For decades, people in search of the best food in Rome have found their way to the arms of the Roscioli family. On top of a network of wine cellars between the old Jewish quarter and the Campo de’ Fiori flower market, descendants of Marco and Franco Roscioli run four businesses, each outstanding in their field: a bread bakery, a patisserie, a wine bar and a salumeria moonlighting as a restaurant that has become one of the most sought after tables in town.
Twice a day, Salumeria Roscioli’s staff set the tables transforming the delicatessen into a casual yet ambitious restaurant. There they serve dishes based on a huge pantry that includes semi-dried cherry tomatoes from Campania, culatello from Emilia-Romagna and fig-walnut bread made in the 200-year-old oven of their bakery around the corner, L’Antico Forno Roscioli.
The range of the Rciolis extends beyond Italy. You can enjoy a cocktail made with gin from India or Japan and swirling pasta tossed in vanilla butter and Spanish anchovies; the Caffè next door serves club sandwiches.
“Even having French wine and Spanish ham is unheard of” in Rome’s classic trattorias, said Frank Falcinelli, a Brooklyn restaurateur. “Romans will die on that hill.”
But by pushing the boundaries of tradition, as brothers Alessandro and Pierluigi Roscioli have been doing for decades, the Roscioli brand has flourished. Pierluigi, 49, Alessandro, 53, and their sister, Maria Elena, 29, who recently joined the family business, have cultivated an enviable collection of Italian ingredients, nurtured connections with chefs around the world and a strong social media presence built up.
Under their watch, Roscioli will open its first outpost next month, in SoHo. Instead of expanding to Florence or Milan, the logical next step, the Rosciolis will try to replicate the quality, patina and – most importantly – pasta of their Manhattan Roman Empire. In the spirit of the original, this Roscioli becomes a ground-floor deli and wine bar and basement restaurant, all tucked into a 19th-century brick mansion in the old Italian enclave once called the South Village.
When it comes to the Holy Roman quartet of pastas — gricia, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and carbonara — each paired with a different shape of pasta, “they never stray,” said Chef Nancy Silverton of the Mozza Group in Los Angeles, referring to the Rciolis’ focus on consistency, quality and technique.
Roscioli fueled countless Italian food trends in the United States long before they opened here, such as Americans’ fixations with burrata, cacio e pepe, and maritozzi, whipped cream-filled sandwiches that have been made in Rome for centuries but became a social media star after Roscioli introduced theirs in 2016.
“Roscioli is the Kevin Bacon of restaurants,” says Mr. Falcinelli, citing it as a business and culinary model. “Everyone has a bond.”
The Roscioli maritozzo is one of the models for Bilena Settepani’s recently perfected version at Settepani Bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Coincidentally, Mrs. Settepani was at Roscioli Caffè in Rome, “getting one last maritozzo before my flight home,” when this reporter reached him.
In Italy, food and wine producers are striving to join Roscioli’s ever-changing collection of hundreds of cured meats, aged and fresh cheeses and 2,500 wines.
“Going into Roscioli is the dream,” says Stefano Papetti, an owner of De Fermo, a small biodynamic winemaker in Abruzzo. Being on the wine list there, he said, generated demand for his wines far beyond Italy.
But in New York, the challenge lies in replicating the quality of ingredients that Roscioli is known for, not just in its pastas but also on its plates of exceptionally fresh cheeses like burrata, buffalo mozzarella, and buffalo ricotta, and cured meats like mortadella and prosciutto . — few of which can be served in the United States.
Fresh cheeses made from raw milk cannot be imported at all, while aged cheeses such as Pecorino Romano can. “The winds keep changing,” said Zach Allen, who has overseen food imports at the U.S. locations of Eataly and fast-growing Florentine sandwich chain All’Antico Vinaio.
“The imported products used to be so heat-treated and over-aged that they didn’t taste any more than the original,” he said, referring to regulations imposed by the US Department of Agriculture on cured meats.
Over decades, Mr. Allen has painstakingly developed relationships and recipes with U.S. producers who make what he needs, such as a fatty fennel-tipped Tuscan salami called sbriciolona for La Favolosa, a best-selling sandwich. at the All’Antico locations in New York. “The Rosciolis are at the beginning of that process.”
Alessandro Pepe, the head sommelier at the family wine bar Rimessa Roscioli, is leading the New York opening and said that as they build relationships, the key ingredients for their classic pastas will come from Rome: aged pecorino and Parmigiano-Reggiano , their own dried and pickled tomatoes, olive oil and dry pasta. “These are the kind of dishes that anyone can have on the shelves and make at the last minute,” he said.
As the Rciolis influenced Italian food in America, American food influenced them from the very beginning.
Franco Roscioli, the eldest of eleven brothers from a family of shepherds in Le Marche, made his way to Kenosha, Wis, in 1953. When he returned a few years later, it was with two major innovations: margarine and an industrial bread slicer. .
He opened a bakery on the outskirts of Rome specializing in American-style sliced sandwich bread. As the company grew, Franco had his brothers work in the capital. Marco – the father of Alessandro, Pierluigi and Maria Elena – moved to Rome and started baking in 1958, when he was 12 years old.
At the time, commercial enriched breads were made with cheap olive oil and pork fat, neither of which were ideal substitutes for butter. Margarine, hydrogenated corn oil, came much closer.
It was also kosher. Marco Roscioli opened L’Antico Forno in 1972 and his challah, made with margarine, was a hit among the nearby Jewish community. “Their support was the economic engine that enabled the company to get on its feet, survive and stay afloat in its early years,” said Pierluigi Roscioli.
The idea of turning the salumeria into a restaurant originated in the United States, he said, at the corner of Prince Street and Broadway in New York, where Pierluigi frequented the Dean & DeLuca food empire in its influential heyday. Not only did it stock premium ingredients from around the world, but it also offered ready meals to enjoy at tables between the shelves.
It took 10 years of discussion to arrive at an equivalent Roman menu. They couldn’t make soup and salad from the ingredients on hand, he said. “But we could make a really nice pasta.”
New York, he said, is the only place outside of Italy where he can imagine a Roscioli. “It’s absolutely captivating,” he said. “I wouldn’t sacrifice the beauty of Rome for anything but New York City.”
