Inside SPQR’s Pasta Tasting Menu
Within the tiny kitchen of SPQR, Matthew Accarrino and his team have always placed an oversized emphasis on crafstmanship. It’s one of those operations where once you peel back the amount of components that go into every dish — and the amount of dishes on the menu — you stand in awe at the way things work. The same goes for its sister restaurant around the corner Mattina: the more you peel back the layers of the dishes, the more you understand.
“We think of cooking as craftsmanship,” says Accarrino. “It’s the reduction of flavor, bringing out the best of the ingredient, and the execution of the technique. So when you take every component of the dish, every component tastes good. And then, when you put it together, that’s where you get something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Everything has function.”
Nowhere on the SPQR menu is that now more apparent than the restaurant’s pasta tasting menu, where recently appointed chef de cuisine Mike Kapetanakis, Accarrino, and co. pack an abundance of flavor into little pockets of pasta deliciousness.
The five-course pasta tasting menu was a long-running tradition pre-Covid at SPQR, and now it’s back. It is offered on Thursdays, and based on its popularity, will extend to Wednesdays as well, starting on August 7. It’s currently priced at $59, and diners have the option to tack on anything from the normal menu, like dessert. Expect the pasta tasting menu to change frequently with the seasons, but here’s a sampling of what you can expect on the current version.
1. Goat cheese cappelletti, poached cherry, and pistachio crumble
As noted above, the menu changes frequently, but there are few beats you can expect the kitchen to hit. You’ll get a mix of filled pasta and the extruded pasta. And you’ll usually get one baked pasta. Everything is made in house.
The starter is a light dish, with the pasta dough getting a dramatic dose of cherry purée, and a filling of local goat cheese. It’s plated with pistachio crumble to create something bright to wake up the palate.
“It’s a take on something that could feign sweet but not quite,” says Accarrino. “It’s a good opener.”
2. Smoked salmon girasoli, Meyer lemon crema, and trout roe
The next course is where you start to see the fun that the kitchen has with some of these pasta shapes. “Girasoli” means “sunflowers” in Italian, and accordingly, these little suns bring smiles to the table. The six-pointed shapes are filled with smoked salmon purée; when served, they are simply glazed in a Meyer lemon crema and topped with trout roe.
3. Caramelized onion creste di gallo, nettle pesto, and bacon
This dish serves as a bridge of sorts in the meal, using some big herbaceous flavors to transition from the lighter opening courses to the more savory ones to come. To make these little “cockscombs,” the kitchen puts caramelized onions into the dough for added savoriness, and then mounts the pasta with nettle pesto and bacon.
4. Rabbit-stuffed farfalle with sauce romesco
Wait, stuffed farfalle? Yep.
“This is the place for us where we’re able to play around and make something up,” says Accarrino. “The stuffed farfalle is taking what is usually a hand-formed pasta and twisting it on its head and turning into a stuffed shape.”
The pasta is served with a (mostly) classic romesco sauce, but the simplicity of the dish’s final appearance makes it easier to overlook all the effort that goes into the dish. Whole rabbits are brought into the restaurant, broken down, roasted, and braised before being incorporated with their own reduction and ricotta to compact as much flavor as possible into these little pasta pockets.
“All the process is inside the pasta,” says Accarrino.
5. Cocoa bean pasta lasagna with black garlic and wild mushroom “stufato”
The timbale-style baked pasta dish has become something of a signature for SPQR. Almost like a terrine with its layers, it’s a practical dish for the kitchen, as well as a crowd favorite — a beloved “ugly duckling” dish, as Accarrino puts it. It’s no surprise that you see iterations of this dish popping up around town.
This iteration consists of a stack of cocoa-bean pasta sheets layered with mushrooms and black garlic. To make the mushroom layers, the kitchen cooks down mushrooms with aromatics and mushroom stocks, adds a splash of marsala, and just reduces flavors to get that maximum punch. Black garlic brings in even more umami, a perfect pairing for the mushrooms.
