Serious Eats: New York
Perbacco’s ‘Carbonara’ Is Seriously Strange
Yes. What you're looking at below is what they call 'carbonara.'
For a long time Kurve’s Thai-inflected spaghetti carbonara was the strangest take on this Italian classic I’d ever encountered. Then I tried Perbacco's “carbonara.” Those quotes are there for good reason. Chef Simone Bonelli's avant-garde approach contains all the ingredients of a good spaghetti carbonara, but that's where the similarity ends. Fork over $11 and you’ll be presented with his deconstructed version.
Standing in for traditional pasta are two fried disks of spaghetti, perched atop a quenelle of Parmigiano and black pepper gelato, which sits in a circle of grated egg yolk. That takes care of spaghetti carbonara’s pasta, egg, cheese, and black pepper components. The other quadrant of the plate is occupied by a pile of prosciutto bits crowned by a wobbly poached egg.
Perbacco's “carbonara” elicits reactions ranging from outrage to confusion. I was in the latter camp, but several friends who I described the dish to couldn’t believe how bizarre it was.
At first I ate the ingredients separately, munching on a bit of fried spaghetti, spooning up some of the cheesy/peppery gelato and yolk, but soon I blended them together. The poached egg was an interesting textural counterpoint to the crunchy spaghetti. The entire combination was tasty, but by no means earth-shattering. At least Bonelli chose not to create prosciutto-flavored Pop Rocks.
Perbacco
234 East 4th Street, New York NY 10009 (nr. Avenue B; map)
212-253-2038