"When I was a child, growing up in Piedmont, I was lucky to have my great-grandparents around, especially because they were the ones cooking our family meals. We ate baked pasta rather than lasagna, and instead of béchamel sauce, we used local cheeses such as fontina or formaggio di Bra. The ragù was sometimes made using the leftovers of salsiccia di Bra, a traditional veal sausage that’s generally eaten raw, as my great-grandmother didn’t like to waste food. It was a very rich dish of melted cheese, tomato sauce, and meats. Whatever was left on the baking plate after we ate all the pasta was scooped up with bread.
While it brings back great childhood memories, I rarely eat this dish because there’s no salsiccia di Bra in New York. You can do a scarpetta with anything, but I enjoy it most with fish dishes. For example, with mussels, when cooked with a couple of potatoes, tomato sauce and parsley. The sauce has an intense flavor of seafood and is more similar to a broth, easily soaked up with a piece of bread. It’s divine, and even better when using toasted bread. My preference is for big loaves, such as Tuscan bread, not too salty, with a hard crust and a soft inside, easily sliced and toasted. It works even better for dipping when it’s two or three days old. But good quality bread is hard to find in this country. It’s often very processed and contains many preservatives. We’re fortunate to have a great bakery in Eataly, one of the best in the city, where the bread is prepared daily on the premises with good quality flour and lievito madre, a natural yeast, or sourdough starter."
"As a good Italian, I can’t eat without bread. I love how many restaurants in the States bring bread and oil to the table, so you have a dip before your meal, like a “pre-scarpetta,” which is not often done in Italy. Some places that come to mind are Il Gattopardo, a classic destination of Italian comfort food in a Midtown townhouse with a garden, and Marea, Michael White’s seafood restaurant with a great oil selection. We always serve bread and a rotation of regional oils at the tables in all of our Eataly restaurants across the country. "
"The scarpetta can be done with many of our dishes. It might sound ordinary, but I recommend it with our signature pasta al pomodoro. We are currently using a sauce by the brand Cosi Com’è, which means, “just the way it is,” since it’s made of just small tomatoes cooked in water. The dish is prepared with only three components, pasta, tomatoes and extra-virgin olive oil. When you have such good ingredients you don’t need anything else, maybe some Parmigiano Reggiano on top. The simplicity of sopping up tomato sauce and oil with bread is quintessentially Italian. Our best sellers, both at the store and the restaurant, are in fact simple classic items such as long pasta, like spaghetti and bucatini, and pizza margherita."
"While some might think that cleaning their plate with a piece of bread is not appropriate etiquette, I feel that it’s absolutely acceptable in our current world, where there’s no formality and many restaurants don’t even use tablecloths. Italian lifestyle, even small rituals like the scarpetta, continue to inspire the world to enjoy life to its fullest."
As told to Carole Hallac
Dino Borri's Portrait
Born and raised in Piemonte, Italy, Dino Borri started his career in the food industry in 2000 organizing and coordinating events for Slow Food. In 2008, he started collaborating with Eataly in Turin, and soon after, he became in charge of opening new stores for the food emporium around the world. He curated the opening of Eataly stores in Japan, where he lived for two years, and moved to New York in 2010 where he launched the first US location in the Flatiron District in Manhattan. Living and breathing high quality food and Mediterranean lifestyle, Dino is currently general manager, brand ambassador and head buyer of Eataly North America.