Fresh made Buccatini with house creamy vodka sauce and fried chicken.
Where this dish comes from
Penne alla vodka has murky origins claimed by multiple Italian regions and American restaurateurs. One persistent story attributes it to chef Ugo Tognazzi of the 1970s Italian nouvelle cuisine movement; another credits Columbia University students in New York in the same era. By the 1980s it had exploded across Italian-American restaurant menus and home kitchens in the US, aided by James Beard Award-winning food writer Marcella Hazan who published an influential version. In Italy itself, the dish remains seen as somewhat American — a curiosity rather than a classic.
Cheffy’s note
The vodka's role is chemistry, not flavor. Alcohol is a better solvent than water for lycopene and other fat-soluble compounds in tomatoes — adding vodka to a tomato-cream sauce pulls out flavor molecules that would otherwise stay locked in the tomato solids. Most of the alcohol burns off during cooking. The result is a deeper, more complex tomato flavor in the sauce. Use a decent vodka (not the best, not the worst) and add it after the tomato paste blooms but before the cream.
