Page 15 - Valley Table - Spring 2024

Table Talk
Leanni’s Cucina Verace
At this high-end trattoria, the deliciousness is in the details. BY MICHELLE HAINER
ven in high school, people wanted Vittorio Lanni’s food. “We didn’t get peanut butter and jelly for lunch, my mother packed us
veal cutlet Milanese,” says the chef, whose family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, from Naples, Italy, when he was five. “All my friends wanted to eat my lunch.”
And now, as the owner of a year-old restaurant located
in what’s becoming Sparkill’s culinary corner, diners
are clamoring for his authentic Italian dishes that put a premium on ingredients. “There are 20 regions in Italy, and each one has a different style of cooking, which is tied to the terroir, the weather, the soil, and what the animals eat,” says Lanni, who imports 95 percent of his products from his homeland. “So, I make sure the proper items come from the proper region. You can buy Parmesan from all over Italy, but if it’s not from Parma, it’s just not going to be as good.”
To that end, the pepperoncini that gives his fra diavolo sauce just the right amount of heat comes from Calabria; the caciocavallo in his popular beef carpaccio appetizer
is made in Naples; and the sheep’s milk ricotta that makes “cannoli taste the way it should” hails from Sicily. (Every Wednesday, he sends his son, Vittorio Jr., also a chef, to Newark Airport to pick up the goods.)
Lanni learned the basics from his mother—who made everything from sausage to grappa from scratch—and after college, he got a job as a chef at the exclusive Columbus Citizens Foundation, a nonprofit in New York City that celebrates Italian-American achievement. “That’s where
I really learned a lot and got to work with different Italian products,” he says. From there, he moved to North Palm Beach, Florida, where he opened his first restaurant, Lanni’s, at the age of 27. His unique menu offerings, like octopus
and tripe, became a huge hit with the tony crowd (he once catered a party for Celine Dion). He opened two more bistros, before moving back to the Northeast, where he switched gears and began working for a wine distributor. (At his current restaurant, the wine list is all Italian, with nearly 150 varietals.)
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PHOTO BY RUNYON PRODUCTIONS