Continuing on with our CFM Asks Chef Series at Fulton Galley, we recently chatted with Gerad Gobel and Alexis Rorabaugh about their Italian concept, Italianette.
CFM: How did you both get started cooking and when did you know you wanted to be a chef?
Alexis: I didn’t start cooking professionally until I was 26. I went to college to major in art history and minor in film studies in Italian film. I had a lot of Italian culture classes and background and did my post-graduate degree in Italy where I really enjoyed going to the market every day and cooking for my roommates and friends. My parents really tried to push food and wine on me for a long time but at first, I wanted to take my own path. When I moved back to SF, I was working in a mundane office job and thought you know, I’m going to try working in the industry. So, I started working in restaurants. It was a passion from the start and it just slowly worked up from there.
Gerad: I think for both of us, it was accidental. I went to school at SIU Carbondale and needed some spending money. An easy job to get when you’re 19 and don’t have much of a skill set is washing dishes at a restaurant. I was always naturally curious as to what the cooks were doing and ended up hanging out with them and eventually started to cook. I just never used that degree and stuck with kitchens.
CFM: How did you two meet?
Alexis: Gerad and I met cooking at a restaurant in San Francisco called Bar Agricole eight years ago. We started dating and worked at a few other restaurants before moving to Chicago. We did take some time off to travel around Italy and both ended up at SoHo House once we came back to here. Eventually, we both got promoted to head chef in the private club and public restaurants divisions respectively. Then we got married three years ago.
Gerad: Alexis had worked at restaurants in New York and I was working in SF, both with chefs that were connected in this small culinary world. Our paths were meant to cross eventually.
CFM: Why did you choose to come to Chicago?
Alexis: We looked at a lot of cities and decided that Chicago was a good center spot, affordable and something different while still being in a big city. There was and still is a lot happening here and we thought it would be a good fit.
Gerad: I think we talked about moving to LA, NOLA, Portland, Seattle, maybe even Nashville at one point.
CFM: What does Italianette mean to you and what was the inspiration behind it?
Alexis: Italianette to me is definitely rooted in Italian tradition as far as technique and cooking really flavorful, fresh and seasonal food. We have those classics like Cacio e Pepe and Pomodoro and guarantee a little something for everyone. The ‘nette’ part (in Italianette) is our take on a more modern menu with California-esque cooking sensibilities.
Gerad: We could’ve easily called it ‘Italian-ish’ too. We didn’t really want to be pigeon-holed among all of the Italian options here. I’m really interested in agriculture so out of all of the cuisines that Americans are familiar with, Italian food is the most rooted in agriculture, I would say. Growing up on a farm in Southern Illinois that was something that I was always surrounded by. One of my friends ran a farm in Northern California so I enjoyed helping him out and the restaurants we worked at there were very much a part of the farm-to-table movement. Here, we don’t get preachy about that sort of thing instead for me it’s a way to sell local produce. Especially with the pizzas, it’s a good way to move that farmer’s product that you may not be able to move by itself. We really try to support the local food systems and maybe get something unfamiliar in front of the guests that hopefully they really like.
CFM: What was appealing to you about the Fulton Galley concept?
Alexis: Even before we moved to Chicago, we had a business plan for Italianette. It was a little bit different of a concept but similar in that it was going to be small. We wanted it to be more of a wine bar/café/coffee bar type thing in SF, something that was really affordable. Once we started to look around there, we knew there was no way we could afford to do it. So opening a restaurant was kind of on the back burner in our minds. We were both at the point where SoHo House was great, it provided us with a business skill set we probably couldn’t get anywhere else. Then Gerad read the Eater article and we thought the Fulton Galley concept sounded like a very low-risk situation where we are not tied up with a lease. It was almost a ‘now or never’ situation, it was just time to go.
Gerad: We had both been at SoHo house for three years at that point and we couldn’t grow anymore. The timing of this just really worked out well. If this would’ve worked out six months later, we might’ve been cooking in LA or somewhere.
CFM: What have been your greatest struggles and successes so far?
Gerad: One of the biggest struggles is having the conversation with the customers. For both of us, I think we want to stretch our legs a little bit. The vision we had for Italianette has had to change being in a food hall and we don’t really get the opportunity to have that conversation with the guests because it’s so fast. When this place is busy, we don’t have time to touch tables and provide service, it’s not intimate. We’ve put out extra menus with more description of our dishes to help guide customers because we often don’t have the time and there aren’t any servers to give that description of the offerings.
So far, people have been really receptive of what we are doing here. We’ve had a lot of repeat business. Some customers eat the (Spicy) Caesar Salad three times a week, one customer comes in for the (Beef) Short Rib Ragu once a week. Building community with our diners has definitely been a success. We’ve had some guests compare us to Monteverde, which means a lot because we are just a little place in a food hall. But to me, we are two very different things.
Alexis: The biggest struggle for me is I cook a lot of Cacio e Pepe. I want people to order something else! Seriously though, I think the main struggle though is that visual part. It’s hard to not have that conversation with people because they usually want what they can see. Being back of house people, we can be bad at transitioning to the front of house mentality. It’s been a learning experience but Gerad is definitely better at it than I am. We are still trying to figure it out.
CFM: Walk us through the menu. What are your favorite dishes? Will the options change with the seasons?
Alexis: My favorite dish right now is the Chicken Sugo, it’s like a big hug. We make thick ribbons of pappardelle and braise tons of chicken thighs. The chicken thighs we have are really dark and they almost taste like rabbit. The dish kind of tastes like chicken noodle soup without the soup. It reminds of living in Florence and my mom’s cooking while I was growing up.
We are going to do another menu change right before Halloween. The past four months, we were just trying to find things that worked and we know now what sells. It’s been a lot of trial and error. We run specials as much as we can to highlight our great seasonal produce. The Galley Group does a happy hour from 5-7pm every day so everybody had to come up with a happy hour offering. Pasta didn’t make any sense to make for happy hour so Gerad, being someone that loves bread and dough, started doing pizzas. On Thursday and Friday nights, we can go through around 60 pizzas in those two hours. Typically, we will keep serving them throughout the night and not just during happy hour. We tavern-style cut them for people that come in large groups to share.
Gerad: I really like the Eggplant Alla Norma. We finish it with an agrodolce for a little sweet and sour action. I like the pizzas a lot too! What we’re doing and what other Italian restaurants in Chicago are very different because we don’t have the space to do a whole lot. We extrude and make all of our pastas and sauces in house. But right now, we don’t have any filled pastas on our menu because we don’t have the freezer space nor the staff to do those types of dishes.
We’ve changed our menu about six times since we opened in June. If we can’t get something locally, we don’t use it. Right now, the kale (Kale Pesto pasta) and eggplant (Eggplant Alla Norma) are still local. Proteins are always going to be local. At first, we were trying to sell more vegetables but no one was interested. Our next tactic is to do the same thing but to try to push it on a charity to give guests an incentive. The pizzas are a weird style, 100% sourdough, organic, kind of doughy but not super doughy. Typically, we don’t start making pizzas until later in the week to give ourselves time to catch up but we do three different pizzas, including one special pizza.
CFM: What is the plan after Fulton Galley?
Alexis: The next chapter of Italianette would probably be something really similar depending on space and the neighborhood we are in. We’d like to stay here as long as we can. This has been a great opportunity but we would never stay in the West Loop because of the high rent. We’ve started to slowly look at places but nothing serious yet. I like Logan Square a lot, parts of Lakeview, Edgewater, Uptown. We’ve worked in the West Loop for six years now so as much as I like it, there’s just too much going on here. Anywhere where there’s a neighborhood feel and people want to come once or twice a week, that’s where we want it.
Gerad: I’d definitely like to finish out next summer and maybe do two full years here. It’s more up to the Galley Group but the idea is to have a little neighborhood restaurant, a place where locals can come in just to hang out even if we are closed during the day. I really love the all-day café sort of place.