Thanks @Chowseeker1999 for your excellent report and rundown. I was excited to hear about Mother Wolf when its opening was announced, because I love (the four iconic) Roman pastas in particular.
This style of food is deceptively simple, but there are lots of potential pitfalls when scaling it up to serve so many covers. I’m hoping that they’ll fix the system to ensure quality and consistency.
I think that difficulty in staffing now, especially for a restaurant as big as Mother Wolf, will likely lead to challenges in execution - there’s only so much that a head chef can do at this kind of place. I’ve had to temper my expectations of service, quality, and cost when dining out. On the other hand, I totally get the disappointment, especially by relatively “simple” food and all the more at these prices. The problems with the food seemed to persist throughout your main pizzas and pastas and overly charred crust is really unfortunate. Re: pizza in particular, it seems just overcooked - dried out and burnt - and/or maybe an inconsistent touch / unideal temperature of the dough. No excuses for that.
Re: pasta - the Roman pastas have relatively few ingredients, but at their best they exemplify the expression of the “whole being greater than the sum of its parts”. Their simplicity also entails them being unforgiving by nature and it’s a few cooking details that ensure texture, balance, and synergy taking them to the next level - perhaps as it’s said, “uno piu uno uguale tre” (1 + 1 = 3). With pasta, it seems less about a science / exact recipes and more about knowledge / feel and technique - so perhaps more rigorous training and experience is needed.
I’m strongly of the opinion that Roman pastas - and Carbonara, in particular - are best prepared with dried pasta, not fresh pasta. The pasta’s bite is different, and a good carbonara will have a slick, smooth sauce and guanciale that’s crisp outside but a bit tender inside. I think that it’s very easy to become a goopy mess with a fresh noodle, and the carbonara at Mother Wolf looks almost purposefully dry in comparison to that of say Santo Palato in Rome (which was very yolky and creamy).
And on Alle Vongole (which isn’t Roman in origin but is served at Mother Wolf), I think that one of its most essential elements is the texture of the “cremosa” sauce that coats the noodles. I believe it’s achieved by the “mantecatura” cooking at the end to create an emulsion of the pasta starch and water, olive oil, and clam juice or even cooking the pasta in the strained clam juice “risotatta” style. In my opinion, that’s going to be very tough to achieve with a fresh noodle - it just takes too long and the fresh noodle is easy to overcook.
I understand that there are merits to a fresh pasta, especially one made by hand with the mattarello instead of a machine. It’s impressive when done right, and it’s certainly ideal for some sauces and preparations, but not for all. I like the fresh pastas at Felix, but I didn’t think that Funke would have a carbonara on the menu at Mother Wolf because I think that a dried noodle is a much better candidate. I think that a good dried pasta is underrated among some restaurants. I get that fresh pasta is Funke’s thing, but for carbonara and vongole in particular, I have difficulty seeing why a fresh noodle is preferable to dried one.
In terms of the Cacio e Pepe you had being “heavy” and “stodgy,” I’d think that chef Funke is not making all the dough and rolling out the sfoglia himself. A fresh pasta not rolled out correctly can feel tight and not have the right “bite” back. Chef Funke goes into detail about how to ensure a fresh pasta’s extensibility and elasticity (from timing, resting, hydration, even how to wrap/store pasta dough, how to stretch and roll it, etc.), and I can see difficulties / shortcuts in making enough fresh pasta for a restaurant that big.
A few cooking tips that I’ve had work really well with Cacio e Pepe in particular: grinding the pepper by mortar & pestle but then sieving out the finer dust (which would get bitter), partially cooking the pasta in simmering black pepper water but constantly stirring it to let it “breathe,” mixing in some parmigiano-reggiano (about 30%; I learned this one when hearing about Bistrot64 in Rome), adding half the cheese at a time and off heat (with constant stirring) to prevent lumps, vigorous tossing, etc. There’s lots of different ways to cook Cacio e Pepe, but all the techniques I’ve found to help were little details that went a long way.
Well put! It seems all too easy for the cooking to falter with deceptively simple food and with a place this big…hoping they get things dialed-in and I look forward to trying it then!
