Via Carota

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF 2022 by Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Vice, Robb Report, and Cup of Jo

A BON APPETIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Via Carota is one of the most beloved restaurants in NYC because of its simple, elegant Italian home cooking. I love this cookbook and so will you!” –Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa

“Via Carota is one of my favorite places in the world — always delicious and my first stop when home in NY. I’m so excited to learn some of Jody’s and Rita’s secrets for these beloved dishes.” –Sofia Coppola; DIRECTOR OF LOST IN TRANSLATION

“Via Carota is one of my very favorite restaurants in New York City, and this cookbook perfectly captures its magic: simple, seasonal, organic, local, and profoundly delicious, these are recipes that I want to eat all the time.” –Alice Waters; CHEZ PANISSE

“Like their beloved West Village restaurant, Via Carota will transport you to another time and place—one where there is time to linger around a bountiful table of antipasti, grains, legumes, and most importantly vegetables. Jody and Rita’s beautiful union is so present in this book that you have the sense they are your dear friends inviting you into their very intimate, gorgeous, and delicious home. Vegetable-forward and deceptively simple, this book should be in your kitchen NOW, propped open to the recipes of the season—I promise you will be intoxicated and hooked from that moment on!” –Suzanne Goin;  AOC, author of Sunday Supper at Lucques

“The last time I ate at Via Carota I asked the same question I ask every time I visit: How do Jody and Rita do it?  Every dish is simple and honest, and every bite breathtakingly delicious.  Here, finally, are the operating instructions for how they do it.” –Dan Barber; BLUE HILL

“When people ask me what my favorite restaurants are in New York City, I sometimes leave out Via Carota because it’s so popular, well…I want to be able to get a seat there myself. But, now with Jody Willaims and Rita Sodi’s new cookbook, everyone will have the opportunity to indulge in their vegetable-forward cuisine and the full throttle flavors I love. Like the hilltop street Via del Carota overlooks in Florence, the book is ripe with beauty and delicious recipes. Just leave me a seat or two at this Greenwich Village favorite!” –Nancy Silverton; MOZZA, CHi SPACCA

“Via Carota is one of my favorite restaurants in NYC, which is why I’m so excited for this cookbook! The Tagliatelle al Tartufo and Charred Fennel with Orange and Honey are simply divine!”  –Giada De Laurentiis’; author of Giada’s Italy and Eat Better, Feel Better

“I fell in love with Via Carota the second I opened the book! Everything about it is beautiful and fetching — the photographs, the food, the obvious lack of tweezers and the two chefs. This is so much how I would love to eat and cook. Congratulations Jody and Rita! Thank you for sharing so much of yourselves. Your love shines through.” –Deborah Madison, author of An Onion in My Pocket and Vegetable Literacy

“Jody Williams worked with me at Felidia more than twenty years ago and within a few days of working with her I knew that this woman was very talented and was very passionate about Italian food. Her name might be Williams, but her food is truly Italian and, with her Tuscan partner Rita Sodi, they cook some of the best Italian food in New York City. Their flavors and their style are captured in this collection of simple but delicious recipes with “verdure stagionali” as the main protagonist. The recipes are very traditional but at the same time very contemporary, perfect for today’s lifestyle. Brava Jody! Brava Rita!” –Lidia Bastianich; author of MASTERING THE ART OF ITALIAN CUISINE and LIDIA’S ITALIAN-ANERICAN KITCHEN

“In Greenwich Village, there exists an Italian restaurant that rises above the rest, Via Carota. Rita Sodi and Jody Williams, a rare team of co-chefs, have created the ideal Greenwich Village joint. Jody’s and Rita’s love of fava beans, artichokes, pasta, fish, meat, pesto; indeed everything about Italian food that is soulful, and delicious, permeates their wonderful cookbook. The Via Carota cookbook is a love poem to their intense, personalized Italian cuisine.” –Jonathan Waxman; author of THR BARBUTO COOKBOOK

“The many hours and days I’ve spent reveling in the food and ambience at the wonderful Via Carota restaurant can now be extended because of this sterling book, courtesy of the restaurant’s incredibly generous and imaginative co-founders, chefs, and life partners, the always caring and sensitive Jody Williams and Rita Sodi. Here, their earthy, delicious, and important cuisine jumps off the page, completely satisfying your need for the delicious. An instant classic.” –Hilton Als; Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the New Yorker

“[W]hen I heard Via Carota was coming out with a cookbook, I squealed with excitement, but I was also a little skeptical. How much of the magic that makes this restaurant so special, so quintessentially New York, could be distilled into a cookbook? Quite a lot, it turns out….[
Via Carota] boasts the same simple elegance that defines the restaurant itself. There’s no extravagant food styling—dishes are shot plain and beautiful…Those honest depictions guided me as I cooked my way through the book and realized that Williams and Sodi, with cowriter Anna Kovel, had imbued its pages with the same magic that floats through their restaurant. My food looked like their food…While there’s plenty of meat in this book, the stars here are vegetables…It’s not just the combination of flavors that make these recipes shine…It’s the way Sodi and Williams use simple recipes (many of them demanding less than a dozen ingredients) to teach techniques I would never have come around to on my own. Whether it’s steaming carrots in sugar water or taking the harshness out of shallots with a rinse under cold water, I feel like I’ve been let in on the secrets that make my favorite restaurant my favorite restaurant.” –Elazar Sontag, Bon Appétit

“I’ve reacted to the book just as I do the restaurant. It’s how I like to eat, and cook, all the time. Here is the rare restaurant cookbook that will make you a better cook.” –-Charlotte Druckman, Wall Street Journal

“The Via Carota cookbook is finally here…and includes all of the dishes regulars have come to rely on…a great gift for restaurant lovers and New York expats” –Alex Beggs, Bon Appétit (Best Cookbooks of 2022)

“The New Yorker famously called Via Carota ‘New York’s Most Perfect Restaurant,’ and frankly, I can’t disagree with that distinction. Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s tiny, vegetable-and-pasta driven restaurant in Greenwich Village has been the site of some epic meals in my life: long, lazy meals full of laughter with friends and much wine while you eat every last bite. It also happens to be one of my favorite spots to sit at the bar with a glass of wine and a plate of green olives — stuffed with sausage and fried — and just watch the neighborhood for an hour or so. I’m excited to recreate both kinds of experiences at home with their recipes for Meyer Lemon Risotto, Lasagna Cacio e Pepe, Charred Fennel with Orange and Honey, and the Roasted Carrots with Spiced Yogurt and Pistachios I order almost every time I eat at the restaurant.” –-Food & Wine

“Sharing 140 recipes for re-creating the simple and elegant dishes at their beloved Manhattan restaurant, award-winning chefs Jody Williams and Rita Sodi emphasize the pleasure in preparation that goes into every seasonal Italian dish.” –Jacqueline Raposo, Epicurious

“With the mission “to transport” readers to “another place and time, where we have breathed in the rustic beauty and uncomplicated flavors,”  chefs Williams and Sodi deliver a swoon-worthy collection of dishes from their distinctive New York City restaurant. The recipes—mostly simple, plainly stated, and vegetable forward—capture the essence of their culinary experience in Italy… The chefs elevate their selections with small touches, such as the crunch of spring onion and celery in panzanella and a warm honey syrup drizzled over an olive oil cake. Perhaps the best example of this is Via Carota’s signature insalata verde, a piled-high mix of soft, peppery, and lacy greens whose vinaigrette is a balanced blend that employs a bit of warm water to help it emulsify…Even the more luxurious plates of lobster with fresh tomatoes and spaghetti, and a 10-layer cacio e pepe lasagna, are accessible thanks to clear directions and helpful tips. Glimpses of their operation come to life in casual notes, such as describing how tomatoes ripen on a tall rack in the kitchen, and in handsome photography, with images showing how crocks of citrus perfume the dining room in winter months. This is sure to please lovers of Italian food and initiate even more pilgrimages to its namesake eatery.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s Via Carota is at this point a New York institution. Everyone from Paul McCartney to the Obamas has dined at the Greenwich Village restaurant, and even after almost a decade, it’s still a tough reservation to nab. Luckily, Williams and Sodi have decided to share some of Via Carota’s magic with us home cooks…Pour yourself a glass of wine or make one of the book’s cocktails and it might almost feel like you’re sitting in the Grove Street space.”–Tori Latham, Robb Report; 9 Best New Cookbooks to Buy This Fall

“From the West Village trattoria that Alice Waters calls one of her “very favorite restaurants in New York City” comes this anthology featuring its greatest culinary hits including cacio e pepe lasagna, Meyer lemon risotto, and a pillow-soft olive oil cake that comes together in minutes. The book is required reading (and cooking) for Italian food enthusiasts as well as those who pride themselves on cooking with the seasons.” –Benjamin Kemper, Saveur

 “Via Carota by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi is a meaty, 400-page cookbook…Williams and Sodi own Via Carota, a widely-beloved Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. It embodies the seasonality, simplicity and utter deliciousness of Italian cooking at its finest, and we’re hopeful the book can bring a bit of that magic into our own kitchens. This is food you want to eat every day.” –Jennifer Slothower; Arizona Daily Star

“Christmas came early, in the form of Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant, written with Anna Kovel…and it looks like we got everything we wanted. The recipe for their famous insalata verde is here, and while you might not have the patience to Jenga the feathery tower leaf by leaf, it is perfect. You’ll also find such favorites as favas with escarole and mint, fried rabbit, svizzerina (their answer to a burger), and olive-oil panna cotta. To be honest, such complete wish fulfillment is overwhelming. Where to begin?! The recipes are as crisp, correct, and personal as the restaurant’s décor, and cooking them might take you less time than getting a table.” –Christine Muhlke, Air Mail

“In their new book, you’ll find dishes that have graced their menu for years: a Meyer lemon risotto that boldly skips the stock and calls for water instead, fava beans with escarole and mint, and the trofie al pesto are just a few of the recipes I’m glad to finally have. [T]heir insalata verde—a majestic heap of leafy greens dressed in a bracing sherry vinaigrette…has become my go-to salad when I make dinner at home. And if you follow their instructions for preparing cannellini beans by soaking them overnight and allowing them to gently simmer for hours, you’ll be surprised at just how delectable homemade beans can be.” —Epicurious

“Divided into chapters based on the seasons, Via Carota the cookbook walks you through the freshest ingredients and how to use them to emphasize their peak form…Pour yourself a glass of wine or make one of the book’s cocktails and it might almost feel like you’re sitting in the Grove Street space.” –Tori Latham, Robb Report

“This new cookbook captures the magic of Via Carota’s menu and is self-described as “vegetable-forward,” with an emphasis on seasonality. The book also includes plenty of practical advice too like how to peel and cook fava beans, an intimidating challenge for the uninitiated. It’s a great collection for anyone interested in finding new ways to cook fresh, seasonal vegetables.” –Ian Macallen, America Domani

“Via Carota, in the West Village in Manhattan, is one of those restaurants that you don’t want to talk about too much because it’s already so hard to score a table. But now, thanks to this new book by the restaurant’s owners, you can cook many of the dishes that cause people to line up for their food. The prized Via Carota green salad (I know, what’s special about a green salad? You have to try this to understand) relies on the freshest, most buttery lettuces and a chopped shallot in the vinaigrette. The famed pasta, fish, and vegetable dishes are all here. Oh, and Cacio e pepe lasagna!” –Kathy Gunst, WBUR
 
“There’s no better testament to the concept of simple-equals-sophisticated than a meal at Via Carota, the rustic Italian, quintessentially New York restaurant run by Williams and Sodi. The namesake cookbook is infused with personal stories (how they met and married), organized by season, and packed with serious inspiration, especially in the vegetable department. Though the dishes will taste best with high-quality produce and provisions, the recipes rarely call for more than a handful of ingredients. That’s how you know it’s authentic. And Italian.” —Cup of Jo

“This cookbook was released in October 2022. Since then, it has garnered nearly as much acclaim as the restaurant itself…Just as Via Carota is not just any Italian restaurant, the Via Carota cookbook is so much more than your average Italian cookbook. Instead, it is a resource that allows you to recreate some of the restaurant’s unique takes on iconic dishes while also providing pointers that can vastly improve everyone’s standard of cooking.” —Jacob Smith, Daily Meal