Press

Bringing real Italian to a red-gravy town

By Craig LaBan

A side of Tuscan beef is no match for an Italian chef with a cleaver. But as young Marc Vetri watched a master dismantle a Chianina steer into steaks in his Bergamo kitchen, then grill them over an oak fire for lunch, he was simply awestruck.

"Always be able to do everything with your hands," Graziato Pinato told Vetri, then in the final months of his yearlong training at Taverna Colleoni dell'Angelo.

Recounted in Vetri's new cookbook, Il Viaggio di Vetri (Ten Speed Press), it's just one of the many anecdotes and recipes that pay homage to the old-school chefs, 80-year-old pasta-rolling grannies, and mustachioed mentors of his learning years in Italy.

But there is a resonance in that memory - a sort of primal encounter of man, food, and fire - that informs so much of the success of his restaurant Vetri, the intimate townhouse gem he opened 10 years ago this week with maitre d' and co-owner Jeff Benjamin.

This was a town simmered in a century's worth of Italian American red sauce and meatballs, but Vetri dared to forgo the penne marinara and Caesar salad.

"What [people] wanted was the real Italian experience," he says, "how [Italians] really eat when they go out and kill a wild boar. They make a ragu and toss it lightly with fettuccine."

So Vetri worked to capture and elevate the magic of authentic rustic cooking here, dusting that wild boar ragu and chestnut fettuccine with cocoa. He roasted goats over an open spit. He tossed hand-rolled pici pasta with guinea hen ragu and plums. He turned sweetbreads into ethereal ravioli, stewed tripe and white beans beneath a Parmesan crust, and crafted spinach gnocchi so light, only the lacework of ricotta salata on top seemed to hold them earthbound.

Vetri had begun his ascent toward becoming one of the most influential Philadelphia chefs of his generation. But not without the support of the city's best maitre d' in Benjamin, whose photographic memory for customer details is legendary. There was also good karma in one of the city's most storied spaces – the 40-seat dining room of 1312 Spruce St.

The Abington-born Vetri, fresh off a cooking stint in New York that followed his Italian journey, had considered debuting in a much larger, flashier Broad Street space. But he chose Spruce Street, in part, on the advice of one of its previous residents: Georges Perrier.

"I told him, 'Marc, if I was you, to make my name, I'd go to Spruce Street. If you can cook, you will do well,' " said Perrier, who started Le Bec-Fin there in 1970 before eventually moving to Walnut Street. Talk about an understatement. Vetri is just one of five Philadelphia restaurants to win this newspaper's four-bell rating. Major accolades from Gourmet, Food & Wine, and the James Beard Foundation have stoked the growing acclaim, anointing it one of the finest restaurants in the country. Reservations for the lavish weekend tasting menus disappear within 10 minutes of coming available - two months in advance. His second restaurant, the larger and more casual Osteria, has become a hit in its own right.

But the tiny kitchen and cozy dining room of Vetri remain his jewel - a passion-driven culinary atelier that has proven a remarkable training ground for some of the city's best young talents, with five Vetri alums now running three-bell restaurants.

More impressively, Vetri has become over time far more than its gastronomic pleasures. For devoted regulars, it is the touchstone of joyous meals remembered, and the scene of a decade's worth of life events marked by chocolate polenta souffles with glowing candles.

"There are customers who we've seen every anniversary for 10 years," Vetri says. "They had their first date here and now they have three kids. And we know them, and it's a really neat thing."

The regulars have watched Marc Vetri grow up, too.

At 41, he and his wife, Megan, now have two children - Maurice, 2, and 2-month-old Catherine - whom he sees each afternoon at their Center City rowhouse during a three-hour break.

In between running the two restaurants, there is still room for weekly basketball games at the Sporting Club ("I can still hang"), for hand-painting the tasting menus, for reconnaissance trips to farms and other restaurants, and for nightly jam sessions with one of his 12 guitars that sometimes last until 4 a.m. (Before a food career took over, he was the lead guitarist for a Los Angeles band called Mild Mustard.)

To see Vetri these days, striding in his chef whites through the dining room to pull a shot from one of his beloved vintage espresso machines, or tooling around town on a Vulcan motorcyle with his mastiff, Angelo, riding in the sidecar, is to see a man at one with his world, basting in the juices of his unique style.

But he wasn't always the picture of confidence, said his sister, Risa Vetri Furman, now the district attorney of Montgomery County. His lifelong struggle with a stutter, she said, was particularly challenging to him as a child.

"He was the opposite of a confident kid," she said, recalling young Marc as awkward and unsure, his glasses perpetually cockeyed and taped. "The speech problems were very difficult, and some kids were not particularly nice. But he learned to stand up for himself.… Once he hit a guy, they didn't come back."

"But what he went through as a kid," she said, "was the real building block for what he's become. It's also made him very compassionate and understanding with other people."

Vetri and Benjamin's commitment to Alex's Lemonade Stand - their fourth annual benefit last year raised $150,000 to fight childhood cancer - is one measure. But Vetri's relationships with other cooks also portray a chef with a patient and quiet intensity, who communicates by setting an example.

"With Marc, he's not throwing pots or pans or threatening you," says former sous-chef Michael Solomonov, now co-owner of Zahav. "He's, like, making you cappuccino or biscotti. It's different… but you are taught to think like a chef."

Learning to embrace the Vetri aesthetic of simplicity elevated through ingredients and technique is not easy, though, for young chefs to master.

"Cooks are scared to make simple things," said Vetri. "They think you need all this stuff in there - a grilled this with a gelee of that and a puree of this and leaf of this and cracker of that for texture. By the end, it's six different dishes on one plate."

Solomonov agrees.

"I thought I was a hotshot coming from Striped Bass, but Vetri's all about taking four ingredients and making them perfect. Here he was making polenta with water, olive oil and salt, and I could not get it right!"

Vetri's insistence on preparing everything to order, in contrast to the typical restaurant-style prep - from peeling potatoes for a galette to butchering a whole turbot, pitting olives, mincing herbs and finishing sauces - makes it feel more like cooking for 100 diners than 40.

"But that really makes you a strong line cook," said Jim Burke, another Vetri alum, who now owns James. "After a year, I felt like I could walk into any kitchen."

And many of them did just that - to three-bell reviews - including Burke, Solomonov, Dionicio Jimenez at Xochitl, Chip Roman at Blackfish, and Jeff Michaud, now the chef and co-owner at Vetri's Osteria.

Their departures were inevitable and even encouraged by Vetri after a couple of years, before Osteria opened in 2007, showing his first inklings of expansion. But as he looks toward possible future projects - a Bergamo-style trattoria, a casual pizzeria, and maybe a casino location for Osteria - he hopes to retain more of his crew, like current Vetri chef Brad Spence.

But don't hold your breath. Vetri's reluctance to jump on quick-buck gambits is renowned. He had about 50 serious partnership offers before he decided to open Osteria alone on North Broad Street with Benjamin and Michaud.

"I don't like taking money from people," he said. "I don't like owing anybody anything."

To Stephen Starr, who twice approached Vetri only to be rebuffed, "Marc is just cautious… but he's a good role model and good guy."

In the meantime, Vetri is enjoying the moment. He unveiled a fresh renovation of his namesake restaurant that brought elegant Venetian plaster walls and a new mahogany door. The cookbook that documents the culinary journey and the dishes that have won him such acclaim is scheduled for an October release.

To celebrate, he's even throwing a 10th anniversary party for friends in the parking lot next to Vetri, where he plans to carve a whole swordish on a bar of ice and throw slabs of it on a wood-fired grill.

"Everyone does a pig," he says. "But I like to surprise people. Who's ever seen a whole swordfish, a couple hundred pounds, just lying there? That's cool."

At Marc Vetri's place, the primal encounter of man, food, and fire burns brighter than ever.