Arcodoro, a fine dining restaurant on Post Oak across from the Galleria, has been proclaimed as one of the best outposts of Sardinian cuisine outside of Sardinia. The idea to eat at a Sardinian restaurant will probably not immediately register with most diners. What is Sardinia after all? Though proud of my Italian heritage and fairly knowledge about the history of Italy, until recent years many of the basic facts of Sardinia were pretty much unknown to me other than it is a big island in the middle of the Mediterranean that has been part of Italy. Years ago I was friends with sisters who had an unusual, but identifiably Italian last name whose grandparents were from Sardinia. An old classmate, a wealthy Italian, had a family retreat on the southern tip of Sardinia. But, that was about the extent of it. My ignorance was not unusual, as Sardinia has existed outside of much of the history on the Italian peninsula.
Before getting too far off track, the most basic fact that you need to know is that Arcodoro is one of the city’s best Italian restaurants, acclaimed nationally and even internationally. It is also one of the city’s most stylish restaurants, where you can get often excellent, interesting food in a lively, usually hip atmosphere. It serves a number of dishes that can truly be called authentically Sardinian while doing so with excellent and often expensive-to-obtain ingredients. You certainly don’t need to read a guidebook for Sardinia or be a culinary historian to enjoy dining at Arcodoro.
To highlight the uniqueness of the cooking at Arcodoro, and to appreciate the fact that it is in Houston is to first note that the vast majority restaurants advertised as Italian actually serve Italian-American cuisine, just like most local Mexican restaurants serve Tex-Mex. Italian and Italian-American cuisines, again like Mexican and Tex-Mex, are similar but different. Both can be very good. Spaghetti and meatballs and Chicken Parmesan are two very popular examples found here, but not in Italy. What is called Italian cooking in this country is most often the cooking that originated mostly from with the immigrants from Naples and the rest of the neighboring province Campania, the island Sicily and the province of Calabria at the toe of the peninsula, who came to this country during the 1880s through the 1920s. It is cooking that adapted to local ingredients by non-professional cooks, mostly those found in the first homes of the immigrants in the Northeast, the abundance and pace of industrialized and urban America. It was further transformed by the American lifestyle and the American palate. There were never many immigrants from Sardinia, and the culinary influences of ones that made it over were overwhelmed by the vastly greater numbers from the boot of Italy and Sicily in the development of the Italian-American cuisine.
What is truly Italian cuisine is mostly regional Italian food. There is a nearly distinct cuisine from every region (like an American state) and nearly every significant city and town. Examples are the cooking traditions of Rome, Venice, Calabria, Sicily, Piedmont and many others. These regional and metropolitan cuisines are distinctive, and each boasts a rich history. Restaurants in this country that aim for greater authenticity usually try to emulate the dishes from the cuisines of the more famous or populated areas such as Tuscany, Naples and Emilia-Romagna. There are probably not even five other restaurants in the country that specialize in the food of Sardinia.
With modern communication and transportation, some cross-fertilization has occurred. There are now a number of dishes that you will find throughout Italy. These include osso buco, tiramisu, focaccia, Bolognese-style meat sauce, spaghetti with clams, spaghetti with garlic and oil, lasagne, and the world-wide phenomenon, pizza. These might be referred to as “classic” Italian cuisine. In addition to these well known dishes and the regional ones, there are also dishes that have been described as “contemporary,” which typically feature local ingredients prepared according to the chef’s creativity while remaining recognizably Italian. What is not Sardinian at Arcodoro falls into banner of classic or contemporary Italian.
Sardinian cooking is unique, but it is recognizably Italian and quite flavorful. Though a large island, the cuisine centers on a “trio” of “game, meat and bread” according to food historian Waverly Root some years ago. As The Italian Food Guide writes about Sardinia “most foods come from the inland….The traditional gastronomy is characterized by farming and sheep-rearing, which strongly influence the pasta and soups. Meats feature prominently, especially lamb and kid goat. Cooking methods are simple: meats are mostly grilled or skewered, and aromatic herbs are used in abundance.” Vegetables are less common than in other regions of Italy, but the excellent artichokes and tomatoes make it into many dishes. Owner Efisio Farris, who is noticeably passionate and proud of his food, incorporates this ancient culinary heritage, but being from town on the eastern coast, he has the additional family tradition of cooking seafood, which shines at the restaurant.
Long a staple for much of the island’s residents, and served complimentary at Arcodoro is the pane carasau, also called carta da musica (“sheet music”). It is a thin, crispy unleavened bread will a very long life that originated as a staple for the shepherds who would be away from home for extended periods. Those who dined at Grotto during its heyday in the 1990s will remember this distinctive and easily addictive bread.
That Arcodoro does a good job is shown in part by the number of Italians and well-shorn cosmopolitan types you will always notice at the restaurant. Farris estimates that about half his clientele is European. Massimo Rustico, the local consul general of Italy, describes Arcodoro as serving “great Sardinian cuisine regional cuisine” and “some of the most refined Italian dishes” in Houston. Since opening in 1996, it now boasts a very interesting menu that is “about 70% Sardinian,” with the rest contemporary and classic Italian. It is also the only one included in the Buon Ricordo fraternity an Italian organization that highlights top-quality, regional Italian cuisine in Italy and throughout the world. Along with its sibling in Dallas it has also been proclaimed by the well-regarded food writer and Italian food authority John Mariani as being one of the top two dozen Italian restaurants in the entire country and “the only true Sardinian” one.
Part of the reason for the accolades is that the restaurant procures the necessary traditional ingredients, plus highest quality other ingredients. These include bottarga, dried and salted roe of the mullet that is shaved or grated in dishes. An integral part of coastal Sardinian cooking, it has a slightly salty, different, but an easy to appreciate flavor. Other prized ingredients include fregola, the couscous of Sardinia, fresh fish from the Mediterranean, top quality mozzarella made from the traditional milk of water buffaloes, truffles in season, Sardinian wines and artisanal honey.
The fairly lengthy menu consists of delectable appetizers, interesting salads, traditional Sardinian and innovative pastas, refined meat and seafood preparations, and pizzas. The names and some of the ingredients of these dishes might only be familiar with travelers to Sardinia, but each can easily be enjoyed by anyone. Each menu item is followed on the menu by a descriptive translation that makes each one very tempting.
Like the rest of the menu, the appetizers are unique and tempting. Pane Guttiau, the Sardinian flatbread cooked in the wood-burning oven with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt, works well as a side or starter. Another traditional and flavorful appetizer is the soupy Sa fregula (couscous with clams in saffron). Owner Farris is keen on the Capesante Caramellate, diver sea scallops that are pan-seared and served with caramelized with salt on a bed of couscous with saffron and herbs.
As with the better Italian restaurants here, most of the pastas that should be made fresh and in-house are, such as the stuffed pastas like ravioli, and the ribbon-like ones that can add to the specific sauce like fettuccini and pappardelle. Two of the more intriguing pasta dishes are the Ravioli Arcodoro, whose recipe won an Italian competition several years ago to be crowned the worldwide title of “Ultimate Ravioli.” It consists of large ravioli stuffed with scallops and shrimp in a flavorful sauce of wine must and seafood reduction. The second is the Linguini Su Barchile, which is also made in the restaurant hotel that Farris’ family owns in his hometown on the Sardinian coast. Thin pasta in a sauce of clams, skinned tomatoes, garlic and finished with bottarga, it has a lightness that is well suited to Houston’s warmer months. A heavier, but still balanced and excellent is the Gnochetti Sardi al Cinghiale, small pasta dumplings with a rich ragú of wild boar.
The meat and seafood dishes might be more tempting than the pastas. There are veal medallions, veal shank, lamb chops, chicken breast, pork filet, shrimp, steak, and fish all prepared in interesting fashion, usually with a Sardinian touch. The steaks are highly regarded. Arcodoro also offers an entire fish coated in rock salt and baked, which is a traditional dish around much of the Mediterranean.
To eat at the often hopping bar area, or as an appetizer, Arcodoro obliges with pizza. You can be assured that the thin-crust pizzas will be very good since a customary wood-burning oven is evident, and the chef de cuisine, Giancarlo Ferrara, who aptly handles Farris’ Sardinian creations, is a native of Sorrento, near the home of pizza, Naples. If you have room for dessert, you might want to try one of the uniquely Sardinian items such as pastry filled with a sweet cheese and drizzled with honey.
The dishes served at Arcodoro are the type that would be served at a very proficient fine dining restaurant on the coast of Sardinia. This expensive and refined cooking is what most wish they could afford to indulge on a regular basis. It is certainly worth a treat, and more special, in Houston, too.
Arcodoro
5000 Westheimer (at Post Oak)
(713) 621-6888
www.arcodoro.com