Delfina’s spaghetti: Pasta weds tomato

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories highlighting signature recipes from the 2015 Top 100 Restaurants. Look for more of these features over the next several weeks.

In the 16½ years since Delfina opened on 18th Street — long before Tartine Bakery drew lines and luxury condominiums started springing up like mushrooms after a rain — chef and co-owner Craig Stoll estimates he’s sold 120,000 plates of spaghetti with tomato sauce.

The simple dish became a restaurant signature early on; The Chronicle ran a version of the recipe in early 1999, when a fresh-faced Stoll was named a Rising Star Chef.

And rise he has. Since opening Delfina, he and his wife, Anne Stoll, have gone on to open the Roman-inspired Locanda and four outposts of Pizzeria Delfina.

Delfina made Michael Bauer’s annual Top 100 list in 1999, the first year it was eligible, and has has remained on the list ever since.

In a mercurial, trend-obsessed business, the Stolls have remained true to their vision for Delfina as a neighborhood restaurant that marries the simplicity of the best Italian food with Northern California’s extraordinary bounty.

As for that spaghetti, time has not diminished its appeal. The tomato sauce has only five ingredients and cooks in just 45 minutes; it is not, as Stoll says, “an all-day, back-of-the-stove Grandma thing.”

What separates the Delfina recipe from the spaghetti with red sauce you’ve thrown together in your own kitchen is largely technique.

Stoll par-cooks the dry pasta in salted water for only five minutes, at which point it’s still crunchy and a bit stiff.

He transfers it to a frying pan with the tomato sauce and continues cooking it for six or so minutes longer, until the pasta is al dente and there is no sauce remaining in the pan.

This is the significant step; no sauce remaining in the pan means that that pasta has sucked it all up. It’s no longer pasta with sauce — it’s pasta and sauce. The two have become one.

It’s a recipe that anchors a restaurant, and a restaurant that anchors a place.

Photos by Tina Case / Special to The Chronicle; photographed at Riggs Distributing Inc., Burlingame, Sub-Zero and Wolf Appliances Chef Craig Stoll prepares the sauce for Delfina’s signature spaghetti.