Chef Recipes Made Easy

Andrew Carmellini of New York City’s sensational A Voce prepares lusty Italian food using ingredients like pork jowl and mussel broth. Here, F&W simplifies his best dishes.

Andrew Carmellini, an F&W Best New Chef 2000, has spent the bulk of his career working in French kitchens. When it came time to open his own place, however, he chose to honor his Italian heritage. At Manhattan’s new A Voce, he makes meatballs with duck and offers other riffs on traditional Italian dishes. Before opening A Voce, Carmellini took almost a year off from restaurants, cooking at home just for pleasure—learning, he says, to "stop cooking like a chef, to not use 15 pans to make a meal." Even at A Voce he keeps his ideas simple: "At the end of the day," he says, "the stuff people come back for isn’t the veal head cooked three ways. It’s the ravioli." Next up for Carmellini is an American restaurant. After all, he says, I’m an American guy."

Published November 2006