Uovo, a precision-focused Italian restaurant that makes pasta in Bologna and flies the hand-crafted noodles in a temperature-controlled compartment to the US, will open in New York subsequent yr.
Uovo, which launched in Santa Monica in 2017 and now has 5 Los Angeles areas, plans to debut in New York in spring 2026, at 13 W. twenty eighth St. in NoMad.
“We now have numerous Italian individuals who come to the restaurant,” Uovo co-founder Carlo Massimini tells Observer. “And we even have lots of people from New York. All people at all times says, ‘Oh, you need to go to New York.’ We expect individuals will like us simply as a lot in New York as a result of we’re going to make precisely the identical dishes.”
Uovo’s different co-founders are Carlo’s brother, Lele, and prolific restaurateur Jerry Greenberg. (Greenberg and Lele Massimini are additionally co-founders of Sugarfish and KazuNori, each of which have expanded from Los Angeles to New York.) They immersed themselves into making a resolutely conventional Italian restaurant. One R&D journey that led to the beginning of Uovo concerned tasting 77 pastas in Rome, Bologna and a pair locations simply outdoors the northern Italian metropolis, all in lower than three days.
“That was the primary time I ate with Carlo in this type of a approach,” Greenberg tells Observer. “By the point we bought to the seventy fifth pasta, I feel Carlo was fascinated by not becoming a member of us.”
The Massiminis and Greenberg clearly perceive that New York is a metropolis loaded with all types of hyper-specific Italian eating places, together with an outpost of born-in-Rome Roscioli and the Emilia Romagna-inspired Rezdôra.
“The tradition of Italian meals is so robust in New York, and that’s tremendous interesting to us,” Greenberg tells Observer. “We need to go locations which have a tradition for the meals. Some individuals take into consideration going to a metropolis as a result of it’s underserved of their delicacies, however that’s not how we give it some thought.”
The unique plan for Uovo was to ship over Italian eggs with wealthy crimson yolks which can be optimum for pasta. As soon as the group realized this wasn’t doable, they put collectively a Bologna kitchen and tapped chef Pino Mastrangelo and pasta-maker Stefania Randi to run it. Not one of the noodles at Uovo are extruded. Every little thing is made with time-honored sheeting and reducing strategies. And the mixture of this course of and the eggs Uovo makes use of ends in strikingly yellow noodles that bind nicely with sauce.
Each Mastrangelo and Randi got here to Uovo from Bologna’s Antica Trattoria della Gigina, a restaurant so beneficiant in spirit that it additionally shared its born-in-the-Fifties Bolognese recipe with Uovo.
Carlo continues to be gobsmacked about how he went to Gigina as a traditional visitor and bought invited to return the following day and learn to make pasta within the kitchen. Now, Uovo makes its ragu utilizing Gigina’s recipe. However as an alternative of beef from Italy, Uovo will get one hundred pc grass-fed wagyu from New Zealand’s First Mild Farms. Greenberg, who additionally runs wagyu-centric eating places HiHo Cheeseburger, Matu and Matū Kai, traveled the world in the hunt for the very best beef and believes that First Mild is the champion.
Finding out a vongole recipe at Uovo was extra sophisticated than studying the Bolognese recipe. The Massiminis had been born and raised in Rome, and Uovo found out how you can re-create their mom’s clam sauce. The problem was that Carlo and Lele’s mother is a house prepare dinner who makes vongole intuitively.
“We drove my mother loopy as a result of we have to measure it, we have to examine it,” Carlo says. “My mother does all the pieces along with her eyes.”
For amatriciana, Uovo was impressed by the thick, crispy squares of guanciale that Roscioli makes use of in Rome.
“We did an incredible quantity of very high-heat testing,” Greenberg says. “It was about the way you apply the warmth in order that it’s crisp on the skin however nonetheless has a little bit of life on the within.”
It’s this dedication to precision that led Uovo to supply tomatoes grown in Basilicata and 24-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano from Parma. Uovo even makes its restricted gluten-free pasta choices in Bologna.
Uovo is mild on starters and facet dishes, and there are not any important programs that come after pasta. Substitutions usually are not allowed. The main target right here is conventional pasta by way of and thru.
Including to the precision: Each order at Uovo is ready individually.
“We should be constant,” Carlo says. “We consider we now have robust conventional recipes, and we wish the meals to be precisely as we anticipate it.”
“There’s loads of Italian meals that exists in New York,” Greenberg says. “There’s New York Italian, crimson sauce Italian, Italian Italian, most likely all types of fusion Italian. We expect that the precise super-traditional Italian at Uovo will slot in nice and add to the combo in New York.”
There’s one large element that Uovo is understanding because it prepares to open in New York. An necessary a part of the method is having pasta relaxation whereas it’s in transit. As a result of flights to New York are shorter than they’re to L.A., Uovo is how and when so as to add resting time for its pasta. Relaxation assured, the Massiminis and Greenberg received’t be glad till they get this precisely proper.
