Allegria e braciola

Raphael, the restaurant itself, is a modern masterpiece of minimalist comfort and open space. There are no checkered cloths, dark wood, or carafes of Chianti. It is all white birch and white tablecloths. Andy Warhol reproductions and portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra are placed just so on the walls. A Picasso-esque mural by Anthony Russo pushes the envelope to a modern, museum-like feel. I am looking for a headset and curator’s tape.

As the guests arrive — men in suit jackets and ties, women in pearls and leopard prints — they check their ethnicity at the door. Tonight, everyone’s Italian: the Majors, O’Briens, and Sullivans fit right in among the Lombardis and Vincis. They sip a crisp, cold Frascati and graze on the asparagus appetizers. Two veteran musicians, Joe Pescatore, with his 1940s Gibson arch-top, and Dick Salzillo on his Excelsiola accordion, work the crowd, filling the room with “Volare!”

Providence’s mayor, Buddy Cianci, comes in with his assistant, Michael, whose biceps are big enough to right the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The mayor nurses a glass of Chianti and talks to Mariani, gesticulating toward the world outside: Providence’s rebirth, for which he’s been godfather, if not midwife.

Before guests are seated, Cianci hands Mariani a jar of his own red sauce and olive oil, his mug on the labels. “That’s from 30-year-old trees,” he tells Mariani, who promptly holds up the olive oil to what sun is left at seven o’clock in the evening.

The local culture dominates the crowd. Many of the folks are Raphael regulars used to seeing the proprietor dressed in a suit, greeting them at the door.

Janis Cappello (formerly Madden), freckled and blond-haired, remembers her grandmother laying out ravioli on the bed to dry, because where else could she put them? Her Italian mother married an Irish man. “Always had to have potatoes,” she says.

Ed Major, of English, Irish, and French descent, is Italian “by association.” His wife Susan, née Feuti, recalls that her grandfather, from the Roma region, used to make his own wine. “Do you know how long [Conte] cooked this?” Ed asks rhetorically, gesturing to the plate of beef braciola finally in front of us. “Six hours. If you have to cut braciola with a knife, you don’t want to eat it.”

This one Ed eats with the side of his fork.

Finale e dolce — ciao!

There is nothing accidental about Italian cooking — except for Conte’s bar snack. One day, he accidentally dropped dried capellini on the stove. They crisped up. He bit into one and had a brainstorm. He added some romano cheese, a little salt and pepper, and fried them in olive oil. “It was a great hit,” he says of the long, edible straw.

Aside from such innovations, however, preparing good Italian-American food doesn’t involve much serendipity. And this is where Mariani and Conte see eye to eye.

“Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve,” Conte says. “It’s all technique.”

Mariani agrees that every step, from preparing the pasta al dente to the handling of each ingredient, matters very much. He has seen tonight’s display and has to admit he’s impressed. “Most of the dishes are very simple and based on common ingredients, and that is what Italian cooking is all about,” he says. When pressed, he admits that the common perception of Italian-American cooking has been tainted by bad chefs. In the right hands, Italian-American cuisine is not Chef Boyardee, but rather an amalgam of Old World and New that crosses class lines and brings people together.

In the end, both Mariani and Conte are happy with the results of their collaboration. Mariani proclaims that the meal was “done to perfection by the whole staff.”

Conte later says that he “had a ball” cooking the classics. “Cooking with my tongue instead of my eyes gave me a great relief of pressure,” he says. “It’s like playing folk guitar.” The evening is, after all, a kind of “mantecato” — the word Mariani used for “when you put it back in the pan and bring it all together.”

At the end of the meal, Conte comes out of the kitchen and stands at the front of the restaurant. A few guests find their feet. “Bravo, bravo,” they call out. Everyone applauds.

In front of the assembled audience in his restaurant, he says a few words about Ellis Island, and about being grateful for having the opportunity to prepare recipes from Mariani’s cookbook. “I can remember Sundays when I wanted to go to the beach and was told, ‘No, you have to go over there and sit and eat braciola,’” Conte says, pronouncing it not according to Mariani’s book, but his own way: “bra-JOLE.”

“What it is to be Italian ...” he adds. “This book is about it.”