Sunday, June 08, 2008
Food

Made in America

Antica Posta cures its own Italian meats

By Hope S. Philbrick

Billed as the first authentic Tuscan restaurant in Georgia, Antica Posta has combined fresh ingredients with traditional recipes since it opened in 1999. In the dinners served nightly, the restaurant brings flavors of San Casciano, Italy, to Buckhead. The Sunday Paper recently heard that the restaurant started producing homemade sausages and checked in with owner Marco Betti to learn more.

Q How do you ensure the authenticity of your cuisine?
A I was born and raised in Italy and use only family recipes. My brother Alessandro is one of the chefs; the chef de cuisine is another Italian named Ciccio.

    We import products like olive oil from my hometown in Tuscany right outside Florence and zolsini beans (white beans) that grow on the hills of my hometown. But you cannot import meat legally, and that’s why we started making salami here. My father had a butcher store for 48 years outside Florence, and he cured meats like salami. So when we started this project, my brother Alessandro went to Italy for two months at the beginning of 2007 to learn how to make salami and other cured meats, visiting my dad and his colleagues.

It takes time. Normally when it comes to cooking, you get an immediate result; you eat it and it is good or no good. When it comes to cured meats, it’s a different story. You need to wait until the meat is cured, and it’s an investment of time.

    We imported a curing cabinet from Italy. It’s a new device that has been developed by a company together with the Slow Food organization. Traditionally, meats were cured only in certain times of the year because of the weather: You need the perfect climate to cure meat and the cabinet reproduces perfect climate conditions. Different meats need different conditions. We’ve been experimenting quite awhile and now have a great product.

    The goal is to eventually open a school here in Atlanta that will teach people how to cure meat.

What types of salami are available?
We make finnochiona, an air-dried sausage made with ground pork meat—we use Berkshire pork. It’s a typical Florentine salami flavored with fennel seeds for a distinctive taste. I’m not going to reveal the recipe, but we season it with our spices and condiments and then place it inside casing and it goes into the curing cabinet. It takes almost a month to be ready.   

Coppa or capocollo is like prosciutto. It’s placed under salt for about a week and then flavored with other spices and condiments and hung in the curing chamber for about a month.

    Both these salamis are on the menu in $10 appetizer portions.

We’re working on building a separate facility within the restaurant so we can start selling them retail. Retail is a different game altogether: To sell meats retail you need to have an on-site inspector and make the sausages in a separate room. We have had our salamis tested in a lab in Chicago, and we comply to USDA standards—it’s very important for people to know.

What else do you make from scratch? What else is new this season?
We make everything from scratch.

    Eventually in the retail shop, we’ll offer some other cuts of salami, and we’ll add some cheese. I started with these two salamis because they are my favorites. My philosophy has always been to serve what you’d eat and nothing that you wouldn’t.

    Porcini mushrooms are in season; we typically go through 20 to 30 pounds a week when they’re available. White truffle season starts in October; last year, we went through eight-and-a-half kilos of white truffles.

    We’re opening a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Tuscan Grill will be in a new Marriott hotel. Opening is scheduled for the end of July or beginning of August. My other brother Johnny will be the chef there. SP
Antica Posta is located at 519 E. Paces Ferry Rd. For more information, call 404-262-7112 or visit www.anticaposta.com.