Fabio Viviani came to America with Top Chef Season 5, lost the finale, and somehow ended up with more visible career than the chef who won. Fifty-plus locations now. Restaurants, bars, virtual kitchens, the Siena Tavern flagship in Chicago.
He brought spaghetti and meatballs. Which against Bobby Flay is the equivalent of a Florentine chef bringing oxygen — it is the dish his entire country has been thinking about for centuries, and Bobby Flay is one man who has not been. The sauce was San Marzano cooked down with onion and garlic and finished with butter, the way an Italian grandmother does. The meatballs had the panade. The spaghetti was finished in the sauce, not next to it.
Bobby has spent thirty years cooking Italian-American food. Viviani has spent his life cooking Italian. The judges noticed the difference.