Posted on Thu, Jul. 17, 2008

Latin Americans love Italian food -- doesn't everyone? And many Latin Americans are, actually, Italian. Not everyone from the old country went to Ellis Island.

With immigration to points south, Italian cuisine flourished in Latin America. And with latter-day Latin immigration to South Florida, Italian-Latin-American cuisine has become an integral element of our gastronomy. It's Miami's mambo italiano -- ravioli cooked, served and consumed en español.

But what is it? And does it differ from Italian or Italian-American cooking?

Local gastronome and food writer Viviana Carballo says she has observed a ''too-much-is-not-enough school of thought'' at work at such restaurants -- for example, a veal T-bone smothered in mushrooms, topped with a whole roasted pepper, sauced in balsamic vinegar and presented ''on a bed of shoestring potatoes along with a scoop of mashed potatoes and very sweet potato cubes'' that she described in a Miami Herald restaurant review several years ago.

Given the enthusiastic Latino clientele many of these places attract, one suspects this is exactly the way the diners like it.

''Anglos want meat dishes -- steaks, veal chops, lamb racks,'' says Alex Portela, the Argentine owner of Caffé Da Vinci in Bay Harbor Islands, ``while for Latinos it's pasta, pasta, pasta.''

Portela serves both, pleasing a mixed clientele. Rack of veal is as popular, as is lobster ravioli.

So Latinos love pasta. But what kind? As far as purists are concerned, overcooked. Meals at a number of our area's most popular Italian restaurants confirmed this. Pasta dishes were tasty, but definitely not al dente -- at least not unless one requests it.

Daniel Deiters, a Venezuelan of Italian and German extraction, makes artisanal chitarra (a kind of spaghetti), fettuccine and his specialties, ravioli and tortelloni (over-sized tortellini), at his Coral Way storefront, Il Mondo della Pasta.

At practically every Italo-Latino restaurant in town, these stuffed pastas are served soft. Deiters, who does a brisk business in pasta to cook at home, also serves it cooked at his shop. And he prepares it al dente.

His clientele is mostly Latin American, including Italian Cubans and Cubans who live in Italy. Some ask for the pasta (or the paellas he caters) to be cooked soft. He complies, though with regret.

Deiters, who studied pasta making in Milan, uses his grandparents' recipes.

''I offer the pasta that no longer exists,'' he says. ``In Venezuela, the chain of tradition was never broken.''

Italian Venezuelans are a fairly new addition to the South Florida Italo-Latino mix. Salvatore Domanti runs a Doral branch of Spizzigo, a gourmet pizza shop in Caracas. His pizzas are made on a thin, airy crust and come out properly charred on top, often garnished with fresh greens, meats and cheeses rather than thick tomato sauce.

Such touches, like al dente pasta, are a response to a younger clientele with more au courant tastes. But it's the soft pastas and risotti, as well as that mushy classic, gnocchi, that appeal to conventional Latino tastes -- and feed the emotional need for comfort food.

You can expect big portions and nostalgia-pleasing flavors at our Italo-Latino restaurants, too. Some customers don't want a real bolognese sauce, Deiters says. ``They want picadillo.''

And they get it. Or some other familiar touch. You can have ravioli filled with ropa vieja at Grazie in South Beach or tasajo (dried beef) at Jianella in South Miami. Café Avanti in Miami Beach adds saffron to its risotto, ''making it more Spanish than Italian,'' says Cuban-born owner Luis Fuentes.

On the other hand, Fuentes notes proudly that Avanti's sauces are light, ''even our tomato sauces.'' (He grew up among Italian Americans in Boston, eating ``rustic food like pizza, manicotti, spaghetti, lasagne, so it was a struggle to learn refined Italian cuisine.'')

In Surfside, the popular Café Ragazzi is owned by Italians, but the clientele is largely Latino and the staff all speak Spanish. A couple of miles south, the also-popular, Argentine-owned Café Prima Pasta serves an Italian menu to another largely Latino crowd.

Here and elsewhere, the comfort-food factor dominates, but new winds may be blowing. Younger, more gastronomically sophisticated Latinos, like their non-Latino neighbors, care more about authenticity than nostalgia.

Thus, Deiters' fastidiously handmade pasta based on an unbroken family tradition. His Coral Way location is not the best, he says, because parking can be a problem. He may move to Doral, but ''it's all Latino,'' and he wants to attract an Anglo clientele as well.

For the time being, he is close to Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, South Miami and downtown. And here he could find Italian food lovers whose ethnic background may matter less than their appetite for the real thing.