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A year after opening their first location in Los Angeles, Matteo Ferdinadi and chef Angelo Auriana of The Factory Kitchen fame debut Sixth + Mill Pizzeria & Bar at the Grand Canal Shoppes tonight. This year, the restaurant in LA earned a Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide.
The restaurant specializes in dishes from six Southern Italian regions, along with dishes Auriana remembers from his childhood. Casual dishes such as pizzas with red or white sauces, pastas using hard durum wheat or egg-based, fritters, and larger entrees.
Ferdinadi says they played with the pizza dough recipe for seven months before finding the perfect balance, and Auriana uses his own recipe for the yeast starter. The pizza oven that uses Saputo Biscotto stones, handmade in Naples Italy, the birth place of the Neapolitan pizza. The heat cooks the dough but leaves it airy and chewy, creating what Ferdinadi calls “equilibrium on the plate” in about 90 seconds. The oven takes about three hours to warm up and three months to cure.
Ferdinadi says the pastas, semolina representing the south and egg-based in the north of Italy, present an interaction between the sauce and the pasta. The gnocchi alla Sorrentina from Campania features garlic-infused potato gnocchi with a tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella and fresh basil, while the orecchiette uses rapini, anchovy, garlic, and chili oil. Diners can order pasta al forno with a meat ragu and béchamel sauce or cacciatora with chicken and mushrooms.
Plates include salsiccia with pork sausage, rapini, and a chili jam; maialetto with thinly sliced roasted pork loin with lemon dressing, polletto with chicken and corbarì tomatoes; mitili with mussels, garbanzo beans, and potatoes; or polpette with beef and pork meatballs.
The fritters come with Brussels sprouts, red onion and mustard, arancini with beef and pork, or beer battered with cauliflower.
The restaurant, which overlooks the replica of St. Mark’s Square in the Grand Canal Shoppes, opens at 5 p.m. and starts serving lunch on Sept. 7.
Sixth + Mill Pizzeria & Bar, Grand Canal Shoppes, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd. Open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
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