Cannolis, Pasta, Family, and Capone! I interviewed Chef Matthew Cutolo at Gargiulos Restaurant on Coney Island in Brooklyn, NY about all of these things, and more!
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There are Italian dishes you can order anywhere, and then there are the plates that only exist because one restaurant decided to do things its own way and never let the standard slip. We zero in on Gargiulo’s Penne Pasqualina, the signature pasta that regulars treat like a landmark: zucchini, onion, fresh tomato, prosciutto, and a sauce people keep trying to decode after the last bite.
The backstory goes straight to a pivotal moment in restaurant history. When the catering hall was added in 1983, the kitchen suddenly had to scale from a dining room of roughly 120 guests to cooking for hundreds at a time. That kind of growth can dilute quality fast, so the team brought in Chef Carlo Pamigiano from Italy to teach large-scale execution without losing precision. Out of that pressure and training, Penne Pasqualina was born, and it didn’t just survive the banquet line, it became the dish everyone associates with the restaurant.
We also get honest about the question that always starts an argument: what makes the “light cream sauce” light? The answer includes heavy cream, but the real magic is how parmigiano and pasta water pull everything together into a balanced, cohesive bite that still feels rooted in pasta technique. If you care about classic Italian-American cooking, restaurant consistency, and why some recipes should not be reinvented, you’ll want to hear this one.
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