Made In House

Once you commit to a four-day dough, everything else has to answer to it. You can't put a four-day crust under a cheese that came off a truck in a bag and call the plate honest.

So the mozzarella is made here. The ricotta is made here. The stracciatella is made here.

On the stracciatella, since it's the one people ask about. The name comes from straccia, Italian for rag, because that's what it is: fresh mozzarella curd pulled into shreds and loosened with cream. It comes out of Puglia, down in the heel, around Foggia and Andria. It's the same thing you find inside burrata, which was invented in Andria in the early twentieth century, where somebody wrapped the shreds and cream in a pouch of mozzarella to keep them.

It doesn't keep. That's the whole point of it and it's why it has to be made close to when it's eaten. Ours is not a garnish. It's the reason half the people come back.

Same kitchen makes the sandwiches, the salads, the soups and the pasta. I cook lamb, goat, sweetbreads, cuts people might not normally see or try. I want to give people a way into food. Something unfamiliar, and a reason to come back for it.

Olive oil in the pan. Imported extra virgin. Never seed oil. That's the part you taste on the bottom edge whether you can name it or not.

Small shop on Bloomfield Ave, a short walk from the Wellmont. Nothing about the way we run it is fast. That's not a flaw in the system. That is the system.