Chef Mark Ladner's Return: Reopening Babbo with Stephen Starr

Chef Mark Ladner's Return to Babbo

• 💡 Mark Ladner is highly regarded by Dave Chang as one of America's great chefs, known for his craftsmanship and vision.
• 🚀 Ladner is reopening Babbo in the West Village with restaurateur Stephen Starr, a significant event for New York City dining.
• 👏 Ladner's career includes influential roles at Lupa and as the founding executive chef of Delposto, shaping how Americans eat Italian food.

Innovation in Italian Cuisine

• 🧠 Ladner is praised for his cerebral approach to cooking, blending innovation within traditional Italian food.
• 🌿 A simple sugar snap pea dish from Lupa, dressed with olive oil, lemon, and salt, profoundly influenced Dave Chang's view on culinary creativity.
• 🍝 The new Babbo will feature a Detroit-style 100-layer lasagna with a crispy cheese crust, expected to be an iconic dish.

New Babbo's Menu and Kitchen

• 🐟 The menu will feature Passac-inspired crudeau, focusing on fresh, local fish served super cold in custom glass dishes.
• 🍲 Ladner is introducing a 49-day Solera system minestrone, a vegan soup aged over seven weeks to develop a soulful spirit.
• 🛠️ The kitchen features modern equipment like Rational Ivario pressure skillets for pasta, replacing older, less reliable pasta cookers.

The Italian Food Revolution

• 📈 Dave Chang asserts that Italian food has "won" high-end dining, becoming the predominant preference for eating and cooking.
• 🌍 Ladner's menu design for Babbo breaks Italy into 20 regions plus a "Babbo region" and "New York region", rotating pastas based on warm and cool weather.
• 🇮🇹 The discussion highlights the significant shift in perception of Italian food over the last 25 years, from being underestimated to widely appreciated for its regional diversity.

Culinary Debates and Tools

• 💬 Dave Chang expresses skepticism about risotto, finding it often heavy and pasty, a sentiment Ladner largely agrees with.
• 🍚 Ladner shares a technique for better risotto: avoid over-stirring and cover it to steam at the end to avoid a crunchy pearl.
• ✂️ In the "Ask Dave" segment, Korean kitchen shears (Kawi) are highlighted as an indispensable multi-purpose tool for cutting meat, noodles, and kimchi.