Where can I find a restaurant that serves Italian style pasta dishes like penna alla vodka sauce?
If penne rigate is the Bugatti of pasta, here is its autostrada. Penne alla vodka was popularized at the restaurant Dante in Bologna, Italy. (One view holds that Bologna, its good name defamed by the likes of Oscar Mayer, is the gastronomic capital of the world, the epicenter from which shockwaves of culinary goodness emanate, and that view is mine. Not mine alone, however.) I first encountered this marvel at Pepe Verde, a tiny Italian take-out place on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. While we looked over the display of freshly-made focaccias, the amiable Italian proprietor scribbled the day’s pastas and sandwiches on a chalkboard. I had heard of penne alla vodka before, but knew nothing about it other than the obvious, so I went for it. Pepe serves pasta right: large quantities in big white bowls. The penne alla vodka arrived clabbered in a pink sauce with bits of meat. After one mouthful, I was a changed man. The vodka had added an evocative depth of flavor that the even the triu
Penne alla vodka is an Italian pasta dish always made with vodka and penne pasta often with heavy cream, crushed tomatoes, onion, and sometimes sausage or bacon. Origins According to Pasquale Bruno, Jr., author of “The Ultimate Pasta Cookbook,” penne alla vodka was invented at Dante, a restaurant in Bologna, Italy. Other historians of the culinary arts recognize James Doty, a graduate of Columbia University, as the inventor of penne a la vodka[citation needed]. Paula Franzese, a law professor, claims that her father Luigi Franzese, born in Naples, Italy in 1931, devised the first incarnation of penne alla vodka, which he called penne alla Russia because of the addition of the vodka to his tomato and cream sauce base. He first prepared the dish table side for patrons at New York City’s Orsini’s restaurant in the early 1970s. Orsini’s, owned by Armando and Elio Orsini, was one of the most acclaimed restaurants of its time, hosting regulars that included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sammy
