When Jacob Solomon returned to Chicago from New York last summer to help open Testaccio, a Roman-inspired restaurant, they had just two months before the city shut down restaurants due to COVID-19. “It was hard,” he recalls. “We didn’t know what was coming next.” But by the time the restaurant reopened in February, Solomon had done some heavy lifting on his menu—including one of the house specialties, the Mezze Maniche al Sugo di Manzo.
“It started off with me braising oxtail with tons of Mediterranean spices, from aleppo to mace, for about eight hours,” says Solomon, who himself has a Moroccan heritage. “It was rich and delicious, but I knew it was missing something.”
One day, he made himself lunch at Testaccio and called upon a childhood favorite—spaghetti with beef ragù. “I ate it every day as a kid,” he recalls. “I could eat that dish for life and be satisfied.” Between bites, he looked up at the oxtail braising on the stove and had an epiphany. “I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, here we go—we’re definitely putting these two together.’”
And so was born the dish in its current form, a plate comprised of Mezze Maniche pasta with, of course, two kinds of meat: Turkish spiced oxtail (cured for 12 hours then braised in red wine and San Marzano tomatoes) and browned ground beef (a ragù of Calabrian chili, parmesan cheese, fresh oregano, and basil).
“The instant I tried the dish with the ground beef, I knew we had gotten it right,” says Solomon, who credits some of that pandemic pause for determining the plate’s ultimate balance.
“For me to have that downtime was helpful. There were a few dishes that I revisited and improved, tweaking elements or focusing on what might have been missing,” he says.
Take, for example, the Roman artichokes.
“Before our February opening, we were serving the dish in more of a French style, but in the time I had to fine tune it, we dialed it up a notch,” he says. For Solomon, that meant poaching the artichoke in sunflower oil, dredging it in potato starch and paprika, and frying it off before serving it with preserved lemon aioli and a dusting of black lime.
While the restaurant’s fare is rooted in Roman cuisine, it’s that Mediterranean flair that is exactly what Solomon hopes to bring to his menu.
“You don’t always see the convergence of Mediterranean and Italian cooking, and when you do see Mediterranean food, it can oftentimes be pretty broad, and pretty simple—like a piece of fish with a vinaigrette,” he says. “I have a huge spice wall, and I’m constantly thinking about which ones to incorporate throughout the menu. There are so many vibrant flavors that we’re working with here, and that’s one of the most exciting aspects of my job. As they say, ‘The spice is life.’”
Testaccio's Mezze Maniche al Sugo di Manzo photo by Rachel Bires
