Setting Patrizi’s apart from other restaurants is its simple yet complex made-from-scratch authentic Italian menu.
“Our whole shtick is we make everything from scratch,” Nic said. “We make all of our own pasta; we make [most of] our own cheeses and use fresh milks; we cure all of our own meats. Our pancetta is like a three-week process to cure and smoke.”
Nic said the eatery offers only six pasta selections, which are served after 4 p.m. The lunch menu features salads, sandwiches and focaccia—all made from scratch, including the focaccia bread, using mostly locally sourced produce.
One of Patrizi’s signature dishes is the cacio pepe. Though the dish is made with only cheese, pepper and fettuccine pasta, it is anything but a simple dish, Nic said.
“We’re using four different types of peppercorns that we’re toasting first and then grinding,” he said. “We’re using grana padano cheese, which is a 2-year-old aged cheese imported from Italy.”
The dish also features the hand-pulled pasta the restaurant makes daily, an eight-hour process.
“It sounds like a very simple dish, like three ingredients, but it’s like two weeks in the making, and that’s really beautiful,” Nic said.
Nic said Patrizi’s makes its own spirits, including amaros, coffee liqueurs, cognacs and limoncellos.
The restaurant also make its own campari—a type of Italian bitters—using ground-up cochineal beetles, aptly named Beetle Juice.
More than the food and spirits, Nic said coming to Patrizi’s is about the experience. He encourages people “to stay a little longer, have one more drink ... and try to escape from reality for a little while.”
1705 Cuernavaca Drive N., Austin
www.patrizis.com
364-241-1350
Hours: Tue.-Fri. 8 a.m.-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., closed Mon.
