Zeppoli
Collingswood
618 West Collings Avenue
(856) 854-2670
© TREVOR DIXON
Most people expected Joey Baldino to open a restaurant in South Philly, where he grew up and where his family has lived for three generations. Instead, after putting in time cooking in Sicily and at Vetri (page 63), where he was chef de cuisine, he skipped over the bridge to Collingswood, New Jersey, a town with a pretty solid dining reputation in its own right. “I was looking in Philly for many years and couldn’t find the right spot,” he says. “Then the Collingswood space came along, and I had a warm, gut feeling.”
That feeling didn’t let him down. Bald-ino named his Sicilian BYOB Zeppoli for his favorite dessert, and it became the best restaurant in South Jersey the minute it opened 2011. Some say, it’s the best Italian restaurant in the whole Delaware Valley. Either way Bald-ino, humble to a fault, demurs at the praise. He’d rather put his head down and just cook the food that’s in his blood. His father’s side of the family is Sicilian, and the island’s favorite ingredients fill out the Zeppoli menu: per-fumey lemons and magenta prickly pears, salty bottarga and sweet pink prawns, fruity olives and funky cheeses, sweet-and-sour vegetables and pungent herbs. Eating Baldino’s robustly flavored, flawlessly executed food in the simply furnished, often cacophonous dining room is a joy, and the experience has a long list of industry fans that willingly make the trek across the Delaware River. Instagram posts from Zeppoli regularly pop up on the feeds of Pizzeria Beddia’s (page 144) Joe Beddia and Hungry Pigeon’s (page 127) Scott Schroeder. Union Square Hospitality’s Danny Meyer comes for summertime Sicilian barbecues on Monday nights. Mike Solomonov of Zahav (page 89) wrote the foreword to Baldino’s cookbook.
Baldino is also the chef-owner of Palizzi Social Club, the century-old Italian-American members-only hangout he took over from his uncle in 2017. Unlike his first restaurant, Palizzi is located in South Philly, around the corner where he grew up, and was named one of Bon Appétit’s “Hot 10” new restaurants in the country. Baldino divides his time between Palizzi and Zeppoli, but the BYOB will always be the one that gave him that special feeling, “kinda sorta like falling in love with a woman and knowing she’s the one.”
GNOCCULI ALL’ARGENTIERA
“Gnocculi is Sicilian dialect for gnocchi, and all’argentiera means anything topped with Caciocavallo cheese, a mild Sicilian provolone,” explains Zeppoli chef-owner Joey Baldino, who first experienced this pasta while studying outside Palermo. “I put this pasta on my opening menu and it has never come off.”
(SERVES 6−8)
3.6 ounces fresh spinach
1 large egg
1 pound whole-milk ricotta
2 ounces grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Pinch sea salt, plus more for salting water
Pinch black pepper
Pinch nutmeg
3 ounces 00 flour
¼ stick unsalted butter
12 sage leaves
Grated Caciocavallo cheese, for serving
Bring 2 pots of water, one lightly salted and the other heavily salted, to a boil over high heat. Blanch the spinach for 30 seconds in the lightly salted water, then transfer to a strainer, pressing out as much water from the spinach as possible. Once completely cool, chop the spinach and squeeze out any remaining water. Add the spinach to a large mixing bowl with all the remaining ingredients except the flour. Fold the ingredients together, sprinkling in a little bit of flour at a time to avoid clumping. Taste the dough and adjust seasoning if necessary.
Lightly dust your hands with flour and roll out the dough into round, roughly 1-inch gnocchi. When all the dough has been rolled, drop the gnocchi into the pot of boiling, heavily salted water. Boil for 3 minutes.
While the gnocchi are cooking, brown the butter over medium heat in a skillet until foamy and fragrant. Add the sage leaves, then the cooked gnocchi, tossing to coat. Divide the gnocchi between 6−8 bowls or dishes, generously garnish with grated Caciocovallo, and serve immediately.