Nostalgia is a powerful factor at the dining table.
Thousands of newly matriculated college students feel it every autumn, when
dining-hall food prompts a sudden longing for Mom’s cooking. For some, it’s
memories of that vacation in Provence or Tuscany: oh, to get a meal in the
States like the ones we had over there! I get similarly misty over retired
local chefs; for instance, I fondly recall Laura Brennan’s creative French and
Italian cooking at the South End’s bygone Caffè Umbra. Charles Draghi, whose utterly
original take on Italian cuisine I first encountered years ago at Marcuccio’s
in the North End, was another one much missed: he apparently got fed up with
working as a hired gun and left the chefs’ ranks for years. His name often came
up over dinner: “Whatever happened to that guy? Loved his food.”
Fortunately for Bostonians, Draghi is back, this time running his
own show as the chef/owner of Erbaluce (69 Church Street,
Boston, 617.426.6969), where he can freely pursue his unique take on the
cuisines of the Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna, and other regions of Northern Italy.
Perhaps alone among Boston chefs, Draghi eschews butter, instead basing his
sauces on concentrated vegetable, fruit, and herb essences. This technique
yields a remarkable freshness, delicacy, and complexity to his dishes. Yet his
novel approach never takes him too far from the spirit of his sources. Consider
his take on pansoti ($19), a classic Ligurian version of ravioli. The pasta
wrappers have the inimitable tender/resistant texture of fresh house-made
ravioli. The filling combines ricotta with gently sautéed greens both mild
(like cabbage) and bitter (like escarole). These are sparingly sauced with the
aromatic pesto for which the region is famed, here using walnuts instead of
pignoli, and bracingly accented with lemon and fresh thyme.
In other hands, this dish could be leaden, pedestrian. Here, it
offers a phenomenal interplay of textures and an astonishing lightness: a
trenchant example of how artfully chosen and concentrated plant-kingdom flavors
can trump the lazier chef’s reliance on animal fats to impart depth and
roundness. Beyond his singular culinary vision, Draghi’s other great asset is
his partner, genial GM and gifted sommelier Joan Johnson, who has crafted a
list of rarely seen, mainly Northern Italian wines. After a slow start in a
slightly out-of-the-way location near Park Square, the crowds have finally
found Erbaluce, and it’s about time. This is the kind of cooking that future
nostalgia is made of.
