Dante de Magistris
Dante de Magistris, chef-owner of dante in Cambridge, MA, and his brothers, Damian and Filippo, spent summers as kids at their father’s il casale – rural home – in Candida, a small village in Italy’s Campania region. Now the boys have opened their own “rural home,” renovating an 1899 firehouse in Downtown Belmont for an elegant, rustic restaurant serving cuisine of their childhood – country Italian fare that’s deceptively simple.
Naomi Kooker: Il Casale has some cool furnishings and decor. Tell me about some of them.
Dante de Magistris: The red leather antique chairs [at the back of the bar area] are 1920s Italian. My father found them three years ago. The glass lanterns are classic Venetian style, hand-blown. The watercolors on the walls are all of Candida – there’s one of my grandfather sitting in the house, “il casale,” in Candida. He always liked to sit by the window, with the door open. I’m in the green shirt, about 12 or 14 years old.
NK: Since the firehouse was a historic landmark, you had to keep certain things like the fire pole, right?
DM: We had to keep the pole in the original spot; it’s by one of the front tables. We kept an old blackboard with galvanized metal on the outside.
NK: Is the menu all Southern Italian?
DM: It’s Southern Italian with some Northern – my grandmother always made gnocchi Northern-style. The food here is so simple that one wrong step could turn it from something very special to not worth eating. I’m really excited about the menu.
NK: Your grandmother also made minestra, which you mentioned you ate at least once a week. What’s in your version of the dish?
DM: We’re doing dandelion greens and escarole, stewed slowly with pig’s feet and tail. My grandmother served it with a cornmeal “pizza” made from corn flour, mixed with boiling water and salt, and cooked in a cast iron skillet in olive oil for about one and a half hours – it’s sort of like a polenta.
NK: You’ve commissioned Michael Rhoads of B&R Artisan Bread to do your bread…
DM: Yeah, he developed this bread my grandmother used to make that’s 65% potato – potato that’s boiled and riced and folded into the dough. It adds the moisture.
NK: Your father imports special Marzano tomatoes for the restaurant's sauce – I mean gravy. You say Italians are very particular about their gravy.
DM: I have a hard time eating tomato sauce in a restaurant. To be honest with you, if you’re Italian and you’re not tasting what you grew up with, it doesn’t quite do it. Italians are very stubborn. Stubborn and loyal at the same time.
– Naomi Kooker