By Carol Gifford
Located in The Siena Hotel, Il Palio Ristorante is the only AAA Four Diamond Italian restaurant in North Carolina. Offering a wine cellar filled with over 400 choices, the property serves fresh, colorful and savory cuisine in a Tuscan villa setting.
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(January 2009) Il Palio Ristorante, the only
AAA Four Diamond Italian restaurant in North Carolina, is a destination in itself offering fresh, colorful and savory cuisine in a Tuscan villa setting. The "American" Italian restaurant, located in the plush AAA Four Diamond rated Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill, offers guests choices as varied as the fresh local produce, protein and grains that surround the property.
"Our menu is tailored around the seasons and fresh ingredients available in each," says Executive Chef Adam Rose who uses local ingredients -- just like Italian chefs -- to drive his menus and creative productions. For Rose that means using North and South Carolina local ingredients. "Late fall and early winter is braises and heavy dishes such as osso buco, soups and stews. In the summer we switch to more fish and local vegetables and grains."
“We use the best possible ingredients and all of our cooking is from scratch -- we don’t use any additives,” says Rose, who came to Il Palio in April 2007. “Food is better if you cook with local ingredients.”
Italian favorites include veal scallopini with red swiss chard, pan-roasted potatoes and marsala and grilled lamp chop with house-made lamb sausage, cannelloni bean ragu with mizuna and tomato rosemary sauce.
Il Palio’s menu varies when different local ingredients become available, says Rose, and could change as often as one day to the next.
“I might get only enough local racks of lamb for a 15-day run of osso buco,” says Rose, who has 40 to 50 local vendors, depending on the season. “When you’re dealing with small, organic local farmers you need to be able to roll with the punches.”
Other locally purchased ingredients include beef, chickens, duck, and pork. The menu features several fresh varieties of vegetables and grains including greens such as kale, leaf lettuce and Heirloom tomatoes, Carolina Gold polenta from nearby Anson Mills in Columbia, local cheeses, and Yukon gold potatoes. Fruits include blackberries and strawberries, among other locals. Fish from the waters around the Carolinas and Georgia includes black and red grouper, flounder and rainbow trout.
“Using local ingredients is a purer, cleaner and fresher way to cook,” Rose says. “You have to support your local community and if it’s available, I will try to get a hold of it.”
Rose, whose Long Island family owned restaurants, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. After working his way up the ranks at restaurants in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, Rose and his wife, former Il Palio Sommelier Hailey Rose, chose to relocate to North Carolina, halfway between their respective home states of New York and Mississippi. Hailey now spends her time at home with their toddler daughter.
Patrons can choose from more than 400 wines, most of Italian vintage, to complement the menu, ranging in price from $7 to $19 a glass or by the bottle, from the low $40s and up. Wine Sommelier Susannah Smith stocks the wine cellar with both Italian wines from the well-known regions of Tuscany and Piemonte, and other lesser-known regions and grapes.
The intimate-style restaurant seats 65 and the private dining room can be extended to seat 95 for banquet dining.
 Rose visits the dining room and says guests often ask him about his personal story; they want to know how he got to North Carolina and why he left New York.
“I love talking to our guests,” says Rose. “You’re likely to find me roaming through the dining room. I look for a chance to go to each table and become part of the dining experience.
“I’ll come out and serve the food and answer questions about it. Guests ask me to describe it and then about ingredients and recipes.”
Il Palio offered a recent dinner series with other AAA-rated Four Diamond restaurants in the area. In addition to Rose, the five-time series, offered monthly, included chefs from the Washington-Duke, Carolina Inn, the Umstead and Second Empire. Each chef was in charge of one course of the dinner hosted by a different restaurant each month. Several guests attended each dinner in the series.
The series included time for the chefs to discuss the meal with the guests and greet them and answer individual questions.
Some future offerings include a planned North Carolina series with chefs from three AAA Four Diamond rated restaurants from different regions in the state planning and hosting different courses of the meal, each chef featuring regional specialties. The chefs include Rose from the Piedmont, and others from the coastal region in Wilmington and the mountains in Asheville.
Rose credits his staff with creating a memorable dining experience for guests.
“We have 30 cooks, including sous chefs and others and we all learn from each other,” says Rose. “There’s no unimportant job in this kitchen or restaurant.
“Everyone from the sommelier, cooks, and wait staff are dedicated, passionate people,” says Rose. “It takes a whole army to do what we do.”
(Updated January 2009) |
