Saucy spot:
Solevo Kitchen’s expertly old-school approach to red-sauce tropes largely succeeds
Solevo Kitchen + Social in Saratoga Springs offers Italian dining with a classic feel augmented by family touches and some pleasing updates.
You don’t have to look far for Italian in Saratoga Springs, so you have to hand it to the two sommelier-restaurateurs who sold their family Italian restaurant in New Haven, Conn., and opened Solevo Kitchen + Social on Phila Street within the year. After starting careers in wine distribution, one went into fashion and one cooked in Italy before buying and running their parents’ restaurant for four years. At 29 and 32 years old, the siblings only just straddle 30, but as fourth-generation restaurant owners, Giovannina Solevo and her chef-brother, Ronald, have red sauce in their blood.
Of late, the national food media has been agog over Misi, the follow-up to Lilia and their Brooklyn chef-owner Missy Robbins for making carb-loading pasta sexy again. At Solevo, you’ll find just as much love and semolina — or 00 — flour making its way into the scratch tagliatelle, spaghetti alla chittara, rigatoni and gnocchi, some rolled by hand, the rest swiftly sliced from the pasta extruder. Each has that telltale fresh pliability and enough rustic heft for teeth to chew. Italian-americans have long revered their tomato-based sauces as pasta’s figure-hugging accessory, but most agree pasta — in long, short or shapely form — is the real star of the show.
A nest of tagliatelle supporting wildcaught Mexican shrimp unravels in firm, wide strands slick with buttery tomatomarsala sauce and studded with shiitake mushrooms; its sweetness offset by the salinity of beady capers. Those who choose pasta-less secondi — perhaps veal scallopini pounded delicately thin and bathed in buttery white wine sauce shot with citrus and capers — will be rewarded with stubby tubes of ridged rigatoni crowned in Sunday sauce. And there’s another reward: A spectacular richly yellow Parmigiana polenta that moves sleepily and sleekly with each scoop. Ronald admits his goal is to see how much butter and cream each batch can absorb. Do not hold back.
At 8 a.m., Ronald Solevo Sr. sometimes lets himself in to help his son with a head start on Gram’s meatballs made with only beef and panade — breadcrumbs soaked in milk that are key to their tenderness. Or he might start the Sunday sauce using a hand-me-down Calabrian recipe perfected by generations in New World family restaurants. It requires only San Marzano tomatoes, salt, basil and fat.
Wait, fat? Depending on the in-house butchery that week it might be rendered fat from pork ribs or trimmings from the beef braciole or New York strip. Slow-simmered, it gives the sauce its rich depths because, as we know, with meat, fat is flavor.
Unlike eateries that rely on one sauce as a base note, Solevo treats his as individuals: Bolognese, made in two large batches, is cooled and given a day of rest so that herbs and seasoning can harmoniously meld; a quick vegan marinara lightly hints at shallots, basil and garlic among crushed tomatoes. (Ronald is working on import-
ing a signature strain of D.O.P San Marzano tomatoes from Campania for his sauce.)
There’s rustic sofrito with beef heart diced into tiny bites that add an earthy flavor to the slowsimmered trinity of peppers, onions and tomato; a sauce called Pop Gag’s, born of a practical need to feed a crowd, is our table favorite, with smooth paccheri tunnels submerged in stewy tomatoes and hot and sweet vinegar-brined peppers, the kind you see in large cans on Italian deli shelves. The addition of crumbled sausage from a Connecticut supplier is crusty from a hot pan and packs an embarrassment of fragrant cumin. Only the calamari pomodoro misses the mark, with the calamari softly over-stewed, the sauce distinguished by shrimp but arrestingly fishy, enough to stop conversation in its tracks.
What’s the allure of an old-school red-sauce joint? Is it the wall of family photos capturing 70 years of history, a great-grandfather’s naturalization papers, serious faces before a camera, the lettering of Gag’s Dining Room (Gag was their great-grandfather, Antonio Gagliardi) on restaurant windows with an early Ford parked outside? Is it the comfort of Italianamerican standards from
spaghetti with clams to Marsala made with panroasted Amish chicken?
It’s all here — authentic, straightforward and not always prettily plated — a southern Italian story with enough glamour that you could don granny’s fur stole and not look out of place.
Giovannina and Ronald designed the restaurant from the ground up in the new Spencer Condominiums on Phila Street, working with building contractors to outfit the raw space. White tiles back the marble bar, glossy black and white
floors evoke Las Vegas Italian, high tops offer a view of the kitchen through the pass, a tufted green leather banquette cocoons a marble table, and a white-tablecloth dining room attended by servers in black is an oldschool class act. We marvel at the obvious investment. Since it opened in late September, most nights have been busy; arriving, we run into friends at the bar. In this downtown market, you go big or go home.
But the young Solevos do detour from the past with their focus on organic ingredients and a few modern tweaks: A towering pile of crisply battered eggplant chips dripped with Calabrian chile honey and torn basil is an outrageous bar snack; saltimbocca is offered as heritage pork, (not veal), to broaden its appeal, with prosciutto and mozzarella tempering its slightly oversweet port wine sauce.
With two sommeliers in charge, a wine list packed with Super Tuscans and varietals from across Italy’s wine regions sets hearts aflutter, but cocktails are surprising misfires: Grapefruit and basil duke it out in a rye paloma in which sea salt functions as saltwater emetic, and The Fizz, involving Earl Grey tea-infused sloe gin, could be a melted Jolly Rancher ice pop. A quick pivot to a primitivo wine is the right call, though The Fizz stays on the table throughout dinner. Another guest’s Waldorf Manhattan earns full credit from all.
Ronald’s partner, George Ewald, who encouraged the upstate move from Brooklyn, and the Solevos’ mother, Nancy, make the ice creams and desserts. When you don’t have room for olive oil or carrot cake, an affogato usually covers both coffee and sweet, only here it’s sundae-sized and topped with chocolate, whipped cream and a magnificent chewy-fruit biscotto, in a massive overplay of an espresso over a single scoop. You could always stop in for the eggplant chips and move straight onto dessert.
A two-course dinner for two with an additional side and two glasses of wine will cost around $105 with tax, before tip.