Page 8 - Italina-American Herald - January 2025

8 ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM | JANUARY 2025 ITALIAN-AMERICAN HERALD
WINING AND DINING
Chef Franco Lombardo will do whatever it takes to source the best ingredients
By Nikki
Palladino
For the New Year,
I’m bucking the trend
to eat less. Instead,
I want to eat more
of the foods I know
and love and grew up
eating. I will drive for food. So will my friend
Franco Lombardo, owner and head chef
of Sapori Trattoria Italiana in South Jersey’s
Collingswood.
During a recent conversation, the
chef revealed to me that even with food
prices as astronomical as they are, he isn’t
compromising when it comes to setting the
menu or sourcing foodstuff for the restaurant.
“I’ll just drive my car and get it,” he tells me
about Tomino, an Italian cow’s milk cheese
from the Piedmont region in Italy’s Northwest
corner that he has driven to Brooklyn, N.Y.,
to buy and bring back to the restaurant, to
bake and top with walnuts and truffle honey.
“It looks and tastes better than Brie,”
he said. I promise to order it the next
time I’m there but admit that my absolute
favorite thing on the menu is the casarecce,
a traditional Italian pasta shaped like a tiny
scroll.
Lombardo said he goes to South Philly
for the sausage he tosses with that pasta and
that he tracks down buffalo milk mozzarella
imported from Napoli to serve with bresaola
(cured beef).
I find out then that sea urchin is one
of his favorite things to prepare but that
after COVID, it’s not as easy to find. In my
house, we feel that way about tripe. Over
the summer, we saw on Facebook that the
restaurant had a limited quantity and by the
time we got to the restaurant the following
day, it was sold out. “People looked at
me weird when I first started making it,”
Lombardo said with a laugh. Clearly, they
don’t anymore, and he promises to make a
batch again soon.
I don’t know how he’ll find the time,
between opening on select days for lunch,
hosting more private events than ever,
including, most recently, a wedding, and
transforming the restaurant’s patio yet again,
but something tells me he’ll make the time
because he is in tune with every detail. A
mechanical engineer, he’s got everything
in sync.
When I refer to him as the kitchen’s
conductor, his tone turns serious. “No one
person delivers the sound.” His attitude and
approach strike the right chord with me and
countless others who have been patronizing
the restaurant for 21 years.
Lombardo plans to feature lamb, rabbit,
goat, octopus and sepia in the coming year,
along with cotechino, a traditional sausage
dish. Let’s hope he remembers to add tripe
to that list. Regardless, I’m looking forward
to eating more of the countless traditional
Italian foods the chef continues to prepare,
like our grandmothers and their grand-
mothers before them.
When I was growing up, we hardly ate
Casarecce is a traditional Italian pasta shaped like a tiny scroll. | PHOTO BY NIKKI PALLADINO
out. We didn’t need to. We were related to a
chef – my aunt and uncle owned a restaurant,
and my grandmothers were amazing home
cooks. We had everything and everyone we
needed right at home.
As we got older, though, my aunt and
uncle sold their restaurant, my grandmothers
passed away and suddenly, chefs were
some of the only people I knew who craved
authenticity on a plate, as much as I did. My
friend and all-time favorite chef is keeping
that tradition alive for all of us. IAH
The chef revealed to me that even
with food prices as astronomical as
they are, he isn’t compromising
when it comes to his restaurant.
Fresh sea urchins (ricci di mare)
and octopus at a market harbor of
Bari, Puglia region in Southern Italy
ADOBE
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