Mario Carbone's Vodka Rigatoni will Put His Kids Through College, But He's Not Stopping There

One-third of the Major Food Group trio, Mario Carbone is the 35-year-old chef and restaurant entrepreneur who's taken the New York food scene by storm, thanks to his buzzing, high-energy and no-holds-barred F&B concepts that pay homage to the past. Having recently signed on to take over the space previously held by New York's iconic Four Seasons Restaurant, the Italian American took a week away to pop by Hong Kong for the second anniversary of Hong Kong's own Carbone, with a few new surprises to add to the menu (spoiler: they're almost as good as the Vodka Rigatoni). 

Can you tell us a bit about growing up in Queens and where your love of New York-Italian cuisine came from? My dad’s parents were Italian Americans, born in Brooklyn, and my mom’s parents were Italian from Italy, so I grew up seeing both sides... both cultures, both cuisines, both expressions of Italian Americans making their own way in the country. I was always in the kitchen with my grandfather, my mom’s dad, who was one of those guys who always had an apron on no matter what the occasion was. I learned to love cooking without really knowing it. At 14 or 15 years old I started cooking after school and on weekends in local neighborhood restaurants. I went to school for it and then eventually worked for many Italian chefs and worked in Italy for a year in northwestern Tuscany. 

Who are some of your cooking mentors? I was really lucky to have some great mentors, people I still call on for advice now. Mario Batali was and is a great mentor to me. Also his right-hand man, a man named Mark Ladner. Then there are the other great chefs that I worked for and I am thankfully part of that community now... people like Daniel Boulud and Wylie Dufresne.

How would you describe your personal cooking style and approach to food? I’m an old soul for the most part. The stuff I like to do, the research I do for my restaurants, and the type of restaurants I like to build are generally of the older brigade. Places like Carbone are throwbacks—it’s not a fresh take, it’s a historical look at the food, but we obviously use contemporary techniques to get the results. While the customer might not notice it, we try to give them something that they are very familiar with but try to make the best version of that thing. Those are the sorts of challenges that I like. It’s less interesting for me to make something a customer has never had before and try to wow them with it, because you can stand behind “Well, even if you didn’t like it, you've never had it before."