Age 65 is a career red light for most. Chef Alfred Portale blew right through this signal like a Ferrari, opening a namesake Italian restaurant in November. After a 35 year run as Executive Chef at the legendary Gotham Bar and Grill — he earned three James Beard awards, multiple glowing reviews from the New York Times, plus a Michelin star lasting more than three decades — Portale packed his knives and left his post last summer. During his Gotham tenure, he introduced us to New American cuisine, and along the way, mentored numerous chefs like Tom Colicchio, who have become as recognizable as their former boss.
With his latest incarnation, Portale continues as a guiding force, surrounding himself with young up and coming kitchen talent. He recognizes that to stay on top, the fresh ideas of this new generation are essential. Part of this crew includes his daughter Victoria, who runs social media and events, and a few trusted, long-time Gotham chefs, a seemingly winning combination thus far.
Portale's Team (ph FB)
Portale was surprisingly relaxed during our meet-up at his eatery on a cold afternoon despite launching a new venture in the most cut-throat culinary city in the world under the weight of high expectations. Perhaps he never anticipated that an idea, hatched while designing a menu for a Bryant Park restaurant inspired by the French and Italian Riviera cuisine, would evolve into his Chelsea neighborhood Italian venue. Or maybe it was a relief that one week after introducing a lunch menu, the place was bustling with midday diners.
Nonetheless, Portale has created his version of a happy place, starting with the restaurant’s interiors. The design concept is mid-century modern Italian inspired by one of his favorite architects and furniture designers, Giò Ponti, who used a lot of brass, marble and walnut, all materials used for the bar.
Alfred Portale (ph Pat Dunford)
Here he discusses crafting ideas for his menu, how his mom’s red sauce became white bolognese, what he enjoys cooking at home, and his strong bond with fellow chefs.
How did you come up with your menu?
Some of the dishes I had worked on just conceptually. I wanted the menu to be an inspired Italian restaurant: the dishes, the ingredients, the passion of Italian cooking, the accessibility and the warmth, with the precision of the French technique. I’m French trained. I built a sample menu and over the summer we tested all of the dishes and settled on an opening menu. We certainly have lots of dishes in reserve.
Carpaccio (ph Pat Dunford)
How long does it take to create a dish from start to finish?
Conceptualizing the dish is not easy, but it’s the first step. Working through it physically, testing each piece, working on tasting and presentation can take a few days. It’s often a seasonally driven idea, thinking about what vegetables and fruits are at the market. Other times, I’m looking to a common Italian dish with common Italian flavors.
I thought carpaccio was a possibility for an appetizer. The first carpaccio was done at Cipriani in Venice. It’s pounded filet mignon with a sweet mustard sauce. The first time I had done it was back in ’86, it was a duck carpaccio. I thought, ‘What would be unique, different?’ I hit on the idea of using short ribs. They are highly marbled and demand slow cooking, but if you thinly slice them, they are very tender and have a really strong beefy flavor as opposed to filet mignon, that to my mind, has no flavor. I thought O.K. a short rib carpaccio. For sauce, I thought of an anchovy mustard colatura, an Italian anchovy-based fish sauce. Then, for crunch, I added shaved raw fennel. I played around with croutons and then got the flavors down.
Portale's interiors (ph Pat Dunford)
What about your cavatelli with cilantro?
We have a couple of cavatelli recipes made with exceptional ricotta dough. We are making all of the pastas by hand daily. My chef de cuisine Jacinto [Guadarrama], who has been with me for over thirty years, is from Mexico. We were joking about ingredients he could use that weren’t Italian like avocado or mangos and he said cilantro. From that point, we came up with a cilantro pesto.
Is that a popular dish?
Yes. All of the pastas are popular. The most popular is the lumache with the white bolognese. I was either looking at menus or paging through a cookbook and read “white bolognese.” I had never heard of it, and I thought it was cool idea and I knew exactly how I was going to do it. We worked on four, five or six versions of it, but the original concept never really changed, which was to start with my mother’s red sauce. They call it gravy in New Jersey, but growing up outside of Buffalo in a large Italian family, we called it Sunday sauce. It was made with tomatoes and braised pork and beef meat. For the white bolognese, I’m using pork and short ribs braised in a white stock, no tomato. It’s very popular, really tasty.
Lumache (ph Pat Dunford)
What would you recommend to first-time diners?
I would recommend getting something from the cicchetti, the small snack section. For appetizer, I love the salads, particularly the burrata. It is served with poached apricots and yellow raisins, beets and pistachios. I also love the fennel salad with the blood orange and black rice, really healthy and light. Definitely try some of our pastas and then settle on an entrée and a contorno. Experience the whole menu. I like the maiale, the roast pork. It’s a unique cut. It’s a chop but it’s not a loin or a rib chop, it’s cut much higher up near the shoulders and has really good flavor. It’s delicious with the orange mostarda. And I love the chicken in its simplicity, served with a blue corn polenta. I had an idea to do some in-house milling so we bought a mill that we use for the breads and blue corn.
What is your favorite Italian food?
I love pizza and all kinds of pasta. Linguini with clams is one of my favorite things to make. Every six or eight weeks I make a big pot of sauce and meatballs at home. I pack it in quart containers and freeze it.
Brodetto di Pesce (ph Pat Dunford)
What do you keep in your refrigerator at home?
Not a lot. I’m a single dad now, but when I have my boys I’ve got a lot of food in the refrigerator. On weekends it’s different, I have a house in the country and I do a lot of cooking up there, mostly grilling on my big charcoal rig. There are some excellent seafood markets in the area and I grill a lot of fish.
You have mentored some of the top chefs in NYC including Tom Colicchio and Bill Telepan. Do you still keep in touch with them?
Absolutely. They’ve been here a couple of times. Tom called me last week. I’m close to Tom and Bill, all of the chefs. It’s a unique profession in the sense that while we are competing one way or another, it clearly doesn’t feel that way. We’re all friends, and we share ideas, resources. We get together to do charitable events all of the time.