A longtime fixture on New York City’s culinary scene, Scott Conant quietly slipped away in 2017 and moved to Phoenix, opening Mora Italian in the bustling Seventh Street restaurant row. In the fast-growing Western city, he has restored his status as one of America’s foremost Italian chef-restaurateurs at Mora Italian, which reopened in April after a monthslong pandemic closure and renovations, and at his Italian-inspired steakhouse in nearby Scottsdale, the Americano.
Conant’s Phoenix-area restaurants build on a career spent creating elevated Italian food in elegant settings, dating back to the early 2000s, when he emerged in Manhattan with L’Imperio and earned three stars in the New York Times among major accolades. He’d go on to run respected Italian kitchens throughout Manhattan and then created Scarpetta, which became a national brand before his departure. Of course, he is also an omnipresent force on the Food Network, bringing down the hammer on contestants on Chopped, co-hosting Beat Bobby Flay, and hosting Best Baker in America and Chopped Sweets.
La Cucina Italiana caught up with Conant on the phone from The Americano, which opened in 2020, to find out more about his stealth New York exit, how his Phoenix ventures are doing coming out of the pandemic, and more.
The last time I saw you was in New York five years ago and I didn’t know you’d left! How did you wind up having two restaurants in Phoenix and what is your connection to that city?
Well, you know, I was living in New York City for 27 years. And one day I woke up and I said, What the hell am I doing here? I'm living to work as opposed to, you know, just trying to enjoy life a little bit better. I have some really close friends here in the Scottsdale area, and I had this opportunity to open up a restaurant. So I just said, Let's make the switch. My wife was super-resistant at first. Because she didn't know anybody here. It took her a little time to adjust to it. But I'll tell you, she loves it. Over the past year, during the pandemic, I can’t tell you how many times she's turned to me and said, “Thank God, we're here and we're not in New York City right now.” It's just a different world out here. I feel like when I come home, I'm coming home to a resort. It's just great.
Mora Italian just reopened after a long break due to the pandemic as well as renovations, but take me back to when you opened it. What was the concept?
Well, I've opened a lot of restaurants, you know. So the intention here was, first of all, I loved the design—when the partners presented the design to me, I got it right away. And I felt like, what I would want to eat or what customers would expect in this kind of environment. Right? Where it's a great feel, with beautiful pops of color and some rustic elements. Everything is nicely appointed. So I just wanted to create food that was going to match with that, you know, and really identify and push service that matches with that as well. And I feel like we've done a great job.
The menu has some of your familiar favorites on it. Even after all these years, I still don't understand how you get the spaghetti, such a simple dish, to be so good. Can you talk a little bit about the the pasta pomodoro and how it's done at Mora and how people have reacted to it?
It's about the integrity of the cooking technique, as well as the ingredients themselves. You know, I pride myself in using fresh tomatoes for it. Very rarely do we add any canned tomatoes. I just don't like the citric acid inside there. It's simple and straightforward. There's five or six ingredients in the dish overall. But, you know, what I like to think is that all of those ingredients are singular, but harmonious. There's just something about that texture, I think, that people really love.
Pasta at The Americano, Scott Conant's Italian-inspired steakhouse in Scottsdale. Credit: Tac Coluccio
Can you talk about your own history with Italy?
Yeah, well, my mother is a first-generation Italian-American. My grandparents came from Benevento. And you know, if you say to anyone Benevento, particularly in Italy, the first thing they're going to say is Strega, because that's where the drink comes from. So I grew up with that Campagna-style food around the table. Italian-American food never really resonated with me. I always found it to be a little heavy handed and, frankly, a little bit sloppy. That's not what I wanted to cook. So when I started working at San Domenico in New York City in 1990, I saw this world of Italian cuisine that I had never experienced before. Eventually I went to the CIA (Culinary Institute) and I graduated and went to Germany to work. The intention was that I would go to Italy and find a job, but I couldn't find a job there. But I would go to Italy twice a month and travel around. It was just the food that I love. And it resonated with me because of that refinement, the integrity of the cuisine, but still also simultaneously identifying the soulfulness. That's what it is for me: Italian food is soulful.
Why do you think Italian-American food lost that soulfulness? Is it because many Americans prefer the chains’ version of Italian food, like at Olive Garden and Spaghetti Factory?
Well, I'm not in the business of judging—
Yes you are!
I judge a TV show, but that’s different. I like to compartmentalize my judgments. [Laughs] Many people I've known over the years have said to me, “Scott, before I ate at your restaurant, the Olive Garden was my favorite restaurant. Now I understand a little bit more about the nuances.” And that's all I can do. Right? You know, there's a Buddhist philosophy: you do the work, and the rest is up to the universe. The rest is not up to me, I'm just doing the work. I'm putting it out there.
Nice. So let’s take it back to Phoenix. Or Scottsdale, where you have the Americano? Is that reopened now as well?
Yeah, we've been open pretty much throughout this. We had a really small staff and we had to cut the menu down significantly. It's a steakhouse. And it just has a nice balance of really good pasta dishes and steaks that are off the charts. We finish everything on a beautiful grill. I'm standing inside the dining room right now. It is a gorgeous restaurant. So I really feel like when I created Scarpetta years ago, like I can take more Americanos and put them in multiple markets and make a lot of people happy.
What’s the audience for Italian food like in Phoenix and Scottsdale? I mean, is the Negroni a very well known drink there? I see it on your cocktail menu, front and center. Is that something that you're that you're selling a lot of where people know what it is?
Yeah, I mean, it's not a third world country! There's some very sophisticated people in Scottsdale. Surprisingly, there are a lot of Italians here. It's always fun for me to have an Italian come in, and they look at me and they're like, “Oh, your name is Scott Conant. Yeah, what kind of name is that?” Of course, they're judging me right away. But I always say to them, Listen, I speak Italian with my food. Eat the food and you will understand. And inevitably, there's a shocked look on their face. We have a lot of New Yorkers that have moved here, a lot of people from California that have moved here over the past year. And they just feel like it’s recognizable because I've had restaurants in California for years. Obviously, I came up in New York City. A lot of people know my restaurants from New York. And people know me from TV or whatever the case may be. But when they come in and they taste the food, you know, the celebrity chef thing is what it is, and I don't pay a lot of attention to that. But I have been a sort of celebrated chef through most of my career. I take much more pride in that. What I always say, though, is if the TV show gets you in the door, the restaurant and the food will make you come back.
We want to speak to you more when your new cookbook comes out this fall, but when can you tell us about it now, as a teaser?
Peace, Love, and Pasta is the name of it. I've been cooking now for 35 years. This is basically a lot of the food and a lot of the dishes that I've done over the years, kind of recreated for the home. My last three books were really more about the food that I cook in restaurants, kind of tweaked for the home cook. But this is literally stuff that I cook at home for the family.