Along with Pago restaurant across
town, the biggest buzz among Salt
Lake City’s dining glitterati this
summer has been about Tipica. This is
the long-anticipated restaurant project
launched by Tony Caputo and his son,
Matt (although Tony claims he’s “retired”),
along with wunderchef Adam Kreisel.
Here’s what happens: By day, Tony
Caputo’s Market & Deli is an informal, cafeteria-
style spot to fill up on meatball subs,
eggplant Parmesan and savory salads such as
the Vanocur. At night—Wednesdays through
Saturdays—the Caputo’s deli space morphs
into a fine-dining restaurant. Gold-colored
curtains are drawn to redefine the space
and create intimacy; white tablecloths cover
the tables; tealight candles and fresh flowers
appear, along with sleekly designed salt
& pepper shakers and fine stemware. A staff
of black and white-clad service pros patrols
the dining room. Wine and beer is poured.
Magically, a deli is transformed into a restaurant.
But, don’t go looking for Caputo’s
lunchtime muffaletta on the menu.
I inadvertently created a firestorm of a
controversy when I previewed Tipica in the
Salt Blog a while back. Billed as a “nose to
tail” restaurant, the idea is that if you see,
for example, lamb chops on the menu, Chef
Adam Kreisel hasn’t merely purchased chops
from his meat supplier, but acquired the
entire lamb from Lau Family Farms, which
he will use, from nose to tail, eventually.
There seems to be a lot of sectarianism and holier-than-thou-ing going on when it comes to this nose-to-tail business. People are radically opinionated about it: “They don’t use the snout!” one person might proclaim. Well, Matt Caputo invites interested parties to come and take a peek inside the fridges and freezers at Tipica if you need to be convinced they’re using the entire beast.
Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn either
way. I care most about the food on my plate.
When I order the roasted marrow bone and
pickled beef tongue with frisée and lemontruffle
vinaigrette ($11), I don’t really care
if the rest of the cow is in the fridge; what
matters to me is that it tastes spectacular.
And, thus far, I’ve found very little at Tipica
that didn’t taste spectacular
I’m not surprised, though. I’ve followed
Kreisel from his turquoise-and-fuchsiacolored
muttonchop days at The Globe
Café by Moonlight (which simply arrived
on the Salt Lake City scene way ahead of
its time) to Sundance Resort, Metropolitan
and Acme Burger Company. At every stop
along the way, he has, at times, made my
head spin. Finally, he has the freedom
and the support to cook the
way he really wants to cook. And
we, luckily, are the recipients of that
freedom, expertise and creativity.
It takes a very talented chef to get me to
like cauliflower, but Kreisel did it. Mostly,
I don’t usually like cauliflower because it’s
boring, but I also don’t like it because it
looks like brains. For the same reason, I’m
not fond of whole walnuts, either. (Oddly,
cooked brains don’t look like brains, which
is why I still miss the breakfast brains at
Bill & Nada’s.)
“I treat it like meat,” says Kreisel about
his technique for cooking cauliflower. He
takes big, brainy-looking hunks of cauliflower
and sears the bejeezus out of them,
before roasting. The end result is tender,
almost meaty-tasting cauliflower with a
beautifully browned crust, infused with
grape must and garnished with a chiffonade
of micro basil ($5). I defy you to find a
better use of cauliflower.
Farm-fresh and local ingredients abound
in Tipica dishes, from the local baby arugula
salad and the English peas accompanying
the smoked pork shank ($15) to the sunchokes
in the roasted shallot and sunchoke
soup ($6) and porcinis used in the beef
ragout. That last dish—Piedmontese beef
and porcini ragout ($17)—is a hearty dish
that would seem more apt in winter. But
I loved every single bite on a hot, steamy
summer’s evening. It’s a robust, rich dish
of braised and shredded tender beef (from
Larson’s Piedmontese steer) with minced
porcinis—a beef and porcini “Bolognese,”
if you will—served on thick strips of homemade
rosemary papparedelle pasta. Can
you say, “Lick the plate clean?”
When I asked our server to recommend
a wine pairing for the ragout, she
was refreshingly honest: “I don’t really
know anything about wine, but I’ll ask,”
she replied. A few minutes later, Kreisel
popped out from the kitchen to recommend
’63 Cheval Blanc. “Are you buying?”
I think was my response. Well, you won’t
find Cheval Blanc on the Tipica wine list,
but there is a very good selection of eclectic
wines that perfectly match the Tipica fare,
including the glass of Aia Vecchia Lagone
Rosso ($8.50/glass), which a very winesavvy
server, Mike Webb, recommended.
So many delicious dishes and so little space to write about them: Thick, chewy bucatini with arugula and tarragon pesto was creamy and delightful, enhanced with 3-year-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano and edible flowers. Ridiculously good risottos I’ve tasted include Kreisel’s lamb sweetbread and celery risotto, and his seafood and baby tomato Carnaroli risotto with lump crabmeat and rock shrimp. I could go on and on.
With the possible exception of the noise
when it’s crowded (and it always seems to
be crowded), I can’t think of any reasons
not to encourage you to go and try Tipica
for yourself. Even the prices are relatively
low, which is far from typical.
TIPICA
314 W. 300 South
801-328-0222
TipicaCaputo.com
While dining at Tipica recently I was shocked and insulted to find that they don't have salt and pepper shakers on the tables! I certainly wish Mr. Ted had notified me of this in his 'critical review' of Tipica. Amazing that he overlooked this - who do these guys think they are, Charlie Trotter???
Tipica is incredible! The food is excellent! Our server was great! Salt Lake is very fortunate to have the Caputo's market, deli and the Tipica restaurant. Tipica is very well done and adds great dimension to this city of mostly chain restaurants and bland food. I would highly recommend this great dining experience to anyone. Kudos to the Caputo's for taking the risk and doing something different. I wish them much success and will continue to support them.
So, let me get this straight -- when a restaurant opens up, whether it be Tipica or Pago or Forage and they say that they're about using seasonal, local stuff to the best of their ability they get crucified for being wannabes and posers?
Brilliant. Aboslutely brilliant. Let's cut down the bona fide efforts of some new blokes who are adding to the small core of venues who have been trying to put this style of consumption and cooking into practice. God forbid, we have more restaurants like Paris Bistro or Pizzeria 712 that gives a shit about flavor and integrity, because you know, that would just be WRONG. How dare these guys try to join in?
Has anyone even bothered to ask any of the ranchers or farmers who actually work with these restaurants what they're selling to the kitchens? Or what sort of working relationship they have with these restaurants?
All the haters who insist on comparing what Salt Lake has barely got going (and by that I mean in the last decade, Paris Bistro et al included) to the more established scenes in San Francisco, NYC and Portland are as bad as the close-minded diners who refuse to eat meat cooked any degree below well-done. What gives? You can diss it for not liking the flavors, but to diss it because they're trying to do something that is working in other cities and because they seem to genuinely dig food is kind of baffling. Where's all this pitchforking for the restaurants in this town at the same price points (if not higher) that lie through their teeth about the things they use in their kitchen? Seriously, if greenwashing is everyone's problem, let's focus on some other businesses that are SO guilty of it.
Ten years ago, Portland was NOTHING what it's like today restaurant-wise. And believe it or not, San Francisco, London, Dublin and even New York weren't always the holy lands of microgreens and pig's trotters. I'll even pull that obnoxious "I've lived/eaten everywhere in the world" card to say that yeah, SLC has a long way to go. At the same token, I'll pull that same lame card to get a chance to say that in the past few years, SLC has made some remarkable progress. I've had some mind-blowing meals in New York, Italy, San Francisco and ... yes, SLC. And I've had some spectacularly shitty ones in all the same cities. it's one thing to miss a certain restaurant or dish, but it's another to compare a place like SLC that's still on the threshold of good things to places that are already THERE in terms of having the network of growers and producers who can supply them year round. Do you think New York State has a huge growing season? Have you ever experienced winter in the Hudson Valley?! Please.
When the demand is there, more producers will eventually appear, which gives these guys and others (who have yet to jump into the fray) a chance to showcase what's so good about local -- eating and doing business. Did the guys at Higgin's in Portland always have it so easy with getting all the gorgeous stuff from farmers? Hardly. Or did Heston Blumenthal always have it so easy sourcing and selling braised pig tails? These guys are trailblazers for a reason -- they carved something out of relatively little and did shit that people thought were nuts and stupid. And here we lambast the people who have the same dreams.
If folks seriously want less to complain about in this city's dining scene, consider letting go the petty bickering retarding the momentum of the passionate folks (like Tipica, Pago, Paris, Lugano) who sweat it out for relatively little pay and the people who have their livelihoods invested in this sort of thing. The vitriol is better aimed at those bloody "McCafe's" and caricatures of cuisines that we're surrounded by.
So, let me get this straight -- when a restaurant opens up, whether it be Tipica or Pago or Forage and they say that they're about using seasonal, local stuff to the best of their ability they get crucified for being wannabes and posers?
Brilliant. Aboslutely brilliant. Let's cut down the bona fide efforts of some new blokes who are adding to the small core of venues who have been trying to put this style of consumption and cooking into practice. God forbid, we have more restaurants like Paris Bistro or Pizzeria 712 that gives a shit about flavor and integrity, because you know, that would just be WRONG. How dare these guys try to join in?
Has anyone even bothered to ask any of the ranchers or farmers who actually work with these restaurants what they're selling to the kitchens? Or what sort of working relationship they have with these restaurants?
All the haters who insist on comparing what Salt Lake has barely got going (and by that I mean in the last decade, Paris Bistro et al included) to the more established scenes in San Francisco, NYC and Portland are as bad as the close-minded diners who refuse to eat meat cooked any degree below well-done. What gives? You can diss it for not liking the flavors, but to diss it because they're trying to do something that is working in other cities and because they seem to genuinely dig food is kind of baffling. Where's all this pitchforking for the restaurants in this town at the same price points (if not higher) that lie through their teeth about the things they use in their kitchen? Seriously, if greenwashing is everyone's problem, let's focus on some other businesses that are SO guilty of it.
Ten years ago, Portland was NOTHING what it's like today restaurant-wise. And believe it or not, San Francisco, London, Dublin and even New York weren't always the holy lands of microgreens and pig's trotters. I'll even pull that obnoxious "I've lived/eaten everywhere in the world" card to say that yeah, SLC has a long way to go. At the same token, I'll pull that same lame card to get a chance to say that in the past few years, SLC has made some remarkable progress. I've had some mind-blowing meals in New York, Italy, San Francisco and ... yes, SLC. And I've had some spectacularly shitty ones in all the same cities. it's one thing to miss a certain restaurant or dish, but it's another to compare a place like SLC that's still on the threshold of good things to places that are already THERE in terms of having the network of growers and producers who can supply them year round. Do you think New York State has a huge growing season? Have you ever experienced winter in the Hudson Valley?! Please.
When the demand is there, more producers will eventually appear, which gives these guys and others (who have yet to jump into the fray) a chance to showcase what's so good about local -- eating and doing business. Did the guys at Higgin's in Portland always have it so easy with getting all the gorgeous stuff from farmers? Hardly. Or did Heston Blumenthal always have it so easy sourcing and selling braised pig tails? These guys are trailblazers for a reason -- they carved something out of relatively little and did shit that people thought were nuts and stupid. And here we lambast the people who have the same dreams.
If folks seriously want less to complain about in this city's dining scene, consider letting go the petty bickering retarding the momentum of the passionate folks (like Tipica, Pago, Paris, Lugano) who sweat it out for relatively little pay and the people who have their livelihoods invested in this sort of thing. The vitriol is better aimed at those bloody "McCafe's" and caricatures of cuisines that we're surrounded by.