After 25 years, there’s still no place like Vetri Cucina

Marc Vetri’s dream restaurant hadn’t even been open a year when his relationship with the landlord, developer Leonard Levin, began to get messy. The elegant townhouse at 1312 Spruce St. where the chef and his business partner Jeff Benjamin opened Vetri in the fall of 1998 was a legendary address — the first home of Le Bec-Fin, among other French gems, including La Panetière, Ciboulette, and Chanterelles. But a chronic leak had allowed four inches of water into the basement wine cellar, and Vetri and Levin were at odds over how to fix it.

“We’re gonna get you outta here!” Vetri recalls the landlord threatening him and his father, Sal Vetri, in a heated argument that spilled out onto the sidewalk.

The famously feisty Sal replied, “We signed a 20-year lease. We’re. [Expletive]. Married!”

Marc Vetri, an Abington native, had just returned home from years abroad cooking in Italy, then New York. He was going to court this red gravy town with the alta cucina wonders of Lombardy: casoncelli, chestnut fettuccine with cocoa-scented wild boar ragù, and a sweet onion crepe with white truffled fonduta. The chocolate soufflé was studded with polenta and, well, that was the beginning of a promising romance between Vetri and Philadelphia. Who knew how long it would last?

Flash forward 25 years. Both Vetri’s father and Levin have passed away. (Sal died last year.) The chef has launched a generation of culinary talent, spawned two restaurant empires in multiple states (both before and after the partial sale to Urban Outfitters in 2015), and now has projects that take him from a pizzeria in the basement of the Comcast Tech Center to a Vetri Cucina satellite on the 56th floor of a Las Vegas casino. Meanwhile, as noted in my recent feature on three next-gen Italian tasting menu experiences, the dining scene has grown up around him, so Vetri Cucina now has serious company in the genre of luxury Italian dining. But the Spruce Street mothership, where Vetri won a James Beard Award in 2005 as best chef in the Mid-Atlantic and the restaurant as a whole has been nominated seven times, continues to thrive as one of Philly’s gold standards for special occasion dining.

Vetri, which added “Cucina” to its name in 2012, is still a splurge, with menus that range from a four-course prix fixe for $165 to $215 for the seasonal seven-course “Forchetta” tasting, plus $150 for the full wine pairing. As we recently sipped Contratto spritzes from our cushy seats in the saffron-colored dining room beneath the soft glow of a Murano chandelier, awaiting our salumi board while the chef chatted up M. Night Shyamalan — who was at the table beside us with his wife, Bhavna Vaswani — it was obvious Vetri’s allure remained strong.

“It’s so beautiful I almost don’t want to eat it,” cooed the movie mogul as a “classic pasta split” was set before him, with truffled almond tortellini on one side of the plate and the signature spinach gnocchi on the other, the ethereally light green orbs rising from a frothy puddle of brown butter and ricotta salata.

That pasta didn’t last long. The couple, who were celebrating an anniversary, are fans of the Vetri Cucina standards, and the chef had even procured a branzino to bake in a salt crust — a classic but now off-menu Vetri dish — in their honor.

I am always curious to taste new dishes that show how this restaurant keeps evolving. Culurgiones stuffed with crab and squash? Morel soup bobbing with polenta dumplings that ooze hearts of taleggio cheese? Yes, please. I also need the orechioni, an oversize, ear-shaped pasta infused with the intense corn flavor of masa and cradling wild boar mole ragù — a soulful Mexi-talian twist on one of the restaurant’s standards and a tribute to one of Vetri’s proudest alums, the Puebla-born chef Dionicio Jiménez of Cantina La Martina.

The ability to keep growing is a rarity in restaurants this old. But a restless love of cooking, learning, and reinvention in large and small ways is at the core of Vetri Cucina’s enduring energy, be it adding a mill to grind local grain for its pastas and breads, or an expansion into a beautiful second floor dining room with a show kitchen and 18 more seats to allow for more space between tables.

“We’re not slowing down because the Philly restaurant scene is vibrant as ever,” said Vetri, whose restaurant has been as instrumental as any other in shaping that landscape over the past quarter-century. It was influential from the start, bridging the decline of fancy French dining to an era inspired by a (slightly) more relaxed tone in the dining room and a pursuit of the rustic pleasures of regional Italy. Vetri Cucina has also been an incredible engine for talented chefs now cooking elsewhere in all sorts of genres, from Jiménez to Michael Solomonov (Zahav, Laser Wolf, etc.), Amanda Shulman (Her Place Supper Club, My Loup), Jeff Michaud (Osteria), Joey Baldino (Zeppoli, Palizzi Social Club), Brad Daniels (Tresini, Pizza Freak), and at least a dozen others.

Of the three new guard luxury Italian restaurants I recently reviewed, only Salvatore’s Counter at Irwin’s struck me as a more thrilling experience. But Salvatore’s is also so incredibly limited, with just four diners per week, that the relatively more accessible Vetri Cucina is a safer bet.

Its longevity is all the more remarkable considering that steady influx and eventual departure of homegrown talents. Its advantage over whatever newcomer-of-the-moment rises to prominence is its consistency as a complete experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts. That begins with the setting of that venerable townhouse, whose intimate 22-seat downstairs space has such a long history of great food, its dark wood floors and timbered ceiling practically resonate with good vibes, like a well-played violin.

The veteran staff is part of that aura of institutional polish, with 15 members of its 37-person crew having worked there a decade or more. That senioritis might explain the slightly poky start to our meal: a cocktail welcome that lasted nearly 45 minutes before I took my first bites of house-cured bresaola wrapped around flaky Parmesan bread sticks. I devoured the fennel-scented ‘nduja spread with in-house baker Michal Shelkowitz’s crusty Redeemer flour sourdough with an unseemly ravenous hunger.

But once things started rolling, our lead server Danielle Keefe was the picture of grace and good guidance, while sommelier and service captain Bobby Domenick paired my meal with exceptional by-the-glass highlights from the 400-label cellar, like the Braida Barbera d’Asti, whose ripe dark fruits and soft tannins were perfect for the béchamel and Bolognese richness of a tortellini pie streaked with the sweet acidity of a 40-year-old balsamic.

Vetri Cucina’s kitchen has never been cutting edge, exactly, in that it uses traditional Italian techniques to explore seasonal ingredients with precision and clever twists. The Forchetta tasting menu, helmed by current executive chef Jacob Rozenberg, pushes that creativity most, beginning with a scoop of caviar atop a silky carrot mousse piped into the hollow of an empty egg shell. (A subconscious echo of Le Bec’s once-famous honeyed carrot mousse?) A plump seared scallop took on an extra shade of opulence with a crust of foie gras-enriched breadcrumbs, set beside the contrasting orchard sweetness of roasted pear.

Vetri Cucina always shines brightest with its unparalleled pastas. The pleated culurgione dumplings were stunning — gorgeous designer purses stuffed with crab and cream cheese — and set over a brilliant orange pool of tangy pienollo tomato sauce. A lasagnetta of sheer pasta rounds layered with broccoli di ciccio, béchamel, pistachios, and a runny egg yolk had a delicate snap around its toasty edges that reminded me of an Italianized tostada.

But the two pasta courses on the Forchetta were not really enough. So we took advantage of the more flexible classic four-course tasting, which offers multiple choices within each course — and has the option to add more pastas for $24 each. The bonbon-shaped scarpinocc filled with artichoke cream were exquisite, with wide edges crimped into ruffled wings that made them look like pasta butterflies about to take off.

It was at about this time that I overheard Shyamalan tell his wife, “We need to come back more often, so we can try the other dishes.”

Building an ideal Vetri Cucina meal, if you don’t opt for the preset Forchetta, can involve choosing a balance of standards and newer creations. I wish we’d stuck with a sure-fire secondi off the classic menu, like the smoked goat over house-milled polenta, because the newer dishes in that course were the kitchen’s weakest. A shallow crock of brothy ribbolita had true Tuscan potential, with thin slices of veal sweetbread sausage and veal breast. But it lacked the typical beans, bread, or medley of veggies that usually make this classic peasant stew a hearty leftover treat. The Forchetta menu’s secondi of braised Wagyu short rib over pomme purée dusted with cocoa was fine, but forgettable. The cherry and eucalyptus notes of a stellar Barbaresco Riserva 2015 “Baluchin” in my glass, at least, kept me sanguine.

My cheerful demeanor would be fully revived once I got a perfect shot of espresso from Vetri’s mint condition 1958 Faema Urania, which gleams against the dining room wall like a shrine. I was even happier when Shelkowitz’s desserts appeared. The warm pistachio cake, which releases a pale green flow of nutty custard across the plate, is yet another unbeatable Vetri Cucina classic, while a crackly meringata saucer stuffed with chocolate crema, candied kumquats, and blood orange granità is a refreshing new creation.

One ongoing Vetri storyline, however, that I’m happy to report is finished? The chef’s persistent landlord squabbles are over, since he bought the building from Levin’s heirs last year. “I thought [the sale] was never going to happen,” confesses Vetri, now 57, and eager to keep rolling. “When will we stop? I don’t know. We are still having so much fun.”

1312 Spruce St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19107, 215-732-3478; vetricucina.com

Not wheelchair accessible.

There are multiple gluten-free options, although gluten-free pastas are not offered as an alternative. Most dietary restrictions can be accommodated with advance notice.

Menu highlights (changes often, but some standards are constant): sweet onion crepe; foie gras pastrami and salumi; classic pasta split (spinach gnocchi and almond tortellini); culurgiones; orechioni with wild boar mole ragù; smoked baby goat over polenta; chocolate meringata; molten pistachio cake.

Drinks: Vetri has one of the area’s deepest Italian cellars, with 400 labels ranging mostly between $150 and $300 a bottle. At least 22 of those bottles are offered nightly by the glass to pair with the tastings, including recent highlights from Braida, Bellavista, Occhipini, and Cocito.