Rolnick Glenn - Carmines celebrates : classic Italian recipes for everyday feasts

ALSO FROM CARMINES

Carmines Family-Style Cookbook

CARMINES TM
CELEBRATES

CLASSIC ITALIAN RECIPES
FOR EVERYDAY FEASTS

Glenn Rolnick with Chris Peterson

St. Martins Press
New York

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For Artie Cutler, a man who had a gift for creating reasons to celebrate

ALICE CUTLER

Carmines is the premier Italian restaurant in New York, the city with the most famous Little Italy in America, a place jam-packed with notable Italian restaurants. We stand out from those others because we serve superbly cooked classic Southern Italian dishes made to order with the freshest ingredients we can find. We serve our dishes in abundant, family-style portions that leave no guest hungry. We offer a wine list second to none, including impressive magnums of high-quality Montepulciano and Trebbiano, hundreds of labels, and our own house brand bottled in Italy. All in all, we seat, feed, and make millions of customers happy every year.

But Carmines is much, much more than a restaurant. You have only to step through our doors to understand that. Carmines is a larger-than-life place, where we consider it failure if someone walks out less than impressed with every aspect of the experience. Our mammoth portions delight the eyes and nose every bit as much as they do the tongue. Its food made for conversation and socializing. Our dining room is filled with the happy, boisterous noise of fun and people enjoying themselves, almost from the moment we open our doors.

Carmines is the experience of participating in an ongoing celebration. It is the unbridled culinary joy inspired by the irresistible smells of melted mozzarella, sauted garlic, and simmering tomatoes. It is the delightfully welcoming sight of warm dark oak gleaming in a pleasantly lit dining room, bejeweled with glistening glasses and shining brass worn silky smooth by the passage of a thousand happy hands. It is the exuberance and energetic bustle of the white-aproned waitstaff balancing armfuls of oversized platters of food on their way to a table of six or eight or ten. Its the ease they exhibit, weaving through the crowd and smiling as they deliver one stunningly delicious dish after another. It is the boisterous animated crowds at the tables smiling back at the unbelievable bounty theyve ordered, not realizing quite what they were in for (and the delighted surprise as we neatly package up leftovers and send them out the door with another meal waiting to be enjoyed at home). It is the echoing laughter, of friends calling to one another, and the intimate clink of wineglasses consummating a toast. It is the simple feel of a starched white tablecloth under the fingertips and the comforting warmth of a freshly served plate of pasta. It is friends and family and happiness. This is what Carmines really is. Celebration captured in the experience of one of the best meals youll ever enjoy.

Its been that way since the beginning. Carmines owes its spirit of celebration to our founder Artie Cutler. The idea for a high-quality, family-style Italian restaurant got into his head after he attended a wonderfully simple Italian wedding. The reception included platters overflowing with traditional antipastibasic, simple, and purely satisfying. Everyone was well fed and had a great time. It was like the Sunday afternoon dinners that Italian grandmas would cook back in the day.

Artie wanted to create a restaurant that captured that spirit, where people could experience a Sunday afternoon at grandmas house for any meal. So in the summer of 1990, he opened Carmines. He envisioned a restaurant that was as much an event, as enjoyable an experience as anything on offer at the theaters in the neighborhood.

It wasnt about being stuffy or showy. Artie wasnt a fan of pretentious ritual. He liked to eat great food, spend time with fun people, and enjoy life. Thats why Carmines focuses on the fulfilling and charming recipes of Southern Italy, the most social of cuisines. To him, the bustle of a crowded restaurant was the promise of fun. Thats part of why he started a whole group of restaurantstheres never too much fun in life. Artie loved life and loved to enjoy himself, and he wanted all the people around him to enjoy themselves too. That included the guests at his restaurantsfirst and foremost, the people that came to Carmines.

Artie left us way too soon, and Im far from the only one who misses him on a daily basis. But his spirit and love of life endures in the happy chaos that is the Carmines dining room. Its not just the warm, homey ambience or the unparalleled portions and quality of the food. Artie was a visionary in the best sense of the word. His wife, Alice, took over the responsibility of running Arties restaurants in his stead and she keeps his vision alive and the Carmines celebration going.

Alice has made sure that all Carmines restaurantsfrom the flagship in Times Square, to Carmines Upper West Side, the Atlantis in the Bahamas, the Tropicana in Atlantic City, the powerhouse in Washington, D.C., and our latest site at the Forum Shops, Las Vegasmaintain the tradition of abundant, delicious food, and an atmosphere full of friends, family, and the love of life that is Arties legacy.

We had that legacy in mind when we were considering what focus our second cookbook should take. Our first, Carmines Family-Style Cookbook, offered a wealth of the recipes that make our customers so happy. It is a wonderful book and was so well received that we had requests for more recipes, more information on classic Italian ingredients, and more of the Carmines spirit. To answer those requests, we decided to write a new cookbook, offering even more great recipes and building on the idea of food as a celebration. We set out to expand on the information in the first cookbook, and weve done that with an Italian Pantry feature that I think youll find delightful and a little bit more informative about where this unique cuisine comes from.

Just the same, our goal is still to help home cooks create the Carmines experience of every meal as a celebration. Theres no excuse for a dull dinner. If Artie Cutler were here, hed tell you theres every reason to celebrate with your next mealespecially if you have your pick of Carmines recipes. In that spirit, I hope youll join me in raising a glass to Artie Cutler, Carmines restaurants, and your next celebration.