20 Questions with Roberta’s and Foul Witch’s Carlo Mirarchi
Published:
In the Resy Questionnaire, we play a game of 20 questions with the industry folks behind some of our favorite restaurants. What’s your most memorable restaurant experience? Your favorite food movie? What restaurant would you want to time-travel for?
In this edition, we spoke to Carlo Mirarchi, the chef and co-owner of Foul Witch in the East Village, and Roberta’s, which has multiple locations throughout the city, from Bushwick and Domino Park to Penn District, as well as in Los Angeles.
The Resy Questionnaire
The Resy Questionnaire
1. Favorite thing you’ve ever cooked?
I used to make chicken piccata for my brother after school. It was the first time I had ever cooked for anyone else.
2. Kitchen tool or equipment you couldn’t live without?
A set of grill tongs or tweezers.
3. What five culinary items would you bring on a desert island?
Peanut butter. Just that.
4. What’s your favorite place to get a slice in New York?
5. Favorite cookbook?
Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds by Oretta Zanini De Vita.
6. Your drink of choice?
Freak Flag Hazy IPA from Self Care by Three Magnets Brewing Co. in Olympia, Wash. It’s a non-alcoholic beer.
7. Favorite food movie?
Don’t have one.
8. Which industry people, living or dead, would you love to cook for or have over for a dinner party?
Pellegrino Artusi [author of “La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene” (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well)] and [chef] Marie-Antoine Carême.
9. What restaurant industry person do you admire the most?
David Kinch.
10. What’s been the greatest restaurant experience of your life so far?
Dinner alone at La Grenouillère.
11. Your greatest professional achievement?
Being able to see people that I have worked with in the past go on to find their own success within the industry.
12. What single dish best describes your personality?
Ha. I’m pretty boring so probably something like chicken breast.
13. If you could go back in time, which restaurant would you dine at?
Not necessarily a restaurant but I would find it interesting to experience an imperial banquet during the Qing Dynasty.
14. Your favorite meal from childhood?
15. What is your wish for the restaurant industry?
We need to do a better job of bringing in the next generation of chefs into the industry.
16. What do you wish you did better? What do you do well?
My training skills seem to always need improvement. See question 18 for what I do well.
17. If you could eat through a city for a day, where would you go?
Saigon, Vietnam.
18. The one thing you can’t resist splurging on when you go out?
Not so much in restaurants but around late June I am eating a disgusting amount of Albion strawberries. It’s scary how many I can eat in one sitting.
19. What do you value most in restaurants?
Consistency.
20. It’s your last meal on earth, what are you eating?
Carbonara.
