#mark ladner

The Del Posto Cookbook

Mark Ladner

From our Obsession Session event, a lesson in how to make the perfect gnocchi with Marco Canora.

Mark Ladner, one of our favorite chefs anywhere, launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new restaurant concept called Pasta Flyer. 

Honestly, if almost any other human proposed a gluten-free mashup of traditional Italian pasta and ramen shop convenience, I probably would have pantomimed some horrible act and scrolled down to the next item on Eater. But when Mark Ladner cooks, I listen. And so I asked him some questions just before the kickstarter went up — there are more pictures and more info that way. 

[PM] So why this, why now? 

[ML] I’ve always wanted to do something that involves like a quick service pasta centric restaurant — the majority of my background is more in casual dining. I came to Del Posto for the challenge of it, which continues to push me every day.  But I’ve had this pasta concept in my mind for a couple of years now. And one of the things that really started to push it out into the light was Tokidoki, which my kids got me into. I don’t know if you know Tokidoki.

[PM] I don’t know Tokidoki! How old are your kids?

[ML] I have a daughter that’s 14 and a son that’s 9. When my daughter was about 9 she started to get into this Tokidoki, which is a more modern Hello Kitty Japanimation kind of line of trinkets and clothing and backpacks and skate decks and all that shit. The guy who created Tokidoki was born in Italy, and lives and works in LA, but he practices pretty much traditional Japanimation.

[PM]  So there’s an animated show? 

[ML] It’s just a line of tchotchkes! ButI love the idea of convergence of like American culture, Italian culture, and Japanese culture.  I’ve been a Japanophile for a while at least in terms of food and street culture. Most chefs tend to lean toward Japanese food for a lot of reasons: the discipline, the simplicity, the cleanliness.

So I was frustrated by the fact that while ramen culture is blowing up—everybody understands fast food ramen and the efficiency of the way these shops operate—nobody has ever done anything like that with traditional Italian-style pasta.

So I’m trying to bridge the gap between the two. So it would be Italian food informed by this avatar, this grandmother, but taken into the context of the efficiency of a Tokyo ramen shop—with an automated kiosk for ordering and all that.

[PM] How did the gluten-free angle come into play?

[ML] At Del Posto, I’ve realized that as far I’m concerned back in the kitchen, there really is no difference between dietary restrictions and dietary preferences. It doesn't to me: we're going to treat it the same way whether it’s an allergy or preference. And we’ll run into the same thing at Pasta Flyer. Eventually, as I started getting better at gluten-free, I was like well maybe we can do just all gluten-free all the time. 

[PM] What is gluten-free pasta?

[ML] It’s just made with blends of flours that are not wheat, or barley, or rye; usually rice and potato and tapioca flours. The really difficult part is that without gluten there is no elasticity, so you need to add a tiny bit of xanthan gum. See, pasta is a balance between elasticity and plasticity. Fresh pasta—where you have that silky chew—is elastic; the plasticity of dried pasta is where that “al dente” thing comes from. So in a way, dried pasta was never really that elastic to begin with plus I was trying to create something that was more shelf stable.

So I’m making gluten-free pasta and extruding it and then drying it.

[PM] Will the sauces will be Italian?

[ML]Yeah it’s not fusion or anything — actually it really mostly informed by all the traditional Italian classics but all the language and names will be English. And it will decidedly not be “health food." It’s just gluten free pasta. We will be using cheese and butter, and there will be times when it’s spicy. But you can choose any shape, choose any sauce, choose any protein, choose any crunchy bit like that. So it’s like an ordering kiosk system like an iPad where you just scroll through, intuitively.

[PM] And when and where will the gluten-free grandma-powered pasta spaceship land?

Mario Batali's Del Posto, in the last week or so, has stopped taking reservations for the $500 collezione menu, which had the distinction of being New York's most expensive meal. The tasting, which effectively cost $1,269 after tax & tip for two, included 12-courses, wine pairings and tableside service from chef Mark Ladner. General manager Jeff Katz told The Price Hike that the menu will be offered again "at some point," but likely not before the new year (or thereabouts). Here's some more color on the ambitious collezione menu from our short interview today with Mr. Katz: 

"It's kind of an evolving menu. We've done it the last couple of years. I think this was our third iteration of it. When Mark is done with the menu, he'll start work on another one, and it takes him a long time to come up with the structure and what's going to be offered on that menu. . .it's when Mark gets to a place where he likes what he's come up with in terms of dishes and then sees a sequence that makes sense and he'll start working on putting it together. . .they've all been pretty different. . .they come and go, it's not something that we offer very regularly. It's something we offer to, you know, 35 people a year. . .we will have another one at some point. . .it's almost like an R&D project for the restaurant and for Mark." 

Culinary historians will recall that a few years back, amid the depths of the global financial crisis, Del Posto had cut the price of its collezione menu from $250 to $175 (that's according to an excellent NYT Diner's Journal entry from 2009). Those prices, incidentally, did not include wine pairings, and the price would of course rise to $500 by 2010, with the addition of vino.