HOT DISH: Tableside cacio e pepe at La Vista

Kosovar "Kos" Hoti preparing cacio e pepe tableside at La Vista Ristorante Italiano. AMY SOWDER PHOTOS

By AMY SOWDER

Cheese fanatics, you’re welcome. Why? You’re about to discover any card-carrying turophile’s dream: cacio e pepe created before your table in a 150-pound wheel of 24-month aged Parmesan Reggiano.

The magic happens before your eyes as you relax at your table draped with a white tablecloth at La Vista Ristorante Italiano in South Salem. It’s likely you’ll hear Frank Sinatra crooning and watch the flames flicker from the wood-burning stone fireplace.

But that creamy classic and deceptively simple pasta dish is made with a flair not found anywhere else in Westchester or nearby Connecticut. Meaning “cheese and pepper” pasta in Italian, this dish can be made with any noodle and sounds simple, but in fact, it requires skill in each step of the process. Plus, with so few ingredients, the quality of each ingredient can make or break the dish.

“The quality elevates the dish,” says Kosovar “Kos” Hoti, general manager and son of Remy Hoti, owner and head chef.

Hailing from Albania and seeking a better life in the states, Remy Hoti launched this family-run restaurant in 2014, after years of cooking in Italy and New York. His wife, Dashi, makes some ingredients such as the pasta and the feta slices served to each table at the start of the meal with a roasted pepper, olives, slices of Parmesan, roasted tomato puree, and assorted breads in a basket. Kos Hoti also does a lot of the tableside cooking of pasta, branzino fish, and zabaglione, a torch-crusted custardy dessert. Christina Lulgjuraj, a cousin, is one of the longtime servers.

If you order the cacio e pepe, it will likely come with Dashi’s handmade bucatini pasta, which is like spaghetti but hollow in the center, allowing it to soak up more sauce. “You can do linguine if you like, but I chose bucatini because it goes really well with the sauce I’m trying to present,” Kos Hoti says. 

This cacio e pepe version doesn’t stick exactly to some traditional recipes, which call for Pecorino Romano, black pepper, salt, butter and nothing else besides the water from the cooked pasta. Before the sauté pan arrives on the rolling cooking table to your dining table at La Vista, the pasta has been cooked for 1 to 2 minutes in the kitchen with a little cream. The table is outfitted with a mise en place of organic ghee (clarified butter), minced shallots and chopped parsley. Hoti pours a dash of extra-virgin olive oil onto an empty pan heating on the portable induction burner. His fork nudges a few clumps of minced shallots onto the pan, which reacts with a satisfying sizzle. He then adds a couple pale-yellow pats of ghee, browning that butter slightly for caramelization effect. He sprinkles in a hearty pinch of parsley as the concoction crackles. He twists a wooden pepper grinder over the sizzling pan, to toast the pepper and draw out its sweeter notes.

Then, “stand back,” Hoti says,” as now comes the flashiest part of the tableside cooking experience: a dash of the Rémy Martin cognac, sending an eruption of flames 4-feet high, creating quite the show.

Hoti pours the shallot mixture into the partially hollowed out wheel of cheese that came certified from Parma, Italy. “I put this little bit of sauce in the cheese so it melts the cheese just a little bit,” Hoti says, scraping the softened Parmesan around the small pool of amber sauce, mixing it up as he scrapes and sending savory scents across the table. Meanwhile, Hoti slides the pan of creamy, peppery bucatini into that same sizzling pan, warming it up over the burner, and then he pours the heated pasta into the cheese wheel where the two components meet in a thick, creamy, umami mess to create the ideal mouthfeel.

Using the tried and true technique of spinning the pasta onto a spoon with a fork, Hoti piles pasta mounds onto pasta mounds onto the white plate. The result is a glossy, thick, creamy, peppery — and above all, cheesy — plate of sensual Parma perfection. 

“Of course, it’s finished with our beautiful black pepper,” Hoti says, giving the plate a few final grinds.

Tableside cooking, made popular in the 1990s, also spotlights the dining atmosphere.The family has been transforming the property with renovations in the last year or so, from the cherry wood floors to the main dining room’s front wall full of new French doors that open to the new patio in warm weather, lit by roadside lanterns. In warm months, there are food gardens all around the property, providing vegetables, fruit and herbs for the kitchen. Inside, the fireplace keeps diners cozy while classic American and Italian standards play.

Besides the prix fixe lunch menu, dinner menu, prix fixe Sunday brunch menu, private and special events menus and happy hour menu at the bar, there’s a chef’s menu that changes every season, available from 4:30 to 8 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday.

La Vista Ristorante Italiano is located at 355 Smith Ridge Road, South Salem. For more information, visit lavistaristorante.com.