Italy: Pilgrimage to amatriciana where tomato first met pasta

When tomato met pasta: Ingredients for pasta all'amatriciana in the kitchen at Ristorante Roma in Amatrice. Photo / The New York Times

Friends in Rome had warned me: No one should eat pasta all'amatriciana nonstop for a week. The sauce — a glutton's glorious punishment of pork, pecorino and tomatoes — produces one of the most satisfying dishes on the Roman table. But what's the best way to make it? I planned to eat my way all the way to the source waters, in the mountain village of Amatrice, about two hours north of Rome, to find out.

My amatriciana journey began, in a sense, several years earlier. On the evening of Aug. 23, 2016, I prepared bucatini all'amatriciana, for my son, Sandro, and myself. I remember this not because I'm one of those obsessive foodies who documents every meal. I remember it because my wife, Mindy, who doesn't eat pork, was not around for dinner that night, and the dish is a guilty pleasure. I remember the date even more acutely because when we woke up the next morning, we learned that a magnitude 6.2 earthquake had struck Amatrice overnight, killing nearly 300 people and causing widespread devastation.

So this is the oddest of travel articles: urging a trip to a place that, according to a former mayor, Sergio Pirozzi, mostly doesn't exist anymore. But it is still worth going. Not just for the food, which is the ultimate farm-to-table version of amatriciana, but for a moving reminder of human resilience in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Spires: Earthquake damage in the small hamlet of Retrosi in Amatrice. Photo / The New York Times

There is muscle-memory, and there is taste-bud memory. I first encountered amatriciana in 1976, shortly after I had come to live in Rome, at a now-extinct restaurant near Parliament called La Pentola. Known as a classic "piatto popolare" (everyday proletarian fare), the sauce was simplicity personified: a Savory ooze of guanciale (pig jowl), tomatoes and grated pecorino cheese, with a hint of hot pepper to deliver a subtle afterthought of heat, piled upon the thick, hollow and slithery noodle known as bucatini. A Roman-born chef I know in New York put it this way: "It's a very strong dish. You either love it or hate it." I loved it.

Ever since, I have been preparing the dish at home according to the recipe in Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cook Book" (Page 105, I don't even need to look it up), because that version — with onions, butter and pancetta — most closely approximated what I ate in Rome. I had to travel all the way to Amatrice to find out I've been doing it wrong for 40 years.

— A Pilgrimage Begins

So we set off for Amatrice, which is in the northernmost part of Lazio, poking its tongue, as it were, into the adjoining regions of Umbria, the Marche and the Abruzzo. After an hour or so on the old Roman salt road, the Via Salaria, hills become mountains, and fields become sloping pasturelands. A clue to amatriciana's simplicity — and indeed to its nativity — lies in those upland pastures.

Pasturelands: A view of Monti Sibillini National Park, near Amatrice. Photo / The New York Times

In her wonderful history of food in Lazio ("Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds"), historian Oretta Zanini De Vita celebrates the central role of pastori, or shepherds, as protagonists in the evolution of food in this part of Italy. For at least a millennium, sheep have been a dominant feature of this landscape. That explains why lamb remains one of the signature dishes in this region; it also is why many food historians believe shepherds probably "invented" the first, primordial version of amatriciana, before tomatoes ever made their way into the Italian kitchen. As one chef in Amatrice told me, "All the shepherds needed was a little pork, a little cheese and a little fire."

Earthquakes have riddled this region for centuries, too, and nothing can prepare visitors for the sight of what remains of Amatrice's historic center. Every building on the main street, the corso, was levelled by the 2016 earthquake, save a single forlorn and orphaned bell tower from the church of Sant'Emidio. After the tragedy, the mayor's lament — "Amatrice non c'e piu'" (roughly, Amatrice doesn't exist anymore) — became a popular epitaph for the town. But a second, more hopeful phrase has increasingly grafted itself upon the first — "ma c'e ancora" (still, it persists). Happily, that includes many local restaurants.

Fresh pasta: A new food emporium, replaces eight restaurants damaged or destroyed by the 2016 quake. Photo / The New York Times

In July 2017, thanks to a crowdsourcing campaign by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and the television network La7, a new food emporium opened in a beautifully landscaped complex just east of town. Eight restaurants that were either damaged or destroyed by the earthquake have relocated to these stylishly designed quarters. They feature light airy dining rooms with spectacular views of the Monti della Laga mountains.

— Red or Snow-Capped?

I knew I wasn't in Kansas — or Rome, for that matter — when I ordered amatriciana for the first time at Ristorante Roma, and our waiter, Alessio Bucci, asked a question you typically hear about wine: "Red or white?" In Amatrice, the town's signature dish can come either with tomato sauce (the traditional amatriciana) or without (a more ancient version of the dish known as pasta alla gricia). What you won't get is bucatini; the local version usually comes with spaghetti.

I opted for the traditional version, and the dish arrived as its own modest mountain of spaghetti topped, just like the 7,988-foot Monte Gorzano out the window, with a snow-like pile of pecorino, with slices of guanciale poking out through the sauce. The sauce was less sweet and less fiery than in Rome, but it had that essential amatriciana quality: elemental, feral, hearty without being heavy, delivering a mouthful of umami contentment.

I got an education, and some remonstration, in every restaurant. Gabriele Perilli, the 81-year-old head chef of La Conca, raised his hands as if fending off a vampire when I confessed to using pancetta when I cooked the dish back home (about the only way you found guanciale in the United States in those days was the way my Abruzzese grandfather obtained it — by butchering his own pigs). "Guanciale comes from here," Perilli said, tugging his cheek in admonishment. "Pancetta comes from here," he continued, patting his flank. "It's a completely different taste."

Pasta alla gricia, left, and spaghetti all'amatriciana, top right, at Ristorante Roma in Amatr. Photo / The New York Times

The amatriciana at La Conca, which was excellent, was presented not as bright red, but rather an off-red. This reminded me of the color of the Hazan dish when I made it at home, and when I mentioned that his sauce was not a full-bodied red, Perilli nodded his head in a conspiratorial manner, leaned forward and exclaimed, "Rosato!" Pinkish.

That may seem like a modest distinction, but Mark Ladner, the former head chef at Lupa and Del Posto in New York City, made a telling point when I mentioned Perilli's remark about color. If you add enough cheese, he said, it forms a kind of emulsion with the pig fat, producing an almost orange-ish color. When Ladner makes amatriciana, in fact, he uses a half and half mixture of pecorino and parmigiano, sheep and cow cheese. That strays from the classic Amatrice recipe — but that same mixture of two cheeses is also a feature of the Hazan recipe.

Pasta alla gricia at Da Giovannino in Amatrice. Photo / The New York Times

When did tomatoes enter the scene? Marco Crisari, proprietor of Da Giovannino, in Amatrice, said half-jokingly, "The tomatoes came into it, they say, when Columbus discovered America." So gricia, the precursor of amatriciana, was around before 1492? "Before Columbus, for sure," he said. (Tomato historian David Gentilcore places the arrival of the tomato in Italy — by way of Spanish and Italian missionaries to Mexico — around the mid-16th century, although he points out it was often grown as an ornamental plant for centuries and did not enter mainstream use in the Italian kitchen until the 19th century.)

— Butter? 'Noooo.'

When I returned to Ristorante Roma a couple of days later, Arnaldo Bucci, the 86-year-old family patriarch, showed me a picture of his mother sitting on a horse; until the era of truck transport after World War II, she herself would drive flocks of sheep down centuries-old mountain paths to Rome. When I asked about the proper ingredients, he waved me into the kitchen. "Talk to my wife," he said. "She's been making it for 60 years."

Back in a large, modern kitchen, his wife, Maria, stood sentinel over a simmering pot of tomato sauce, next to a large bowl of glistening cooked guanciale. I described to her the Hazan recipe, and she scowled with motherly disapproval.

Onions? "No," she said, with a sharp dismissive shake of the head.

Olive oil? "Just a little," she conceded.

Butter? "Noooo," she cried, shaking her head in exasperation. She pointed at the ingredients surrounding her: guanciale, tomato sauce, pecorino. And with that, she scooped up an ample handful of pecorino and snowed it over a platter of "white" amatriciana before sending it out. A few moments later, I was eating that same pasta. If anything, the gricia is tastier than the red amatriciana: The marriage of pasta, pig fat and Amatrice's earthier pecorino must have tasted much like it did to the shepherds centuries ago.

For such a simple dish, everyone, but everyone — especially on the internet — has an opinion about the proper ingredients. Chefs in Amatrice toss a goccia (a "splash") of white wine on the guanciale when it has almost finished cooking. Chef Carlo Cracco caused an uproar several years ago when he disclosed on Italian television that he adds garlic to his amatriciana; more than 100 media articles documented the "scandal." And it's not hard to find indignant online debates over even more exotic ingredients, including balsamic vinegar. "That's blasphemous!" pronounced Ladner.

— Sauce on Your Shirt

How did the chefs in Amatrice feel about the fact that much of the world now perceives amatriciana to be a Roman dish? Gabriele Perilli provided the slyest retort. "I've never understood why they make it with bucatini," he said. "It's such a big noodle, and it splashes all over, so that when you eat it, you always end up with tomato sauce on your shirt."

He was half right. The next night, back in Rome, I was eating bucatini all'amatriciana at Archimede, a bustling Roman trattoria just behind the Pantheon. I didn't get any on my shirt — but that was only because I was wearing a sweater, which quickly became flecked with tomato sauce. By this time, I would order amatriciana, and my wife would gently remind me that I didn't need to eat all of it. My only concession was to order half portions. Our Roman waiter could barely conceal his contempt for such a cowardly request.

Ristorante Archimede, a trattoria behind the Pantheon in Rome. Photo / The New York Times

On March 21, the day of my last amatriciana, government officials declared an end to the restricted "zona rossa" of Amatrice, although town officials still restrict public access to the center of town; the annual "Sagra dell'amatriciana," a festival celebrating the local pasta, will once again be held, on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. But people in town privately fear that it will be another 20 years before things return to normal, if ever. Filippo Palombini, who was Amatrice's mayor at the time of my visit, told me that reconstruction to date had been slowed by "mistaken" government policies.

Amatriciana: made with bucatini, at the Ristorante Archimede in Rome. Photo / The New York Times

When I first wrote about an earthquake zone, in 1977 in Friuli, I was struck by the generosity of the survivors, who had lost everything but insisted on offering coffee or grappa to people who had everything. Sometimes travel should be about giving back, and a splendid way to give back to Amatrice would be to venture into this most beautiful, ferociously remote part of Italy. You can savour the wonder of amatriciana at its fountainhead. You can explore the nearby Gran Sasso or Monti Sibillini, in spectacular national parks. And you can still hear the tinkle of sheep bells in town, which will remind you that you've arrived in the birthplace of one of Italy's greatest gifts to the world of food.

Written by: Stephen S. Hall

Photographs by: Susan Wright

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES