Have You Ever Tried Italian Sushi?
In the ’80s it was sashimi from Japan; in the ’90s, it was seviche from Peru. Today the latest cold seafood dish to go mainstream is crudo—pronounced “CROO-doh” —from Italy. “It’s just now catching on in this country, but we’ve been serving crudo for 20 years in our Atlantic City, New Jersey, restaurant,” says Michelle Iovino, general manager and executive chef at Girasole, successor to the family-owned Neapolitan restaurant Luciano Pavarotti once said was his favorite in Philadelphia. The flavorful finger food is a favorite among the theater crowd and late-night loungers, and much of crudo’s appeal is the pristine aesthetic of Girasole’s presentation. The restaurant’s most popular crudo dish includes tonno, blue fin tuna marinated in lime zest and drops of an aged balsamic reduction; riccola, kingfish marinated in fresh blood orange, grapefruit, tomato, and avocado; and branzino, sea bass in extra-virgin olive oil, Meyer lemon, and mild mustard. “Our chefs like to use other fish—grouper, striped bass, halibut, albacore, uno, salmon, sardines, mackerel, scallops, shrimp, and sea urchin,” says Iovino.
Besides its crudo, Girasole also offers five different styles of seafood carpaccio: salmon with sun-dried tomatoes, scallions, and black olives; boiled octopus with julienne vegetables; and swordfish with citrus fruits and capers. The difference, says Iovino, lies in the preparation. “Crudos are hand sliced and raw; carpaccios are flash frozen so they can be machine sliced extra thin then marinated as they thaw.” Both styles lend themselves to experimentation, says Iovino. “There is no end to the kinds of oils that can be used in crudo or seafood carpaccio. A pungent olive oil could bring out the best in one kind of fish while a tangy citrus will do it for another.”
As a bonus, Italy’s cold fish styles are fun to pair with wine and beer. “Crudo has the added virtue of proving how well red wine like a Valpolicella pairs with fish,” says Lynn Hoffman, author of The New Short Course in Wine (Prentice Hall, 2006) and The New Short Course in Beer (Kunati, 2009). If I were drinking beer I’d have a tangy but barely hopped wheat beer like Victory Brewing’s Whirlwind Witbier; the beer would work a bit like lemon on an oyster. Or I might pull out that same brewery’s Golden Monkey, which has a tingle of spiciness that might taste good against the oily dressings.”
In a way, says Hoffman, crudo is like pizza, in that it can be prepared so many ways. The big difference is, he says, “It’s a lot more fun to eat than pizza.”
