How These Beloved Chefs Make Shrimp Parm at Their Hit Italian American Restaurant | Culinary Masters

Chefs Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli have created one of New York’s toughest tables with their West Village hit Don Angie. For the new San Sabino, it looks like there’s no sophomore slump in the offing for the husband-wife duo.

Opening next door to Don Angie, San Sabino is a continuation of the chef making an ode to the Italian America food they ate growing up, which for Tacinelli was in New Jersey and Rito in Ohio. But what differentiates this new restaurant is a focus on seafood, as well as coastal American cities where there’s an Italian diaspora such as San Francisco and New Orleans.

An early winner on their new menu is a shrimp parm that is more nostalgic for Tacinelli than Rito, as Angie admits to having never heard of shrimp parm growing up in Cleveland. In this latest episode of Culinary Masters, the duo show how they make their take on a northeast classic, but then also show how they make some key changes that make it distinctly their own—from Thai basil to a sweet and spicy arrabbiata that’s punchier and more dynamic than the marinara you might be used to. It’s an excellent dish and reason enough to go to San Sabino—that is, if you can secure a table.

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Scott Tacinelli and Angie Rito of the new San Sabino 
in the West Village, thank you so much for having  
me. Thanks for coming in. So what are we going 
to be making together today? So today we’re  
going to make shrimp parm. Just like my grandma 
made. Did your grandma make shrimp parm? That’s what  
I was going to ask you Angie, did you have 
shrimp parm growing up? I absolutely did not. 
I’m from the Midwest, so this is the phenomenon 
I wasn’t familiar with until I moved to the East Coast.
I’m guessing when you were getting this 
growing up you did not have beautiful shrimp  
like this, can you talk a little bit about these? Yes, so 
these are u5 head-on shrimp. So u5 means there’s  
approximately five shrimp to a pound okay, so 
that could range you know anywhere from from to  
six or something like that. So they’re almost 
a quarter of a pound each. Jeez. When you use these really  
big shrimp and we butterfly them from the back, 
and then we’ll we’ll bread them, we stick them  
with like a little stick so they stay straight 
when we cook them. They take on like a real meaty  
texture because there is so much meat. How do you 
get started with like the breading here? Yeah, so  
it’s pretty much a typical breading process. So we 
actually season them with like a garlic salt  
first—so it’s just granulated garlic and kosher 
salt—and then we carefully just dip it in flour  
and then we just shake it off. Because you just want 
one thin layer of flour, you don’t want it to be  
caked on. Kind of like that. And then just in 
just an egg wash there. Just an egg wash, yes.  
Very, very traditional breading. We actually make 
our own breading and we dry all of our own herbs  
for the breading that’s one thing we’ve been 
doing for a long time because it really makes  
a difference—Angie’s grandmother taught her that. And you’re saying like in the breading here there’s 
like a little bit of did you say rice that was 
like crunched up in here? It’s rice that’s been  
cooked and then dehydrated and we pulverize. It 
sounds kind of crazy, but it does add like a  
crispy texture to it that it doesn’t get soft 
when you add the the sauce and the cheese and  
everything else it kind of still kind of like 
holds its own. With San Sabino, is it like much  
more seafood focused than like what people 
expected Don Angie? Yeah, so this restaurant  
overall it’s it’s very much our same style 
that we have at Don Angie which is like our  
sort of take on Italian American cuisine, but 
leaning more toward the seafood. We kind of have  
a few nods to like American coastal cities that 
that happen to have like large Italian immigrant  
communities: New Orleans or San Francisco. After 
we’re done breading it, we take each shrimp and  
put them on a skewer, a bamboo skewer, and we push it all the way on all the way up into the head. 
Yeah, shrimp when you when you cook it, it like 
retracts so this keeps it nice and straight. Then  
what’s the next step in the process? So then 
we’re going to deep fry the whole thing. Okay, yeah  
and the head and everything. About how long do 
you let that go in the prior there so till it’s  
golden brown, um like lightly golden brown, which 
is like, honestly, about 45 seconds. So it’s a  
pretty quick process. Once it’s like golden brown 
here it’s going to be like ever so slightly under  
inside but then once you add the cheese and the 
sauce and you put it in the salamander it goes in  
there for like you know one and a half, two minutes, it it’ll be like perfectly cooked through out.
Angie, you were saying like like these 
bread crumbs are like nostalgic to you? Yeah,  
I mean it’s like reminds me of my grandma, you 
know, she always had like a big batch of like  
homemade breadcrumbs that she made with bread that she dried out herself, herbs that she  
dried out herself. My grandma would have 
the same kind of it’s always in like the  
breadcrumbs were always in the cabinet in like 
some like repurposed plastic container that was  
like an old like ricotta cheese container or 
something. I was going to say that. That they’ve had for like 20  
years, you know what I’m talking about? Yeah. Because they 
didn’t ever buy like an actual container for  
it, it was just repurpose there’s anything you 
got for free. So you’re talking about like your  
grandparents, were they just both like a big 
inspiration for you to get into cooking in  
the first place? I mean this restaurant is named 
after Scott’s grandfather, I don’t know if you  
want to speak to that. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, so well 
my grandfather is—well, his father—was from the  
town of Sansa which is in Salerno. Well, the patron 
saint of the town was Saint Sabino a lot of the men  
on the town were named Sabino my grandfather’s 
birthday was also on the feast day of Saint Sabino  
which was— His name is was Sabino. Sabino, yeah, so that was the inspiration behind the name of the
restaurant. So you’re just finishing the last 
one up pulling it from the oil. Yep, going to dump  
it out. You get it onto some paper to kind of 
take a little bit of the—to absorb some of the  
oil. But it is really crispy. And then we’re just 
going to carefully pull out the sticks that  
we put in and then this is the fun part—
assembling it. So we make a tomato sauce here  
at the restaurant that is—we call it like a spicy 
arrabbiata sauce. It has a lot of sliced garlic in it  
as well as a little bit of rice wine vinegar. 
Okay. And it’s the San Marzano tomatoes that  
we use we use a little bit of extra olive 
oil in a too and a lot of caban chilies and  
then Angie just added a little bit of chopped 
Thai basil, which almost has like a little bit  
of like a licorice-y kind of taste to it, but it 
goes really good with the rice wine vinegar and  
stuff. Why use the a Thai basil instead of just 
like a traditional basil. I think the flavor of  
traditional basil is a little more delicate, like 
this is like a super punchy, intense sauce and I  
think this basil is like a little more intense 
than a typical like Italian basil so it just  
plays well with all the ingredients. You can see 
all the sliced garlic that’s in it. Yeah that’s beautiful.  
So then we’re going to place the shrimp in 
and it’s cool because they kind of are flat now.
Then you do like a last little— We do we don’t 
put it over the entire thing, we just kind of put  
it on the middle of the shrimp, this way when you 
put the cheese and everything on it and it broils  
in the oven, you get like crispy like ends of 
the shrimp and stuff like that. So this is  
stracchino cheese. It’s not mozzarella cheese it’s 
um that typically what you would see on this  
type of thing this is like a soft cows milk 
cheese and it’s really, really tangy  
and it melts really nice, like a really not 
funky brie or something like that, right, maybe?  
It’s super creamy, tangy, it’s really delicate. 
And then we’re going to do a very generous  
sprinkle of 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano, as well as 
Pecorino Toscano like 120-day Pecorino Toscano.
Not Pecorino Romano, Pecorino Romano is great cheese 
it’s just very, very salty. This is not nearly as  
salty. It’s more earthy. So we’re going to take it 
into the kitchen and put it under the salamander.
Awesome.
It’s going to go in for 
about a minute to a minute and a half.
Yeah I think it’s good.
So these are just—just came out of the the 
broiler, just like a quick like blast to really get  
it melty. Yeah, so we finish it with a little bit of 
fresh lemon juice just to kind of cut through any  
of the fat and stuff, but also, you know, seafood 
and lemon is kind of like a match. So it goes  
really well with the shrimp. And then a little bit 
of just Thai basil. Those—and you can see like the  
nice like char on the head that it’s got now. Yep 
and that’s it. Yeah that’s it. Now we eat it.
There’s like a little bit of like sweetness 
to the arrabbiata that’s like really really nice.
We call it like sweet and sour because it has 
like that rice vinegar in there but then we  
also like sweeten it up—it’s like a little 
more punchy and like interesting than just  
like a plain old marinara sauce. I love like that 
sweetness to it and then also just that little  
bit of heat you get on the back end from the 
Calabrian chilies, it’s like super nice. So my  
father’s mother was from Naples and amazing cook,
like the best cook I’ve ever met in my life, but  
a purist in like an Italian sense 
and I would tell her about some of  
the flavor combinations and ingredients we were 
using at the restaurant and she was just like, "No,  
you can’t do that like that’s not allowed!" You 
know, she couldn’t she couldn’t understand  
the you know the amount of rule breaking 
we do here. But when it’s this  
good it doesn’t matter so it’s like go 
ahead break the rules, it’s great. We’re just  
yeah, we’re cooking Italian American cuisine, 
you know. We’re not saying this is Italian Italian  
cuisine. Well, thank you guys so much 
it’s great. Thank you. Thanks for coming in.