Mezze Bistro’s Breaking The Boot Food Study: A Culinary Passport To Italy
The Williamstown bistro is devoting four months to the study and preparation of Italy's regional cuisines.
Agnoletti in the making
Mezze Bistro + Bar in Williamstown is inviting Italian food lovers (and who isn’t?) to take a culinary trip throughout Italy, from its ankle bone to (beneath) its sole, until the end of April. “Breaking the Boot” is the restaurant’s four-month food study to observe, learn, and experiment with techniques and flavors from the Northern provinces to Central Italy to the Mezzogioro, and finally Sicily and the Aeolian Islands. Breaking the Boot items are being offered on the nightly menu, and the Sunday Supper features a $45 three-course Breaking the Boot set menu.
Starting at the top, January is devoted to the cuisine of the Northern Italian provinces: Liguria, Piemonte, Trentino-Alto Adige, Lombardia, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Gulia. Featured dishes include vitello tonnato, pansotti con salsi di noci, and baci di dama.
The deep dive into authentic Italian cuisine was conceived to engage the restaurant’s culinary team and bring something new to the table for its guests.
“We started talking about this idea last year,” says Nancy Thomas, Mezze Hospitality Group’s co-founder/creative director. “We try to make things happen for our team during a slower time.” It’s an opportunity for allow chefs and kitchen staff to go into a learning period— “to look at a place like Italy and how they put together their narrative for their regional cuisine,” she says. “The heritage of Mezze stems from the Mediterranean cooking style. Diving into where it all cradles for us in the Mediterranean is where we always seem to be staying.”
Chef Nick Moulton and Kevin Orcutt, chef du cuisine, have been doing the research, poring through books and online, looking into how the various regions eat (and drink).
“We’re constantly pushing ourselves to study and learn, and let our cooks grow,” Orcutt says. That might include research on what kind of olive is produced in a region or investigate which breads that are traditional to a specific place. “Finding things that intrigue us on a deep sense keeps us pushing ourselves, and we teach it to the local community.” Beverages, too, are related to that sense of place.
In studying food, you’re learning about history. When the team decided to serve a shaved fennel and citrus salad, they gained insight about the 19th-century French occupation of Ivrea, Piedmont, where the Ivrean citizens’ “Battle of the Oranges” involved hurling oranges at the tyrants. Another fact the chefs dug up: a fish stew from Liguria originally came from the Middle East, a testament to global influences in Italian cuisine.
While Mezze is known for its farm-to-table, local sourcing of ingredients, Orcutt admits that there are a few items he procured from, well, the source, ordering olives, olive oil, pasta flour and some cheeses from Italy. Still, he says, they were careful to order from Italy’s local, small businesses that align with Mezze’s ethos.
At the daily pre-shift meeting, the staff reviews the items, their history and tasting notes. For diners who are curious, information about the dishes presented are shared tableside.
In addition to the prix fixe Sunday Supper, Breaking the Boot-related events include:
Friday, Jan. 19 — Cichetti Night (Venetian bar-style small bites) and wines from Northern Italy
Friday, Feb. 2 — Tasting and Mise Wine imports from Umbria, Marche, and Abruzzo
Friday, Feb. 9 — All About Amari
Sunday, Feb. 11 — Mezze’s 28th Birthday Celebration
It’s been all joy in the kitchen preparing for Breaking the Boot, Thomas and Orcutt say. The staff is excited, and there’s no doubt their enthusiasm is being translated into some buon cibo.
“There’s so much to Italy, we don’t think we could do it in less than four months,” Orcutt says.
