Corso 32 Masterfully Pivots

Corso At Home & Corso Wine Club take the new normal by the horns

WORDS BY JOE GURBA PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVEN BABISH

This past month would have marked Corso 32’s ten year anniversary. If not for a gruelling pandemic, this small and mighty mainstay that’s dominated national restaurant rankings for the past decade would have been hosting elaborate feasts, revisiting old menus, and popping beautiful bottles. Instead, Corso At Home and Corso Wine Club were born, ensuring this paragon of Italian cuisine would survive 2020.

Corso 32 has carved its own path to bring Daniel Costa’s cooking and Allen Anderl’s wine selections to your door. The issue from day one has been that Italian food of this pedigree simply doesn’t lend itself to delivery. A chef can spend years researching starches and long days hand-forming pasta while his sauciers slave over simmering pots of sugo for hours of ceaseless stirring, but this caliber of cuisine must be tailored for a set number of diners. When the time comes to finish that fresh pasta in that precious sauce, the dish must hit the table immediately, ready to eat. Costa can not run the risk of his dishes turning to mush while they await their delivery driver. To solve this problem, Corso took a path less travelled.

Every week, their newly minted Corso At Home takes advance orders for pastas, sauces, pestos, and antipasti made in-house from the best local and Italian ingredients. The kitchen then goes to work throughout the week preparing dishes like fusilli with Ligurian pesto, ricotta gnocchi with sage butter and parmigiano, and paccheri alla salsiccia with slowly simmered pork & fennel sausage ragu.

The difference between making your own scratch pasta and making excellent scratch pasta is that of many years’ experience. It’s the culinary equivalent of playing an instrument — anyone can produce a sound, but it takes dedication and talent to produce beauty. And Costa’s team are virtuosos. ▶

Corso At Home’s menu is further rounded out with a host of house-made and imported cheeses, marinated olives, and other antipasti. Their polpette—pork & pecorino meatballs simmered in a classic tomato basil sugo—seem to sell out faster than covid vaccines. But if you miss the meatball express, worry not! You can stock up on gems like Sicilian pesto alla trapanese, Corso’s classic slow and low San Marzano tomato sauce, or their traditional ragu, delicately layered with sofrito, pork, beef, pancetta, white wine, tomatoes, and fresh herbs.

Everyone knows that Italian fare suffers an injustice without the fruit of the vine. Plenty of wine pairings are available, but full-tilt italophiles should make the leap to the Corso Wine Club. Corso’s head sommelier Allen Anderl curates a monthly selection of exceptional wines from small producers farming organically or biodynamically with indigenous grape varieties. Each of these uncommon and terroir driven wines are accompanied by extensive notes and bespoke home-chef-friendly recipes from Daniel Costa designed to make that juice sing. You can even schedule your pickup to coincide with Corso At Home if you’d rather they do the cooking!

The key to offering this caliber of food and drink for home enjoyment is all in the logistics. The Corso At Home website reveals each week’s offerings on Saturday morning with the cut-off at noon on Monday. You place your order ahead and over the week Corso’s talented kitchen prepares your dishes, available for pick up the following Friday or Saturday between 11am and 3pm. Following their simple instruction cards, you head home to finish your pasta in its sauce at your own leisure. Can it compeer with a full course meal at Corso 32? Of course not, but it’s mighty close, and that’s a true luxury in these strange and strained times.

www.corso-at-home.corso32group.com www.corso32group.com/corso-wine-club