THIS SAUCE IS BOSS
Why everybody is using this Italian sauce on everything.
Vitello tonnato. Pronounce it, as an Italian would, trippingly off the tongue. Translate the traditional dish into English — veal with a tuna flavored mayonnaise — and that initial mellifluous charm fades fast.
“It’s such a delicate dish, but such specific, strong flavors,” British chef Ruth Rogers said. “Once you start describing it, it becomes more complicated than it is.”
That’s why, on the menu of London’s River Cafe, this antipasto from Italy’s Piedmont region comes with no description. It probably doesn’t need one; she’s been serving it there, unchanged, since 1987, when she opened the restaurant with Rose Gray.
Vinny Dotolo, the Los Angeles-based chef and restaurateur, considers vitello tonnato a forerunner of surf and turf. “You get that brininess, but tuna carries a bitter quality with it in a weird way,” he said. “And I think that’s a good thing.”
At Jon & Vinny’s, the modern pizza joint he opened with partner Jon Shook, he presents the tonnato without the vitello, or any other meat. A recent visit found the sauce — made of anchovies, capers, lemon, egg yolk and olive oil — spooned over wood-grilled shishito peppers garnished with sesame seeds.
Dotolo is one of many chefs taking creative liberties with the dish and, more specifically, its fish-enriched condiment. Like other sauces — bagna cauda, chimichurri or romesco, to name recent examples — it appears to be having its meme moment. Where before people applied the flavors of Caesar dressing to everything from kale to potato chips, now they ton natize with abandon. It has been swooshed onto seared swordfish and raw tuna. About 10 miles from Jon & Vinny’s, at Bestia in downtown Los Angeles, there is a crostino topped with veal tartare and, you guessed it.
Lately, the thing to do is to pair it with vegetables, which is Dotolo’s preference. He has seen it with regular bell peppers, green beans, beets and — one he strongly recommends — chicories.
Rolando Beramendi, an importer of Italian specialty foods based in San Francisco, is less than thrilled with the “very strange things” being done to the iconic Italian dish. “I think they are using the word tonnato for anything that’s a mayonnaise with tuna in it … This is a prime example of a recipe that has lost its meaning,” he lamented over email.
What everyone agrees on is the importance of having the very best olive oil and tuna you can find. Although the dish is a summertime institution in Italy, the tonnato itself is composed of pantry staples. Those, like Dotolo, who would dare flout convention are doing so year-round, and why not? You can make the sauce anytime.
Now is as good a season as any, and, with apologies to strict constructionists, I’ve come up with recipes for four variations on tonnato.