SOBEWFF Chef Carla Pellegrino Shares Her Biggest Secret

When asked to confess something no one knows about her, Top Chef contestant Carla Pellegrino quips “I’m shy.” It’s a trait you wouldn’t have guessed if you watched Top Chef, on which the Brazilian-born, Italian-raised tattooed beauty sizzled. “That’s why I’m loud and talk so much,” said Pellegrino.

At Touché, an Italian-American glass cube perched on the third floor of Miami’s first 24-hour cabaret club, Pellegrino and her freshly made pastas are the stars of the show. “I never had any idea I would make a career out of cooking,” she admits. Although she was kneading pasta dough at the age of 10, it was out of necessity. “We were so poor that my mom would make me skip school to help her cook for her catering company, so I was never able to link cooking with money or see a future,” she said.

All of that changed in 1997, when her travels led her to the Big Apple. It was there that she met Frank Pellegrino Jr., co-owner of Rao’s restaurants. “Frankie is the one that wanted me to become a chef,” she said. She enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, graduating with honors in 2000. She and Pellegrino Jr opened Baldoria restaurant shortly after.

Once married, the restaurant power couple did the unimaginable. They moved to Las Vegas to open Rao’s. “I always wanted to go to Vegas but you don’t choose Vegas, it chooses you,” Pellegrino said. Luckily, Frank Pellegrino Sr. had longstanding invitations that he never accepted. “’We don’t open restaurants where we have nobody there’ is what he used to say, until one day he asked ‘are you going to be there’ and I said ‘yes,’” said Pellegrino.

Maximizing her time in Sin City, Pellegrino managed to establish two additional concepts: Bacio by Carla Pellegrino (as part of the Tropicana’s $180 million renovation) and Bratalian Neapolitan Cantina. The latter, which she still owns and her sister operates, is a tribute to the casual, home-style cooking she learned from her mom growing up.

At Touché, on the other side of the country, Pellegrino takes a more refined and diverse approach to cooking. Here, the piquant aroma of porcini mushroom cream spiked with truffle oil over handmade pappardelle quickly fills the all white and intimate dining room, only to be dissipated by slivers of salmon sashimi lightly rolled with Japanese onion chutney and topped with caviar and cucumber.

It’s a risqué move for a Brazilian-Italian chef to work Japanese cuisine into the menu of an Italian restaurant, even more so considering Pellegrino is allergic to shellfish. It’s another trait you’d never have guessed given her take down of Bobby Flay down in a Feast of Seven Fishes contest. “It was my favorite food before I became allergic so I eyeball it really well, but I miss it terribly. The day I want to die I’m just going to sit down and ask for oysters,” Pellegriono said.

But Pellegrino has a way to go before her last meal. “I’d like to do a tapas concept next. I think that’s the way to go.” For now, however, she’s focused on balancing her Magic City outpost, which hasn’t even celebrated its first anniversary (it’ll be a year in April), with Bratalian Neapolitan Cantina in Las Vegas. And with her upcoming participation in the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, calling Pellegrino busy is an understatement. “I like to keep busy,” said Pellegrino. “It’s fun.”

You can witness the sassy chef dart around the kitchen alongside Robert Irvine at Touché on Saturday, February 21 when the two join forces for an intimate dinner. Or if big events are more your beat, Pellegrino is also partaking in this year’s kick-off event: an Italian al fresco feast hosted by Debi Mazar and Gabriele Carcos on Thursday, February 19.