On opening night of Carbonara: Old School Italian & Wine Bar, guests ordering the restaurant’s namesake pasta were treated to a bit of theater as waitstaff delivered their entrees with a massive wheel of parmesan and flambéed the cheese tableside to finish off the dish. Those who opted for chicken or veal parm were similarly entertained as servers prepared the cheese and sauce for their selections and transferred the finishing touches directly from the hot skillet onto their plates.
“Everything is a show at Carbonara,” Cordero says of his latest venture, which opened March 18 in Ballston and welcomed 200 guests. “You’ll see my people making pastas and raviolis as soon as you walk in. We have an old-school slicer machine, where we slice prosciutto tableside.”
As the latest concept from Cordero Hospitality, Carbonara joins a local empire that includes sister properties such as Bronson Bier Hall, Bronx Pizza and taquerias Don Tito and Taco Rock.
Cordero, a Bronx native who began his culinary career at 15, making meatballs at an Italian restaurant in New York, says he carefully curated the menu using traditional recipes and focusing on dishes that aren’t widely available in this area.
“Nobody carries veal anymore around here,” he offers as an example. “We’re making veal parm, we’re making a veal marsala.”
Another dish he’s excited about is Pollo Alla Positano ($25), sautéed chicken topped with eggplant, prosciutto and mozzarella and served in a red wine sauce.
Other menu highlights include brisket-stuffed tortellini in a sauce of mushrooms, brown butter and cream ($23); Linguine Cardinale tossed with lobster, shrimp, grape tomatoes, green peas and mushrooms in a creamy lobster sauce ($39); and Chicken Cacciatore in a tomato red wine sauce over ziti ($24).
Sicilian pizza ($14) and two Italian sandwiches with fun names round out the savory bill of fare. The Little Italy “Can’t Get More Italian Than This” ($16) piles salami, provolone, mortadella, capicola, prosciutto di parma, lettuce and tomato on Italian bread.
Grandma’s Chicken Cutlet Parmigiana ($15) is chicken parm in sandwich form.
“Our menu is all fresh. We make the bread, we make the mozzarella, we make also all the pastas, from lobster ravioli to linguini to spaghetti,” Cordero says. “Everything is made in-house. It’s a scratch kitchen.”
Italian culture also inspired the trattoria’s signature cocktail menu, says Katherine Basile, Carbonara’s general manager and beverage director.
The Zenero Italian ($14), a riff on the French 75, is made with Bulldog gin and a house-made ginger-sage syrup, fresh lemon and prosecco. The Manhattan Di Notte ($14), which translates as “Manhattan by night,” is the restaurant’s take on a classic Manhattan. Served in a smoking cloche, it’s made with Russell’s 10 bourbon, Averna Amaro, Angostura bitters and sweet vinaigrette.
“We also make our own brandied cherries in-house using star anise and vanilla, as well as Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur,” says Basile, who has worked with Cordero since 2012. “They’re delicious. We also will be using those for our homemade cheesecakes.” (And speaking of dessert, there’s also tiramisu and cannoli.)
The Ciao Bella ($19), which has gin, fresh lavender syrup, lemon, egg whites and a lavender dusting, is pretty in purple, with a pea flower-dyed ice cube that looks like a rose floating in the glass. “It’s very botanical, very refreshing, perfect for spring into summer,” Basile says. “That will pair well with anything fish-related.”
The restaurant’s design aesthetic matches the menu’s traditional-meets-modern vibes. “I wanted it to make it not just this Godfather-style Italian restaurant, I wanted to make it fun,” Cordero says. “I wanted it to look like the Bellagio [hotel in Las Vegas] when you walk in. So we have all these chandeliers all over the place.”
Created in partnership with designer Yvette Irene, the interiors feature faux-Carrara marble floor tiles, Italian streetscape wall murals, an LED fireplace and a floating wine rack stocked with more than 1,000 bottles of Italian wines. In the background, Frank Sinatra croons over the sound system—except on Friday and Saturday nights, when a Sinatra impersonator provides live entertainment.
“We also teamed up with an Italian cigar maker, Toscano Cigars, so you can smoke cigars outside,” Cordero says. “We have a lot of gentlemen [who] would like to have a cigar outside and we have an area just for that.”
His hope is that Carbonara fills a hole in Arlington’s dining scene. “The anticipation of this restaurant was crazy,” he says. “People were messaging me, ‘When are you going to open, when are you going to open?’ They showed up yesterday and showed me that [this] restaurant is needed.”
It’s also an opportunity for Cordero to get back to his culinary roots. After that first job making meatballs, he went on to open a chain of East Coast pizzerias that he sold to Sbarro’s in 1990. A year later he opened Bravo’s Italian café in Fairfax, which became Honor Brewing Company in 2014. Since then, he’s owned 16 restaurants, 11 of which are still open.
“A lot of people that come to my [other] restaurants, they’ll come for the alcohol,” he says, “and then they get hungry, and they say, ‘Let me try the food,’ and they say, ‘Oh, man. This is pretty good.’ But that’s not the first thing that they came in for.”
Carbonara, on the other hand, is first and foremost a restaurant. “I really wanted to go back to being a chef and being recognized as a chef,” he says.
Tucked inside the Ballston Gateway building at the corner of Wilson Boulevard and North Pollard Street, the 4,000-square-foot establishment seats 150 inside and has a 1,500-square-foot patio that accommodates another 50 guests.
The kitchen is offering 70% of the menu and is open only for dinner during week one, but the full menu will be available at lunch and dinner by the last week in March, Cordero says. Brunch service will be introduced at a later date.
Carbonara is located at 3865 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, between Ballston and Virginia Square.