all over the world; this helped me to grow as a chef and entrepreneur.”

This “not your mamma’s pasta” claim intrigued me, so I asked Monosilio to explain (read in bellissimo Italian accent; I’m swooning). “People all around the world are used to think that fresh pasta is the greatest expression of the product of pasta. That kind of pasta, that reminds us of our mothers who rolled out the dough with a rolling pin at home, is what we call Mamma Pasta: artisanal, maybe too much artisanal, to have a method behind the execution. 

“But it was perfect that way. 

“The product we serve at Scala is completely different: first of all we prepared also durum wheat semolina pastas; all our kinds of pasta are artisanal products that follow a codified recipe and high quality flours. The most important difference between a homemade pasta and a professional one is the different approach to the recipe: that housewives have no precise rules but those handed down verbally from grandmother or aunt, with all its small defects; pasta made by professionals in enriched by technique and written recipes to make the product replicable and consistent to give the customer a good and always the same product, which cannot be done with a home approach.”

In other words, “your mamma’s pasta”.

Monosilio became King Of Carbonara when he was working in Pipero al Rex. “And in a fine-dining restaurant I proposed a Roman poor dish, trying to elevate this traditional recipe from its humble origins into an art form,” he said. “My Signature Carbonara is considered the best in the world also because it has a production method that makes it replicable and good, always the same every day all year. In Luciano Cucina Italiana in Rome we serve about 230 carbonaras every day and each dish has the same high quality.”

This wasn’t an overnight process. Monosilio said his passion for dry pasta comes from a long path; he started with a very small workshop on the lower floor of his restaurant in Rome. “Four years of long studies to find the perfect recipe, this passion is leading me today to open my factory of durum wheat semolina pasta in the Roman countryside not far from Fiumicino.”

For the menu at Scala Pasta, Monosilio decided to concentrate more on Italian flavours and less on specific recipes because “of which they have no certainty because traditional recipes could change from region to region”, he said. “Italian gastronomy is mainly made of home and oral tradition. That’s why the Scala menu is an explosion of Italian and traditional flavours. There are healthier recipes with less salt and fat.”

I asked Monosilio his thoughts on the South African palate and true al dente. It’s clearly a topic which Italians take extremely seriously and it’s not open to debate. “In Italy, pasta al dente only means that it must not be overcooked. It has to have a bit crunchy texture,” he said. This is still somewhat subjective, so if you really can’t handle the chewiness, do tell your server and your pasta will be slightly “overcooked” for you.

So, the carbonara. Sure, it was good. It has guanciale instead of pancetta, and you can easily find a YouTube video of Monosilio making it. But that tortelli though… wait, the pacchero… no, the pici. Oh just have them all and blow your mind.

Whether this leaves you suitably inspired, or intimidated, you can learn to make pasta yourself. Old Town Italy runs monthly classes which are enormously popular and sell out fast. At Constantia, my local, Peter Wernich told me he had 11 planned for the year but has had to add extra ones, with 17 so far by the beginning of September.

Perhaps I should be ashamed to say I have never, not once, made pasta. It’s one of those things I’ve always liked the idea of but somehow never got around to it. By the end of this class I was on my Takealot app looking up pasta machines, so I think that speaks for itself.

Ready to go – pasta dough (rested), flour for dusting, and slow-cooked pulled short rib to fill. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

Rolling pasta dough. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

The classes are hands-on. Depending on the type of pasta, you’ll either knead it and rest it, or it will be done for you. On this night, it was the latter. Wernich demonstrated the basic dough – flour, eggs and water, could it be any easier? – and then we all got our balls, wooden boards, cutting wheels and paddles, flour for dusting, and a bowl of pulled beef short rib. The task was to make tortellini. Google Translate will be of no use to you whatsoever in this case but those are the ones that are supposed to look like belly buttons. I was amazed at how easy they were to fill and fold; it always looked so complicated when old Jamie was doing it on the TV.

I found it a deeply satisfying task, sitting there dusting flour, wetting my fingers with water to seal the ends, and making pasta. I could see myself in a Tuscan kitchen, or outside the back door of the kitchen, in the dappled shade of lemon trees, with my pasta dough and my wine. There is wine at Old Town Italy as well, it’s included in the price, as is a small antipasti board of some salami, cheese and bruschetta. 

Bianca’s army of tortellini with a tortellini captain. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

If you get stuck, Wernich is on hand to help you out; he’s a patient teacher. I proudly used up all my dough and all my beef, and arranged my tortellini in neat, regimented rows. There was one bigger tortellini which Wernich had made for an example, and I designated it the captain of my tortellini army. I wasn’t the only one playing with my food; I noticed a man who had put his in a circle on his round board. You get a sticker on which you write your name, and your pasta is whisked away to be cooked. The sticker is so you get your own back, something of which I heartily approve as I have a deep distrust of communal cooking vibes.

Tortellini by Bianca, with pomodoro sauce. (Photo: Bianca Coleman)

The slightly-more-than-al-dente-but-not-mushy tortellini were served with a rich pomodoro sauce with peas, in a ratio which would probably give an Italian an aneurysm but I enjoyed it. Plus there was enough to take away for the next day’s lunch.

Move over, Sophia – I’ve got this pasta thing. Fun fact: Ms Loren turned 88 on Tuesday. Buon compleanno! DM/TGIFood

Click here for more information about Scala Pasta.

For more information about the pasta classes, click here.

The writer supports The Gift of the Givers Foundation, the largest disaster response, non-governmental organisation of African origin on the African continent.

Follow Bianca Coleman on Instagram biancaleecoleman

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