A Case for Simple Cooking

What FraLi Gourmet does right

In the mind of a chef—or of anyone tasked with throwing a menu together—there’s a pesky urge to overcomplicate. Just one more ingredient, one more avant garde component and I’ll be on the cover of Food & Wine. The fact that less is indeed more has become an increasingly hard pill to swallow for many in the industry. The dining world has become a pissing contest for the attention of prestigious foodie instagrammers. No one (except for them) is impressed by your twelve-ingredient marvel of modern architecture served with five kinds of oil and an edible orchid. Dishes like this are a pathetic coverup for a lack of food knowledge and open-mindedness in the kitchen, not the other way around. A real chef, like any artist, rarely adds to, but instead whittles away at.

FraLi Gourmet seems to agree with me here, and they play a rare and important role in the culinary scene—in their own words, the role of “your lost Italian grandmother.” I could’ve shed a tear looking at their menu. Happy ones, sure, but I was also faced with all I’d missed out on in lacking an Italian relative. The menu was open, honest and simple. Every ingredient in the dish descriptions took up just one line. It’s nice to glance at a menu that doesn’t make you dive into a flash memoir just to explain moules marinière. I simply do not need to know that your white wine lemon sauce is tangy. I sure as hell hope it is.

I was attracted pretty quickly to their fettuccine carrettiera. Carrettiera (meaning cart driver) is a loosely defined Sicilian sauce—it’s only required ingredients being garlic and olive oil—with possible iterations including peppers, tomatoes, and pine nuts. The dish serves perfectly as a parading of a restaurant’s freshest ingredients. FraLi’s take sported a tomato basil sauce with pine nuts, garlic and olive oil—and, might I add, homemade pasta.

It was lovely. The pasta was perfectly dried and cooked, and the basil and pine nuts added just enough earthiness without turning the sauce into a pesto. The service was just as homey as the environment, and their Italian imports market was a sweet touch. Still, the thing that made me happiest was the simplicity of it all. FraLi is authentic without being out of touch, and fresh without making farm-to-table their whole identity. Sure, there’s a case to be made for the authenticity and naturality that comes with peeling bulbs of garlic from milk crates straight from the farm, but true gourmet comes down to how each ingredient is put to use. FraLi successfully scratches this growing itch in the restaurant world for simple, to the point, and real-deal Italian cuisine.

Thanks to FraLi for a wonderful meal and an opportunity to state my case for simple cooking. I’m glad we see eye to eye…

FraLi Gourmet is located at 217 W Liberty St. in Savannah, GA. They’re open from 11-7 on weekdays and 11-5 on Saturday. Go meet your Italian Grandmother.