Mamma Knows Best

Twenty years ago, when Leo, Salvio and Roberto — the brothers Varchetta — helped launch their parents' restaurant, Mamma Melina, in the University District, the focus was on Italian comfort foods. And for most Americans in the 1980s, that meant the food of Naples: pizza, calzone and macaroni, spaghetti, marinara sauce and the tender white cheese known as mozzarella.

But over the years, Americans, including Seattleites, became more familiar with foods from other regions of Italy. Emilia Romagna yielded its secret delights: balsamic vinegar, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and unctuous Parma ham. Fresh pastas such as tagliatelli and hand-formed tortellini made with soft wheat flour instead of hard Durham wheat started appearing on local menus.

We traveled to Florence and discovered the simple joys of Tuscan-style vegetables — asparagus and artichokes naked as Michelangelo's David, barely drizzled with olive oil. Risotto in the style of Milan became a menu staple. Local bakeries started producing focaccia, and diners grew hungry for more authentic Italian flavors.

So the Varchetta family experimented with other Italian dining venues, including Leo Melina on First and Union and Buongusto on Queen Anne Hill, now home to Vincenzo's Gourmet Pizza. But nothing they tried endeared itself to Seattle the way Mamma Melina did. That is, until last September when the brothers collaborated to produce Barolo Ristorante.

Mamma Melina, says Leo Varchetta, "is the food of the south, of Naples. Barolo is the food of the north, of the Piedmont." Why, I wondered, would three brothers from the south decide to serve foods of the north?

"When my great-grandfather opened his first restaurant in 1898, the regional cuisines of Italy were still very separate. Even when I was a kid, we would drive from one end of the country to the other to try foods from different regions. But Italy is a small country, and more and more, Italians are familiar with foods from everywhere in Italy. After all these years in Seattle, I wanted to serve foods of the Piedmont because that region of Italy is so much like the Northwest. The weather is similar, the foods are similar."

Nestled between Switzerland and France, the Piedmont is, after all, the northwest corner of Italy. In addition to being the home of Italy's most noble wines, Barolo and Barbera, it is famous for dairy products like the incomparable Fontina cheese, for grains like rice, corn and wheat yielding risotto, polenta and creamy pasta dishes. It is game country and mushroom country. As home of the famous white truffles of Alba, it is the center of the truffle lovers' world. All these traditions are reflected in the menu at Barolo.

As many as a dozen different made-in-house pastas and risottos appear on the menu every night. Expect some of them to contain wild mushrooms and/or game. House-made gnocchi with braised pheasant, anyone? And because this is Seattle, look for seafood variations on the classic Piedmontese themes. One rainy day last winter was considerably brightened by a delectable spaghettini with sparkling fresh chunks of Dungeness crab, warming bits of crushed red chilies and sweet caramelized grape tomatoes.

James Best, who trained under their mother at Mamma Melina and helped open Leo Melina, is the chef. Between his posts with the Varchettas, Best donned a toque at the Four Diamond-award-winning Sun Mountain Lodge in Eastern Washington and the prestigious Stein Eriksen Lodge in Utah. "We work together to develop new items for the menu, and James, having trained with our mother, totally gets it," Leo says.

But Barolo isn't all about the food. "When you do a regional restaurant," he says, "you're not only cooking regional food, you're representing a culture. We wanted the dining room to reflect the Italy we know. There, you will see Roman ruins right next to an ultra-modern building. It's a mix of traditional and modern." Italian-American designer Denise Corso interpreted Melina's vision with both antique and modern furnishings set against a backdrop of clean architectural lines and framed oil paintings commissioned by the family patriarch, Pasquale Varchetta, who is living happily ever after with the family matriarch, Melina, in Formia, halfway between Naples and Rome on the Italian coast.

Greg Atkinson is author of "West Coast Cooking." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com.

Spaghettini Al Granchio

Serves 2

12 ounces spaghetti noodles (about ¾ of a 1-pound package)

1/3 cup good-quality olive oil, plus more for finishing the dish

2 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and sliced thin

1/8 teaspoon red chili flakes, or to taste

2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley, divided

8 grape tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise

7 ounces fresh Dungeness crabmeat, about 1 cup packed

1. Cook the pasta first. Bring a large volume (about 2 quarts) of well-salted water to a rapid boil and drop in the noodles. When the noodles are half cooked, after about three minutes, prepare the sauce.

2. Pour the olive oil into a sauté pan over medium-high heat until the oil is hot, but not smoking. Add the garlic, the chili flakes and half the parsley to the hot oil and stir until the garlic is sizzling and just beginning to brown. Add the split tomatoes and cook until their juices are beginning to turn brown on the bottom of the pan, about 2 minutes. Add the crab and cook just until the meat is warmed through, about a minute.

3. Take the sauté pan off the heat, drain the spaghetti noodles and stir the cooked spaghetti and the remaining chopped parsley in with the crab. Transfer the pasta to warm serving bowls and drizzle each serving with olive oil.

— Adapted from a recipe by James Best of Barolo Ristorante