Brian Canipelli, the exceptionally talented Asheville chef behind Cucina 24 and Contrada, died on February 6. He was 46, just a couple of years younger than me.
Obituary readers are always on the lookout for their ages, of course. But this synchronicity has real-world relevance because Canipelli opened Cucina 24 on Wall Street just a year or so after I got my first food writing gig at Mountain Xpress, a few doors down the block. In other words, our careers coincided almost precisely. In fact, I was the first person to write about his restaurant.
We didn’t have much of a dining-out budget at Xpress, an independent alt-weekly, so I couldn’t have the multiple meals that a true review requires. Instead, I worked out a format in which I’d visit a restaurant once, and if the place seemed worthy of readers’ attention, I’d arrange to meet with the chef for a guided menu tasting. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it had a critical component, and all the chefs loved having a chance to explain what they were trying to do with each dish.
All the chefs, that is, except Canipelli.
Canipelli always wanted his food to speak for itself, even at the very start, when he wasn’t sure he’d yet puzzled out the best way to make something. We were both just getting the hang of our work when I published a quasi-review of Cucina 24 on July 9, 2008.
In other words, it’s not a piece I’d want enshrined in my permanent portfolio. But I’m sharing a lightly condensed version of it here, with Xpress’ permission, for two reasons.
First, I’m spending a few days at the University of Mississippi next week with writing and rhetoric students, who’ve been reading along, so it’s an opportune moment to acknowledge how writers develop over time. Second, and most importantly, it feels fitting to commemorate Canipelli—one of the humblest chefs I’ve ever met—by focusing on the restaurant he created.
When chefs die, they take their artistry with them. Unlike poems and paintings, which retain their power forever, all that’s left in the wake of a dish are diners’ memories of it. Fortunately, in the case of Canipelli, those memories are manifold—although some of them are slightly inaccurate.
After I learned of Canipelli’s passing, I credited him on social media with introducing me to cacio e pepe. But according to what I wrote 17 years ago, I already knew about the dish. That makes sense: I’d been to Italy, and it’s not like pecorino and pepper were rarities in the U.S. What Canipelli actually did was reset my expectations of the dish so thoroughly that his preparation expunged every previous encounter with it. That’s a feat which doesn’t require any additional explanation.
A gathering in celebration of Canipelli is planned for next Sunday, February 23, from 2 p.m.-5 p.m. at New Belgium Brewery in Asheville. Remarks start at 3 p.m.
Posted on July 9, 2008 by Hanna Rachel Raskin
Flavor: Fresh, seasonal pan-Italian
Ambiance: Cosmopolitan
Price: Lunch, $8-$11; dinner, $12-$21
All my visits to Cucina 24 have started with the same long wait at the hostess stand. I’ve never encountered a line—although, heaven knows, with such superlative food on offer, even the indignity of being handed a blinking pager device would be endurable there. Instead, it’s usually just me and another customer, wondering whether anyone knows we’re there.
We’ve strategized: Should someone approach the bartender? We’ve whined a little, having grown accustomed to the perky, ready-to-please restaurant greeters that are the trademark of a tourist town. And, ultimately, we’ve sighed and waited our turn to be whisked down the long, honey-lit corridor to a table.
Lately, I’ve come to appreciate the wait. Like the ramp leading to the comfortably hip sunken dining room, the pause serves to create some welcome distance between Cucina 24 and the world beyond its doors. Cucina 24 does what only the best restaurants do: It makes everything else feel very far away. “I can’t believe we’re in Asheville,” I’ve heard more than one dazzled guest muse aloud.
The kicker is that the restaurant doesn’t rely on gimmicky décor or an overwrought menu to induce eating-out ecstasy: Cucina 24 has justly placed its faith in its dishes. Chef and owner Brian Canipelli is a sucker for stripped-down simplicity, as exemplified by the centerpiece found atop each table: Lanky house-made breadsticks gathered in a juice glass.
“I didn’t want to be a special-occasion restaurant by any stretch of the imagination,” Canipelli told me when we met for a meal. “I wanted to do honest interpretations of classic Italian food.”
Canipelli, a veteran of Rezaz and Table, spent the better part of a year planning Cucina 24’s debut. He recruited his brother and a former culinary-school classmate to staff the open kitchen, creating a clubhouse air he says is conducive to great cooking. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” he says.
So well, it seems, that not a single one of those weaknesses is apparent to diners. Canipelli is serving phenomenal food and knows it: He declined to expound on his cooking philosophies when we met and offered the same shrug in response to every compliment and challenge. Because, really, are there any words that could convey Canipelli’s skill and purpose as articulately as a dish of fava beans with mint, olive oil and pecorino?
Cucina 24’s urbane menu is organized in traditional Italian fashion, so diners can enjoy a standard progression of antipasti, pasta, entrée and cheese courses. But Canipelli says many guests linger in the antipasti section, ordering up a veritable picnic of small plates, most of them composed of deceptively humble-sounding ingredients.
The antipasti menu I sampled included a rich chicken-liver crostini, zippy marinated mushrooms, olives, peppers and six cured meats. And then there was the mound of delectable, watercolor-green, pureed favas, packed with a startling amount of springtime flavor.
Cucina 24 is quite kind to vegetarians and vegans—a friend of mine reports that when he called about options for his vegan guest, the restaurant took the cue to prepare an all-vegan feast for the pair. Three of the four wood-fired pizzas available at suppertime, including a stunning wild mushroom-and-taleggio pie, are veggie-approved. I also adored a rustic salad of warm asparagus, crowned with a jiggly sunny-side up egg.
Canipelli delights in juxtaposing textures and temperatures; it’s not unusual to find hot and cold elements elbowing for space on the same plate. Although not all his experiments are successful—I was slightly put off by a chickpea salad featuring tuna subjected to three minutes of wood smoking, creating what tasted like very hot raw fish—the underlying playfulness is remarkably engaging.
While meat surfaces throughout the menu, none of Canipelli’s creations could easily be re-plated on tripartite cafeteria trays designed for equal portions of protein, starch and vegetable. His dishes are fully realized compositions, perhaps none more so than the exceedingly popular roasted lamb shoulder, which Canipelli soaks in milk for six hours.
Or try a dish like the awesomely good black-pepper tagliatelle, an updated cacio e pepe, with the black peppercorns brilliantly worked into the pasta dough, embedding a depth absent from most preparations of the sheep’s-cheese-flaked dish. Although the wavy noodles, looking like a skein of unraveled yarn, are visually bland, the flavor is sensational, with the pungent earthiness of the cheese providing the perfect counterbalance to the sharp sophistication of the peppercorns.
I was so completely taken with the tagliatelle when Canipelli served it to me that when I returned to Cucina 24, I insisted that my dining companion—who has no obvious affection for black pepper or sheep’s-milk cheese—order it. This time, the noodles were gummy, making it the only disappointing dish I found.
That suggests to me most of the food offered to the public is every bit as good as what I was given in my role as a reviewer. And that is very, very good, indeed.
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