Mario dug into and clearly dug the Italian Beef Chef John cooked for the shindig and sent along with grub from a who’s-who of Chi-town culinary luminaries including contributions from Vie, Floriole Bakery, Hoosier Mama Pies, The Butcher and Larder, Nightwood, In Fine Spirits, Sepia, Las Manas Tamales and, from MI, Zingerman’s Delicatessen. Amazing food, amazing company and an amazing couple. Good times.

You encounter this word on restaurant menus all the time – Bolognese. What you seldom encounter afterward is, in fact, Bolognese or even an arguable facsimile. Bolognese is simple – ground meat (traditionally just beef or veal, PZ’s uses a local farm raised pork and beef mix), onions, carrots, celery, butter, salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg – two cooking stages – one with dry white wine, one with milk and Time – at least 5 hours. That’s it. When you read Mother Marcella’s recipe she almost seems distressed there aren’t even fewer ingredients (perhaps imagining an austerely Perfect ragu that would have no ingredients at all…now that’s Peasant Food).

But there are no rules and Authenticity is Overrated so, here at Panozzo’s, we cheat on that tradition with abandon. We add ground salumi. We up the ante on the milk by replacing it with Heavy Cream and Prosciutto Broth. We cook it all day and create a sublime Ragu I would put up against Any (ANY). When I tasted Chef John’s Bolognese for the first time I said what any self-respecting Italian would say. “John…that’s the second best Bolognese I ever tasted’. Available in Moral Lasagna form or, separately, as Ragu (it ain’t Sauce) daily.

We kicked off the 2011 series with a sensual slaughter of the food of Emilia-Romagna (one highlight – >>). We rocked a Rome menu for Two nights. We did a 12 course monster Ode to Sicily (and were considerate enough to serve bubbles with the cuttlefish). We also threw in a couple conceptual curves – our ‘Family Meal’ (pictured above) where 7 staffers collaborated on a course with Chef John inspired by a primal food memory and somehow we brought that Syrian, Polish, Italian, Cuban, Mexican, American mélange into gustatory harmony. Our final dinner of 2011 was our ‘Hearth and Home’ dinner where we, pretty much, just tried to make everyone so pleased and sated that they wept. Stay tuned for the 2012 slate.

Enter Panozzo’s. Our Meatballs are, truly, all about the vegetables. We cook down a local veggie stew for 5 hours as a component of the mix. We take our house recipe fennel-forward pork sausage, add fresh ground bread crumbs, currants, capers, coriander, onions, celery, garlic, chilies, eggs, tomatoes and pecorino. Our Meatballs are always Hand-Mixed, Hand-Rolled and Pan Fried (in extra-virgin Olive Oil). Our Meatballs are Sincere.