Paris is in love with Italian-American restaurants

"Imagine a place as lively as the best Italian trattorias, but resolutely American in spirit. With this restaurant, we want to merge these cultures, offering a cuisine that is fun, nostalgic and naturally trendy." This is the promise of Red Sauce, which will open in Paris in May 2025. Since the inauguration, it has been a hit, carried by the press relations agency Woki Toki, already at the origin of the take-off of Dumbo, which specialises in smashburgers. At Red Sauce, people come for a plate of large meatballs accompanied by a generous ladle of ricotta and served with golden pieces of garlic brioche, or for rigatoni bathed in a vodka tomato sauce.

The name of the brand is particularly well founded: it refers to "red sauce restaurants" (which can be vulgarly translated as "restaurants with tomato sauce"), these Italian-American trattorias born in the United States with the massive arrival of Italians in search of a better life. Between 1880 and 1924, more than 4 million of them, mainly from the south of the peninsula, crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life. In New York, the main host city for this diaspora, some iconic names have disappeared (Mamma Leone's, Gino, Angelo's...), but others, just as old, perpetuate the tradition: Rao's, John's of 12th Street, Bamonte's, Mario's, Patsy's...

Among the must-haves on the menu, the famous chicken parm — an adaptation of eggplant alla parmigiana but made with chicken breast — features breaded cutlets, tomato sauce and mozzarella. It's impossible to talk about the red sauce style  without mentioning the fettuccine Alfredo: the story goes that Hollywood stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, won over in Rome by the pasta coated in butter, parmesan and cooking water at the restaurant Alfredo, asked for the recipe, which was then declined in the United States with the addition of cream, adaptation obliges. On Sundays, in this restaurant, there is also the tradition of Sunday gravy, a meat stew inherited from the Neapolitan ragù. On Netflix, in the film Nonnas, the character played by Vince Vaughn is desperate to recreate this family dish after the death of his mother.

Recently, the red sauce spirit  has  been exported, especially in the French capital. First there was Vecchio, at the end of 2023, with former Top Chef contestant Gianmarco Gorni in the kitchen: a long-term pop-up in the face of success. On the sixth floor of the Perchoir Ménilmontant, white tablecloths, candles and tables close together recreate the "neighborhood restaurant" side characteristic of the pioneers of the genre. Meatballs are obviously on the menu, with toast and marinara sauce, and you can even order arancini — breaded and fried rice balls — here filled with cheddar. For Baptiste Aubour, a consultant specialising in catering, who works for Top Chef, imagining the mechanics of the tests and tasting the cuisine of nearly a hundred potential candidates before the official casting, "it's a bit of a perfect combo. You can't be disappointed with Italian cuisine and it blends in with the spirit of the Americans, kings of entertainment. We have really slimmed down the codes of Italian restaurants in France, and this allows us to add a culture that makes it even more lively. It's also a way of creating a language with mental images: we think of Little Italy, of Scorsese's films; suddenly, it becomes sulphurous, and that's what festive catering needs for a successful experience."

And it's not over, at least in Paris: it's Cherry's turn  to make a name for himself. This time, we are moving away from the original "neighborhood restaurant": in this corner of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the waiters wear a bow tie and a thick white jacket, and the rigatoni "with lemon cream and caviar" are billed at €89. Italian-style luxury, with an American ascendancy, then.