Chefs embrace pasta as blank canvas
2/2/2010
Source: Nation's Restaurant News
http://www.nrn.com/landingPage.aspx?menu_id=1380&coll_id=616&id=378936#

By Nancy Kruse

(Feb. 2, 2010) Restaurant kitchens are jam packed with foods that have jumped ethnic boundaries to become fixtures of the American diet. Hot dogs have transcended their Germanic roots and are ballpark staples and picnic standards, while salsa has taken its place alongside ketchup as a condiment of choice. Pizza is on menus from breakfast through dessert and in venues from schools to taverns. But when it comes to culinary crossover, no ethnic food is more broadly accepted and widely used than pasta.

Pasta’s path to popularity is well worn. It came ashore on a massive wave of immigration that brought three million Italians to the U.S. in the first two decades of the last century. It received a second wind as globetrotting American tourists swarmed Italy, attracted by its culture and its cuisine.

More recently, celebrity chefs have burnished pasta’s image and made it the star of TV cooking shows. Taking a cue from these powerful external forces, chefs have embraced pasta, using it as a blank canvas for a range of innovative items.

It’s rustic and robust. Pasta rates high on the satisfaction index in the best of times, but when the going gets tough, its comforting qualities really shine. It delivers value as the focal point of substantial, filling dishes like Romano’s Macaroni Grill’s Penne Rustica, which delivers a hearty amalgam of shrimp, chicken and aged prosciutto, or Fazoli’s Tortellini Robusto, which boasts a pair of proteins, chicken and sausage, along with a dairy duo of mozzarella and provolone cheeses.

Fast-casual Go Roma offers Rigatoni Country Style that marries conventional ingredients like sausage, tomatoes and roasted peppers with contemporary touches like fresh basil in a garlic-cream sauce. Perhaps the ultimate menu mash-up of comfort classics is the use of pasta as the basis of a number of Stroganoffs, in which it complements the meat and sauce and provides ample plate coverage. A bit of a menu boomlet, current examples include the Steak Stroganoff at Country Kitchen, Bob Evans’ Pot Roast Stroganoff and T.G.I. Friday’s Prime Rib Stroganoff.

Arguably the biggest newsmaker in the pasta category over the past couple of years has been the unexpected appearance of pasta entrées on pizza-chain menus. Looking to appeal to budget-conscious families and to blunt the impact of the emerging recession, Pizza Hut led the charge in spring 2008 with the introduction of its Tuscani Pastas that are meant to feed a foursome.

In spring 2009, arch competitor Domino’s jumped in with five penne dishes; in a nice point of differentiation, each is baked in a lightly seasoned bread bowl. At about the same time, Pizza Inn rolled out three family-style pastas including Sausage and Shells Pomodoro.

It’s by the numbers and it’s oven baked. Pasta dishes often connote abundance, a connection that’s exploited by many chain offerings. Olive Garden offers Five-Cheese Ziti in a five-cheese marinara sauce under a layer of melted Italian cheeses. Sticking with the number five, T.G.I. Friday’s menus feature Gourmet Mac ’N Five Cheeses that’s tossed with bacon. Good things come in fours, too, as with Old Chicago’s Four-Cheese Tortelloni and Buca di Beppo’s Quattro al Forno, a sampler plate of four oven-baked pastas.

On the subject of baking, it’s a prep technique that complements the heartiness of many pasta dishes. Fazoli’s introduced a new menu in 2009 that features a number of oven-baked specialties, including Creamy Chicken Basil and Twice-Baked Lasagna. And Bertucci’s Lasagna Rustica, with its handmade layers of pasta, is promoted as “baked to perfection” in a brick oven.

It’s good for you, too.It’s been about five years since the Atkins Diet and its prohibition of carbohydrates forced a substantial number of restaurant patrons to eschew pasta for protein. Reporting on the phenomenon, research gurus at the NPD Group observed that the typical Atkins acolyte fell off the diet wagon after 90 days o