COMFORTING CARBONARA IS BACK
PPasta is Australia’s unofficial national dish (up there with meat pies and pad Thai) but our preferences seem to go through phases: we’ve been obsessed with cacio e pepe, there was the great penne alla vodka wave of a few years back and the proliferation of tricked-up spins on mac and cheese. All of those dishes are still around – delicious never dies – but a familiar favourite seems to be twirling its way back onto forks: good old fettuccine carbonara.
It’s believed the dish was invented in Rome sometime around the middle of the 20th century, possibly something to do with American soldiers trying to shoehorn a bacon and egg breakfast into a pasta. It was everywhere in the 1980s – you might remember Meryl Streep famously shared a plate of spaghetti carbonara in bed with Jack Nicholson in 1986’s Heartburn – but then seemed to step out of the spotlight, perhaps because quantity overcame quality (no, it should not contain cream and if you cook it too hot and scramble the egg, it’s all over).
Recently, chefs have been reinstating this most comforting of carb dishes on menus all over Australia: you’ll find one rich with guanciale at Fugazzi (fugazzi.com.au) in Adelaide, while Guy Grossi’s classic at Garum (garum.com.au) in Perth – yolky and silky as all good carbonaras should be – is doing a brisker business than ever before.
“People are looking for comfort, flavour and things that make them feel good. That’s where the strength of these classic dishes lie,” says Grossi. “There’s nothing like going to a beautiful trattoria in Rome and ordering a perfect fettuccine carbonara. You’re at the source. There’s a romance to it. People have been starved of that for so long, it’s no wonder we’re seeing a resurgence.”
Pass the pecorino, prego.