But there is a resonance in that memory - a sort of primal encounter of man, food, and fire - that informs so much of the success of his restaurant Vetri, the intimate townhouse gem he opened 10 years ago this week with maitre d' and co-owner Jeff Benjamin.
This was a town simmered in a century's worth of Italian American red sauce and meatballs, but Vetri dared to forgo the penne marinara and Caesar salad.
"What [people] wanted was the real Italian experience," he says, "how [Italians] really eat when they go out and kill a wild boar. They make a ragu and toss it lightly with fettuccine."
So Vetri worked to capture and elevate the magic of authentic rustic cooking here, dusting that wild boar ragu and chestnut fettuccine with cocoa. He roasted goats over an open spit. He tossed hand-rolled pici pasta with guinea hen ragu and plums. He turned sweetbreads into ethereal ravioli, stewed tripe and white beans beneath a Parmesan crust, and crafted spinach gnocchi so light, only the lacework of ricotta salata on top seemed to hold them earthbound.
Vetri had begun his ascent toward becoming one of the most influential Philadelphia chefs of his generation. But not without the support of the city's best maitre d' in Benjamin, whose photographic memory for customer details is legendary. There was also good karma in one of the city's most storied spaces – the 40-seat dining room of 1312 Spruce St.
The Abington-born Vetri, fresh off a cooking stint in New York that followed his Italian journey, had considered debuting in a much larger, flashier Broad Street space. But he chose Spruce Street, in part, on the advice of one of its previous residents: Georges Perrier.
