Mangia (Kenosha)

Mangia Chenoscia

This piece was written a few weeks back. I hesitated posting it because I had no desire to run any risk of initiating another round of pizza-madness, but the discussion has come up elsewhere and I think it not too risky to throw another splash of pizza oil on the fire.

Recently [mid to late March], Lucantonius, Amata and I all had on one and the same day a weekday free from any scheduled duties. We decided therefore to take advantage of the occasion and to escape from the city and have a day excursion to Kenosha, a.k.a. Chenoscia, and environs. The plan was to visit a few parks, stop by the cemetery to pay our respects to our friend, Pat, do some shopping at a couple of stores that we’re wont to visit, and have perhaps a nice lunch out. As our destination for lunch, we decided to try Mangia, the restaurant belonging to Tony Mantuano’s family, right on Sheridan Road in the centre of their hometown.



After one visit, I obviously am not in a position to make any grand pronouncements about the overall quality of Mangia but I will say that, despite some disappointment with my main dish, I suspect that this may well be a very good restaurant; I’d be willing to return and am curious to hear what others’ experiences have been like.

*

There is something I like very much about the space – actually, spaces – that form the restaurant and the rooms toward the south end thereof have large windows and were bathed in sunlight on the day of our visit. There is also an area that they apparently use for outdoor seating during the warmer months, behind the wall along the south side of the property, pictured herebelow.


Amata and I agreed, however, that some aspects of the decor left something to be desired. – for example, the two large murals in this room seemed a bit out of place – but then, the sunshine was gloriously intense and possibly too starkly revealing of the interior’s details; at night, this room may well have a much more intimate atmosphere.

The bread basket came filled with three items: relatively thin slices from a basic large Italian white loaf, thicker slices of a smaller loaf which was seasoned with garlic and herbs on the outside, and crackers which were also heavily seasoned. The basic bread was excellent and I enjoyed the other two items well enough, though Amata thought the seasoned bread had been a little excessively flavoured with garlic. The dominant flavour of the crackers was Parmesan cheese and Lucantonius and I thought they were pretty tasty. Also arriving with the bread was a small bowl containing a generous portion of a hummus-like chick pea spread, which was a nice accompaniment to the bread (the spread can be seen in the background of one of the pictures further on).

In the following picture, the bread basket can be seen in the foreground and in the background appears Lucantonius’ plate – from the children’s menu – of a grilled chicken breast with freshly made potato chips (ca. $6). It was nice to see this more healthy offering for kids, rather than the quasi-ubiquitous breaded and deep-fried chicken-things.

The chicken was nicely prepared and Lucantonius ate a lot of it. I thought the seasoning of the chips was fairly intense (with the dominant flavour being rosemary) and not likely to appeal to a five year old and, though Lucantonius did say the chips were ‘great’, he didn’t eat many of them, focussing far more on the chicken.

The luncheon menu is limited but nicely balanced, with short lists of appetizers, pasta dishes, and meat/seafood dishes, pizzas and desserts. In addition, there are, of course, daily specials and on this day, the specials available were: crema di vongole (clam cream soup) $3.95; pizza con spinaci $11.95; gnocchi alla Baba (gnocchi with a cream and gorgonzola sauce, I believe) $12.95; salmone arrostito $19.95; piadina (according to the waitress, this sounded to be a sort of calzone, but details regarding the filling escape me) $11.95.

Amata chose from the menu a pizza quattro formaggi, with mozzarella, ricotta, provolone and romano, and a sprinkling of bits of sun-dried tomato. The waitress also offered to grate romano on our pizzas at table and, as they say, when in Chenoscia, do as the the Chenoscitani do:


I ordered the pizza special of the day, which was dressed with a properly restrained amount of mozzarella, a little ricotta, fresh spinach and some slow-cooked and very nicely sweet onion:


We each sampled the other’s pizza and concurred that the pizza con spinaci was the tastier of the two – really quite a delicious combination, I would say -- though the dressing of the quattro formaggi was also nice.



Of course, what ultimately makes or breaks pizza in my book isn’t the ‘toppings’, though the style of orgiastic excess that is popular in this country, with its mountains of mediocre cheese and seas of over-seasoned sauce could ruin even a crust made by the cooks for the Padr’eterno. In that regard, the folks at Mangia get the ratio of toppings to crust right from an Italian stand-point. But then, what of the crust itself?

The crust of the pizzas we had at Mangia were so far as I could tell of a basic bread–type dough and, given that their basic Italian bread was quite nice with regard both to texture and to flavour, that means that one should hope to get a fine Italian – if not necessarily specifically Neapolitan -- style pizza there. Given that they also have a wood-burning oven, one’s expectations inevitably rise even higher.

So then, Pulcinella, what’s wrong with this picture?


«Ma ‘un ce sta nu curnicion’! Chesta nun è ‘na pizz’ – nu’ saccio che’d è ma na pizza, no!»

Quite right, my little Parthenopean friend, there is no bready edge, no beautiful range of textures from a chewy outer rim with charred and crispy bubbles to a moist and luscious centre. No, this is not una bella pizza alla Napoletana but rather un croccante travestito da una pizza, a cracker in pizza-drag!... Okay, I admit that I’m not a fan of cracker-style crust; I also know there are lots of people around here who are and that’s fine. In any event, it seems to me that what we had this day is what happens when a Midwestern cracker-crust aesthetic is grafted onto the notional roots of la verace pizza Napoletana: Neapolitan-style insofar as it involves a thin crust of bread dough dressed soberly with high quality ingredients, but Midwestern cracker-style, in that the crust is rolled out thin all the way to the edge – with essentially no rim -- and the pie is then baked sufficiently to firm up and crisp the crust at all points beneath the dressing. Given, however, the more Italian style distribution of dressing, there is as result also a somewhat broad, undressed, crispy cracker-like ring around the edge. Compare a pie recently consumed at Spacca Napoli (below) to the pies from Mangia pictured above:


Now, it might seem as though I am ridiculing Mangia’s style of making a pizza but that’s not my real intention. In light of the experiences of Spacca Napoli, I am inclined to cut the restaurateur some slack here and instead consider the possibility that ‘blame’ or, perhaps I should say in more neutral fashion ‘responsibility’ needs to be laid on the plates of the patrons. It was clear from speaking with the folks there that a certain noteworthy number of Spacca Napoli’s first wave of patrons were unfamiliar with the Neapolitan style of crust and – according to their experience and preferences – specifically asked the pizzeria to produce a more cooked and crispier crust. Perhaps a similar process has led the folks at Mangia – who still are clearly trying in some respects to make Italian (Neapolitan) style pizzas -- to adapt their approach to forming and cooking the crust more to the expectations of an audience that favours something more along the lines of the Midwestern cracker-style.

So then, clearly I wasn’t happy with the crust and especially the outer edge of it. But the dressed centre of the pie was actually pretty good and it’s clear to me that Mangia generally uses high quality ingredients and seems to embrace genuinely a more restrained and Italianate aesthetic with regard to the application of condiments than is generally found in this country. I note too that the dishes of pasta and fish and soup that I saw being consumed at surrounding tables certainly looked very well prepared and I strongly suspect they tasted good too. And the pizza could so easily have been very good or even excellent... better (to my mind, at least) formation of the crust by creating a proper rim, a little more moisture in the dressing, and perhaps cooking at higher temperature for less time*... All in all, I don’t doubt at all that the Mantuanos know what they’re doing and are quite capable of turning out both very good Italianoid fare and more ‘authentic’ Italian-style dishes that are delicious. But being intelligent people, they probably worry less about loyalty to Italian tradition than about satisfying their paying audience.

And that sets me to thinking that maybe most aspects of un-Italian Italian restaurant food in America (discounting, of course, the fodder produced by the major corporate chains or similar stuff produced by non-chain eateries with unskilled labour and bad ingredients), such as the pizza crust at Mangia’s, are not simply or necessarily to be blamed on owners and cooks who don’t know better or can’t get it right, but rather on an important segment of the audience that, from a certain perspective, doesn’t know better and doesn’t like it gotten right. This is not a novel observation, by any means, and I suspect I’ve already expressed roughly the same idea elsewhere on this forum some time back in Year One, but the truth is that in critiquing restaurants we tend to focus on the establishment and the chef but it does well to remember that there is a dialogue through which performer and audience gradually come to define one another.

Now, who wanted that side of spaghetti with the risotto?

Antonius


* Of course, I don’t know exactly what temperature they operate their oven at but the – from my perspective – shortcomings of the crust involve some combination of factors, including dough composition, crust formation, oven temperature and time of cooking.

Great post as always. This is going on the list for the next time I visit my mom and sister there.


Mangia Restaurant
5717 Sheridan Rd
Kenosha, WI 53140
(262) 652-4285
(262) 652-9313

Antonius wrote:And that sets me to thinking that maybe most aspects of un-Italian Italian restaurant food in America (discounting, of course, the fodder produced by the major corporate chains or similar stuff produced by non-chain eateries with unskilled labour and bad ingredients), such as the pizza crust at Mangia’s, are not simply or necessarily to be blamed on owners and cooks who don’t know better or can’t get it right, but rather on an important segment of the audience that, from a certain perspective, doesn’t know better and doesn’t like it gotten right. This is not a novel observation, by any means, and I suspect I’ve already expressed roughly the same idea elsewhere on this forum some time back in Year One, but the truth is that in critiquing restaurants we tend to focus on the establishment and the chef but it does well to remember that there is a dialogue through which performer and audience gradually come to define one another.

A,

I think the All-American pizzas you describe (mounds of mediocre cheese, overdone sauce, cracker crust, etc.) are the result of several factors, and the expectations of the audience are undoubtedly one of those factors. As you suggest, it may not be the case that restauranteurs are unwittingly moving away from the Neapolitan Paradigm, but rather that they're not even trying to "get it right" -- this is just the way customers like it, so that's what they do it. For this audience, there is little value in authenticity if that's not the preference.

I must confess, though I like the softer, limper pizza crust, I also like the cracker crust style (in part because it's much easier to eat with your hands...and I like crunch). However, when I look at an American 'za, with a half-inch of gooey cheese on top, I usually conclude that it's not worth it (unless I'm really hungry).

Is that a rare Thunderwing Transformer off to your son's left?

Hammond

I've been a regular patron of Mangia's since the day it opened it's doors in 1988. When I don't feel like driving into Chicago, Mangia's is 20 minutes from my home. Dennis Ghetto, from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel rated Mangia's as "The Best Restaurant Between Chicago and Milwaukee with four stars in 2004. In 2002/2003, Chef Tony was was awarded the "Best Chef in the Midwest" by the James Beard Foundation. It's a known fact that Mangia's is the best restaurant in the area. Frechetta Lifestyle sums up Mangia's cuisine as follows: "The menu at Mangia's is domonated by by small plates, faithfully representing the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, from Tunisia and Morocco in North Africa, to Isreal in the Levant, to Italy and Spain in Western Europe. While Mediterranean in focus, the menu has strayed further from it's Italian base, occasionally exhibiting more ethnic influences." From a Chicagoan living in Wisconsin, Mangia's serves excellent cuisine for the region. It's rare to find wood fired pizza in southeastern Wisconsin and rarer finding excellent wood fired pizza.

CSD

David Hammond wrote:Is that a rare Thunderwing Transformer off to your son's left?

David,

Good eye! But I believe that is, in fact, the white Power Ranger. Unfortunately, I don't know whether that is an SPD Power Ranger or a Mystic Force Power Ranger: I'm sort of old-fashioned. My own Werner Voss Fokker triplane is just out of sight to the right.

*

CSD,

The only pan-Mediterranean touch to Mangia on the occasion we were there seemed to be the hummus-like spread that was offered along with the basket of bread. The specials were all Italian and so far as I can remember, so too all the items on the menu. (Do you know if there is a separate lunch menu and whether the non-Italian items may be more prevalent on the by us unseen dinner menu?)

My impression was that Tony Mantuano's family owns and runs this restaurant but that his particpation is limited, given his central duties at establishments in Chicago. I vaguely remember having read that but no longer recall where.

I should add too that I think that with reagrd to the pizza, the value of the wood-burning oven is greatly diminished by the manner in which they form their pizza crust. The large cracker-rim was to me quite strange and not something I will seek out. That said, I'm glad to hear your positive views of the restaurant and I would like to go back sometime.

Antonius

Of course, I don’t know exactly what temperature they operate their oven at but the – from my perspective – shortcomings of the crust involve some combination of factors, including dough composition, crust formation, oven temperature and time of cooking.

Antonius,

I greatly enjoyed your description of the pizzas at Mangia and the reasons why the pies didn't meet your expectations. Even if an establishment has mastered all of the factors you have so correctly identified, the level of skill required to consistently bake these pies to perfection is often way beyond the minimum wage, part-time high school kid who so often mans the pizza station at so many pizza joints across this vast land. American-style fast food pizza has been carefully engineered (dumbed down) to be prepared by entry-level staff with little training and skill.

I'm not implying that Mangia's staff is lacking experience, but the kind of pies you like are very demanding: the dough is highly hydrated making it much more difficult to handle and pies are baked for a very short time at high temps, unforgiving of even a few seconds of inattention. Maintaining the wood-fired oven at the optimum temperature with the flames at the right intensity to ensure even baking of the crust and toppings is a skill not quickly learned. I speak from years of experience, or rather, years of trying to learn these skills and still far from becoming a master.

Bill/SFNM

Antonius, I don't think the un-ethnic-ness of ethnic-American restaurants, or ethnic restaurants in America is restricted to Italian ones. I do think a fair amount of authenticity is compromised for economic reasons (at least at first) – though to my naïve mind this is counterproductive as far as spreading enjoyment of that cuisine is concerned. Italian food is well entrenched in America, although with passage of time a better descriptor of the food/style is Italian-American… Such 'fusion' in cuisine, as in language, is inevitable I suppose.

A couple of years ago (maybe a bit more), A2Fay and I really enjoyed our pizzas at Tomaso's Italian American restaurant. It is just North of Milwaukee in a charming though somewhat touristy area that has many interesting shops and the retail outlet of a winery.
I don't remember if Tomaso's had a wood-burning oven or not, but the pizza was enjoyable. It was the cracker style (a little bready) pizza with excellent ingredients.

Tomaso's Italian American Restaurant
W63N688 Washington Avenue
Cedarburg, Wisconsin 53012
(262) 377-7630

Considering the attention that other dining and food shopping options along I-94 north of the border get, I was surprised to search and find just this one short thread about Mangia, and that with no bump in the last 5 years. I am looking forward to checking out Mangia on my next trip Wisconsinward, after seeing it featured on last night's episode of MPTV's "Wisconsin Foodie" (another item, that oddly, to me at least, I can find no mention on LTH). Maybe the pizzas have at Mangia have improved in the several years since anyone last posted about them.

The "Wisconsin Foodie" episode that I saw last night, however, focused not on Mangia's pizzas, but on Tony Mantuano's sourcing of Wisconsin products for Spiaggia, and on the grilling competition ("Masters of the Grill"?) fund-raiser that his family hosts at Mangia's every year. Anyone been to that?