As Chef Evan Funke of Los Angeles’ Felix Trattoria revealed in Part 1 of our interview, his time spent learning from master pasta makers in Bologna revealed to him his “life’s work”—to carry on these fading artisan traditions of handmade pasta. “I'm kind of offering myself up as this godson of pasta to these Nona to allow me to continue the passage of technical and practical knowledge,” he told us. “It’s not just the shapes, it's not just the know-how—it’s the history, the people, and the origin story that is the most important thing to me.”
In this second part of our chat, Funke explains why his book (now on The New York Times best cookbook list) is less a cookbook than an “apprenticeship,” and why he likes to view California as if it’s “a region of Italy”—unless he needs a dish to “taste of the grit” of a Bologna street.
Let’s talk about your cookbook, “American Sfoglino.” Why did you decide to write it?
I don't actually view this as a cookbook—I think it's a hardcover apprenticeship. It is a technical novel with a little bit of story. Sure, there are a few recipes in there, but if you really come down to it, the heart and soul of this book is about the digestible, step-by-step processes on how to roll pasta by hand, and then how to take the different thicknesses and shape them correctly, while debunking a lot of the generalities that are associated with making certain forms of pasta.
For instance, when people make farfalle, they usually cut a rectangle with rounded edges and they crunch the middle together. How many farfalle have you eaten where the wings are completely overcooked in the middle is crunchy? So, I have taken a new, architectural approach to reforming and re-engineering how the shape is actually formed, so there's only a single touchpoint at the very top of the two peaks of the valley. They are connected, and thus it creates a channel for the water to pass through, uniformly cooking the entire thing and creating a consistent texture. Any time you take a single thinness pasta and you bend and pinch it, you have a touchpoint that’s now double thickness. So unless you press that double thickness back down to single thickness, you will have a crunchy bit.
Let’s talk about ingredients.
Here's how I think about it: I cook as if I am in a region of Italy. Italians are very specific. They cook with what is around them, and then they have a base of knowledge, a base of tradition that guides them and how they cook. They are the original creators of sustainable and local cooking. Full stop. So, if you take a note from their notebook and say, “I'm going to cook as if California is its own region in Italy and cook with what's around,” that's what we do.
With that said, there are certain products that are absolutely indispensable. You cannot reproduce Parmigiano-Reggiano. You cannot reproduce Prosciutto de Parma. You can't because the inherent terroir is in it, you can't recreate it. So, if I make Bolognese with one-hundred percent California-grown ingredients, it's not going to taste of that place. It's very important to me when I make this 200-year-old ragu that I know I need it to taste the grit of the street in Bologna. I need it taste like Via delle Belle Arti. It's gritty. It's got cigarette smoke, diesel fuel, and melting pork fat that you can sense in the undercarriage. But the only way to do that is to take products that are produced in that place and bring them to the US and coax out those nuances and then fold them into the ragu. All I'm doing is trying to be a mouthpiece a sounding board for tradition. When I put a dish on the menu, I want it to be the best representation of that dish.
So, would you say the statement you're trying to make with Felix is just a full celebration of authenticity?
One hundred percent. Felix is like Italy's greatest hits—and someones that you may not know—always told with the utmost respect to tradition, to the origin story of whatever that dish is. It’s a teaching restaurant. I want a conversation to flourish between pasta maker and guest. If there's a guest in the dining room and he or she is eating a bowl of trofie, and they look down and see there's like 150 trofie in this bowl, and then they look up through the glass and they see a guy or gal ripping out trofie one by one, it’s like, “This chef did that 150 times just for me.” That's an exceptional feeling. That's a profound moment. And when the connection happens, you never forget it. I want this conversation to happen on a nightly basis.