Chef profile · 1 win vs. Bobby Flay

Angelo Competiello

Wild Boar Ragu
Restaurant and provisions shop; known as 'The Porchetta King'
  • Alta Irpinia · Suffern, NY
@mind_machine

They call him the Porchetta King of Suffern, New York, which is a title you earn by doing one thing so many times and so correctly that it becomes definitional. Angelo Competiello runs Alta Irpinia — restaurant and provisions shop — out of a town most New Yorkers drive through without stopping. They should stop.

Wild boar ragu demands longer and lower than pork ragu, and Competiello knows this. The boar shoulder goes into a braise at 275°F for four hours before it sees any pasta — the connective tissue has to convert to gelatin before the meat will release. He builds his soffritto with a higher carrot ratio than most Italian-American cooks, which rounds the gaminess without masking the boar flavor. The pasta is sauced in the pan, not plated dry, so the starch from the pasta water binds the fat into the sauce rather than letting it pool on the plate.

Bobby Flay, who could ragu anything with enough Calabrian chiles and canned San Marzanos, met a sauce that had actually been thinking about wild boar before he showed up. The Porchetta King did not flinch.

2 0
S32E11
Round 1
vs. Paolo Calamai · advanced to face Bobby
W
S32E11
Round 2
beat Bobby with Wild Boar Ragu
W