When you move into a new house, you unpack the important stuff first. You set up the bed, decide where the couch is going, and get out the cooking supplies. Some of the other boxes can wait a bit. But, in the end, those lower priorities are the items that make the house your home: the silly knickknack you brought home from that trip, the soccer scarf that will feature in your Zoom call backgrounds, the shelf full of children’s sports trophies.
New restaurants can be like that, too. Not every spot opens with every box unpacked. Radici Wood Fired Grill, a high-end Italian restaurant from acclaimed chef and television presence Tiffany Derry, has all the essentials ready to go. The bar serves up impressive cocktails and nice bottles of wine. The kitchen cooks and smokes food on an open grill with logs stacked at the bottom. Cooks have technique to burn, and the service staff is charming and funny.
Radici just needs to open the last few boxes. This is not a metaphor anymore. The dining room’s stark minimalism goes against the soulful warmth of its Italian cooking. The walls are gray. The floors are gray. Even the wood staining on a high shelving unit is gray. Gray exposed ductwork features in the industrial ceiling; gray metallic room dividers separate the dining room’s front corner from the open kitchen. The chairs are a nameless shade of beige. The lighting is cool and dispassionate.
When I visited, there was one painting in Radici and a red flowerpot. (You know you’re desperate for descriptive detail when you must mention the flowerpot.) True, the dining room has two large televisions, but we booked dinners during two of the Dallas Mavericks’ NBA Finals games, and the TVs stayed off. Nothing makes you wish you were looking at a painting like a TV that never turns on.
This is all a pity because Radici is such an endearing love letter to Italy from Derry and business partner Tom Foley, and its food communicates that love so well that the chilliness of the dining room works in opposition to the mood. Gray is a color of modernity, not tradition; neutrality, not love. The menu invites us to relax and order an extra glass of limoncello; the atmosphere asks us not to get carried away.
Let’s get carried away nonetheless. Radici’s cocktail menu smartly divides itself into light aperitivo drinks, alcohol-free creations, martini variations (one of which features that house-made limoncello), and boozier glasses. The Miscela Della Casa sounds like a handful—two kinds of scotch, brandy, and two Italian liqueurs—but tastes like a super concentrated Old Fashioned. The wine list has good, food-friendly bargains in the $50 to $60 range, but they have been pressed into double duty as decoration, so reds are served at room temperature.
The fritto misto is crisp and served with spicy aioli.
Brittany Conerly
Tiffany Derry plates a summery tomato salad.
Brittany Conerly
Bowl of tiramisu with crispies on table.
Brittany Conerly
Cocktails in hand, your table should go big on appetizers. Suppli al telefono are classic Roman street snacks: little deep-fried balls of risotto, meat scraps, and mozzarella. Radici uses chicken liver and pork sausage for the meat portion of its filling and smoked mozzarella for its cheese. The fry is impeccable, the basil pesto on the plate brightens the dish wonderfully, and the cheese inside the fritter pulls and snaps like a mozzarella stick.
Tomato salad is generously dressed with Mediterranean flavors: caper leaves, red onions, clutches of fresh herbs, and crumbles of ricotta salata for extra oomph. With all those partners, the tomato becomes an ensemble player rather than soloist. The chopped salad’s dressing has an electric charge of acidity to go with its matchstick-thin slices of salami and varied greens.
Fritto misto—a mix of lightly fried broccolini, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and other veggies—is a delight to eat and a tiny triumph of technique. The batter on the fried veggies is so light and so crisp that it resembles Japanese tempura. Take a chomp and the fry offers only slight resistance before you get to the tender vegetable underneath. It also comes with a generous helping of aioli spiked with hot Calabrian peppers. I’ll order this every time I’m here.
I’m also tempted to order the rabbit pasta every visit. Casarecce is a pasta shape a bit like a twist tie, with a gentle curve and a groove down the middle. To keep the rabbit from drying out, cooks braise it for three hours, pull the meat, and toss it with pasta, fatty pork cheek, kale, and an unholy amount of cheese. No use trying to describe this dish in fancy terms. It’s a gosh-darn delight. (Our server warned us that rabbit is traditionally served in spring and early summer, but the dish is so popular it may stay year round.)
The lasagna bianca is out of the ordinary and, in a delightful way, disorienting. Imagine a vegetarian lasagna with green spinach noodles, a light herbaceous flavor that makes it easy to eat more, and cheese served generously to make up for the lack of meat. This is that—except it still has the meat. The key is a “white Bolognese,” a sauce that features plenty of milk and white wine and is rarer than it should be in the United States.
No use trying to describe the rabbit pasta in fancy terms. It’s a gosh-darn delight.
Radici’s staff recommends something like a two-two-one approach to ordering: for every two people at your table, order two antipasti, two pasta bowls, and one main course. Most of that plan holds up, but I haven’t loved any main courses yet. Chicken parmesan arrives with one pounded-flat plank of chicken doused in tomato sauce and mozzarella. The meat is tender, but the sauce softens the batter coating. That’s the whole dish, for $32. Radici sources Kurobuta pork, a heritage breed famous for well-marbled fat, to grill chops in its wood oven. The fat was the only saving grace of our chop, which had dried out entirely from overcooking. The kitchen pre sliced it for us, so we could see the grain of the meat, as tight and unyielding as the grain on the end of a piece of lumber. On the side, radicchio had also been overgrilled, until all the leaves were limp.
Eggplant involtini has the advantage of simplicity. Long slices of eggplant are rolled up into spirals, then served a bit like a lasagna: red sauce, ricotta cheese, petite cast-iron skillet. With such simple flavors, much depends on the thickness and successful cook of the eggplant itself, which can be a little al dente. But the flavor has an easygoing red-sauce appeal. All our mains were salty, a common feature at Derry’s flagship restaurant, Roots Southern Table. If I ever compete on Chopped and see Derry at the judges’ table, I’ll use twice as much salt as I do at home.
Radici saves its absolute best work for last. Both of the desserts are dynamite. The tiramisu is mostly traditional—until it gets showered in chocolate shavings and fried phyllo dough, which the menu calls “crispies.” If you’ve ever thought tiramisu would be perfect if it had some texture, this is the slice you need to try. I am not willing to disclose how much I ate.
The other option is just as splendid. It’s a slice of pistachio olive oil cake, with so much pistachio that the batter turns a gentle green, topped with heaping scoops of blood orange Aperol marmalade, crème fraîche, and more pistachios. Get a little cream, a little of the rich cake, and a bit of tart blood orange on one spoonful, and you’ll feel like you’re on a patio in Sicily. Again, my party returned a completely clean plate.
I visited Radici for the first time just one night after returning to another accomplished new neighborhood Italian spot, Via Triozzi. Both restaurants specialize in fresh pastas and lightly treated veggies. Both maintain a high standard of cooking, though Via Triozzi offers bigger savory hits and Radici’s desserts sing. Both are led by chefs who are not native Italians and had to put in the education to reach their high levels of accomplishment.
Look at the dining rooms, though, and they seem worlds apart. Via Triozzi’s decades-old walls are covered with family photos and memories; Radici’s retail strip center offers no architectural interest. It’s easy to joke about the stereotypical decorations of so many Italian joints. They don’t really need black-and-white photos of moody great-uncles in leather jackets, empty Chianti bottles, or a playlist from the Sinatraverse. But they need heart. Italian food is about family, generous excess, and loud displays of love. Radici’s appetizers, drinks, and desserts get in that mood perfectly. The mains will follow soon, I hope. The restaurant just needs to unpack the last few boxes, the ones we don’t strictly need, the ones that make us who we are.
This story originally appeared in the August issue of D Magazine with the headline “Finishing Touch.” Write to brian.reinhart@dmagazine.com.
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