How Vodka Sauce Became an American Celebrity

On a Wednesday in April 2020, Gigi Hadid dispatched an Instagram story detailing her recipe for spicy vodka sauce for two. It was a few weeks into the lockdowns, and all over the country, boules of sourdough quivered, forgotten as they sat proofing on countertops, their creators’ attention turned elsewhere. To a place where acerbic met sweet, where cheesy met creamy, where all of that met al dente, and where, best of all, it happened in less time than it took to stream an episode of Tiger King. Americans watched with bated breath as Hadid added one half cup of heavy cream to a mixture of caramelized shallot, garlic, and tomato paste. The dairy intrusion produced a mottled red-and-white Pollock which, after confident strokes with a wooden spoon, eventually coalesced into a thick, Nickelodeon-orange sauce, velvety enough to coat her conchigliette.

It was not the first time many had encountered vodka sauce. Arguably, Carbone—a restaurant where Hadid has definitely been spotted—was a major instigator of vodka sauce’s national popularity. But Hadid’s video quickly became one of the most persuasive. Insider, Us Weekly, and Metro UK all ran breathless and immediate features. Twitter users referred to it simply as “Gigi Hadid pasta.” Six weeks later, BuzzFeed called us “obsessed” with the tangy, creamy dish, as recipe variations tore through TikTok. Even Gordon Ramsey tried Hadid’s sauce. His alleged review: “I said, ‘Girl, it’s good. In fact, it’s f---- good.’”

“It’s funny to see how today, pop culture has claimed spicy vodka sauce as its dish.”

Since then, demand has only continued to burble over the sides of Dutch ovens and saucepans. In 2021, lauded Instagram home cook Dan Pelosi took to Good Morning America to demonstrate his lauded “sawce” recipe (skip the onion; rigatoni or bust), which had helped to grow his following from plush to astronomical. In 2022, Arthur & Sons opened in Manhattan’s West Village, and its vodka sauce swiftly gained acclaim on TikTok, with users calling it “f*cking phenomenal” and “the best pasta I’ve had outside of Italy.” This past summer, James Beard Award winner Mindy Segal opened a permanent location of Mindy’s Bakery in Wicker Park, Chicago, with a vodka sauce sliced bialy on the rotating menu. Carbone has also steadily extended its tentacles into major US cities, most recently Dallas, with plans to expand around the world. Even the Cheesecake Factory added a Spicy Rigatoni Vodka Pasta to its menu last September.

Vodka sauce managed to play a supporting role in the latest nepo baby fracas, too, when Sofia Coppola’s daughter Romy Croquet Mars tried making it on TikTok while complaining about a foiled attempt to charter a helicopter using parental funds. (No word on how it turned out, though Mars got off to a strong start, with several shallots and an assist from her babysitter’s boyfriend.)

“It’s funny to see how today, pop culture has claimed spicy vodka sauce as its dish,” says chef Joe Isidori of Arthur & Sons. It wasn’t always like this, though. It happened slowly, at first, and then like a Diet Coke exploding after a long trip home from the grocery store: immediate, inevitable, and sticky.

It’s been a wild ride for vodka sauce, which has existed quietly for decades. It all began in Rome, at Taverna Flavia, sometime in the 1960s. Or, actually, it may have begun in Bologna at a restaurant called Dante. Or it might have first appeared in the 1970s in Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi’s cookbook L’Abbuffone. Or it may have started with an Italian-born chef and his penne alla Russia, which he prepared tableside at Orsini in New York City in 1979. Still other creation stories mention a (possibly mythical?) vodka company that incentivized chefs in Italy to use vodka in their dishes. “The origins of the sauce have been long disputed,” writes Ian MacAllen, in Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American.

It was a fixture in Italian-American communities for years. “My family has been in the red sauce business since 1954,” says Isidori, who grew up eating vodka sauce in a number of New York City boroughs. “I’m pretty sure they served penne alla vodka at my Christening. Growing up, there was no glamour to it. People came, and they ate meatballs, and penne alla vodka.”

Then came Carbone, half a century later. And with it, the glamour. And an impossible door, literally barricaded by a bodyguard most nights, and once you got past him, a velvet rope. Some vodka sauce evangelists point to the restaurant franchise, which opened its original Manhattan location in 2013, as the single most important turning point in the *She’s All That–*makeover of vodka sauce. In a blog post from April 2013, Instagram influencer Josh Beckerman (Foodie Magician) wrote, “The hottest restaurant in NYC right now is Carbone.” Citing a recommendation from Kate Krader, Food & Wine’s restaurant editor at the time, he added: “That sauce had the absolute perfect kick. It was the best I've ever had.”

“Every single table seemed to have ordered the rigatoni, which was hardly the pink glop of your average red-sauce place—these noodles were dense, curvaceous, bathed in cream laced with tomato and just a whisper of heat,” wrote Helen Rosner about Carbone for The New Yorker. The subject of her piece? How to get a table at Carbone. In 2021. Nearly a decade had passed and still, no one could figure out how to get in. Carbone’s name alone had become evocative enough to conjure either eye rolls or elation depending on the company you kept. The restaurant had efficiently blossomed into one of Those Places. The ones you can’t get into on raw desire and a Resy account alone. The ones that aren’t a meritocracy, but rather a haven for the Haves, looked upon longingly by the Have-Somes. The ones the gossip rags mention when they detail the sorts of juicily priced dishes that C- and B- and A-list celebrities picked at all weekend, come Monday.

And it was a particular dish on their menu, the spicy rigatoni vodka, that gained the most acclaim. “Vodka sauce had been a secret weapon for outer-borough cooks and chefs, like Joe & Pat’s vodka pie, which blew everyone’s mind,” Isidori says, referring to the storied Staten Island red sauce joint. “From there, Carbone opened and made it a little more chichi, but elusive. It wasn’t a restaurant you could just walk into.”

The trio behind Carbone—Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick—continues to scale, to Las Vegas, to Miami, to Hong Kong, to everywhere beyond. Recently, they opened a members-only club spin-off of Carbone, called ZZ’s Club, in Miami. They have plans to expand the venture to Manhattan this year. When the first Carbone opened in 2013, the Spicy Rigatoni Vodka went for $24 a plate. Today, it's $34. They build, and the people come, with wobbly little noodles coated in orange sauce instead of dollar signs reflected in their irises.

Carbone isn’t the only high-end restaurant known for their vodka sauce; it wasn’t even the first. Just a few blocks from its original NoHo location, Rubirosa had already been open for years, slinging its much-adored vodka sauce pizza. (Rubirosa’s vodka pie was itself an homage to the late Rubirosa owner AJ Pappalardo’s father, Giuesppe Pappalardo, owner of Joe & Pat’s.) Since opening day in 2009, the vodka pie had been Rubirosa’s most ordered offering, says partner Bari Musacchio—though it wasn’t until social media really became a tool for influencers that the pie, and its cousin, the tie-dye pie (with vodka sauce, red sauce, and pesto), really took off, around 2013. “Eva Chen would post the vodka pizza—it was her favorite pizza. And we would have people coming in showing photos from her Instagram,” Musacchio says, referring to the influential fashion media figure.

Meanwhile, home cooks joined the mad dash. In late 2012, with Barefoot Contessa Foolproof: Recipes You Can Trust, Ina Garten shared the recipe for her version of Pasta alla Vecchia Bettola, a vodka sauce that gets extra depth from a jaunt into the oven. It had been a staple at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton for more than 20 years.

By the time Hadid released her own take in 2020, vodka sauce had already become a harbinger of a certain sort of home cook.

Further west, Jon & Vinny’s persuaded large swaths of Angelenos to reengage with carbs and dairy when it opened in 2015, a sort of West Coast interpretation of Carbone with brighter lighting but just as much hype. “There are only 45 seats here. I wouldn’t count on a table soon,” wrote Jonathan Gold in his review that year. (Beyoncé and Jay-Z also stopped there for a late dinner after Beyoncé played Coachella in 2018, and Chrissy Teigen lists it among her favorite LA restaurants.) On its menu was a fusilli alla vodka as well as a “Ham & Yeezy” pizza, with vodka sauce, red onion, caciocavallo, smoked mozzarella, pickled Fresno chiles, and, of course, ham. (Today, the dish is named “Ham & Eazy.”) The same year, Bon Appétit ran the recipe for fusilli alla vodka from Jon & Vinny’s. This publication’s original recipe for rigatoni with easy vodka sauce, published in 2018, also remains one of the most viewed recipes every month.

So by the time Hadid released her own take in 2020, vodka sauce had already become a harbinger of a certain sort of home cook. The sort who had been to, or at least heard of, those restaurants you need to know somebody’s cousin who works in PR to even think about getting into.

But vodka sauce may not have peaked yet. Not even close. Just last month, New York Times cooking writer Eric Kim—whose recipes more often than not explode into the viral canon, and who is, full disclosure, my friend—ran his own vodka sauce recipe (with extra liquor and dollops of ricotta on top to temper). It’s already nearing 1,000 reviews. He says he was driven to develop his own recipe to find out what the vodka actually does. Why vodka sauce is so irresistible. His twofold theory: The vodka helps with the emulsion, and the ethanol helps one’s mouth experience the other flavors in a heightened fashion.

Like a bubbling curry or a hot skillet full of bulgogi, vodka sauce has undeniable sensory appeal, too, from the moment tomato paste hits hot fat and turns brick red and fills the kitchen with waves of sharp sweetness.

It’s deceptively easy to make, which may be another reason why it is so irresistible—why the cult of vodka sauce only seems to swell. And, “it’s not expensive,” says Pelosi. “I always tell people, use bottom shelf vodka.” That, plus tomato paste, Parmesan or Pecorino, and cream—plus an allium, if you please—will get you most of the way there. Any standard variation can go from ingredient to plated dish in under an hour, with just two pots and a wood spoon dirtied in the process.

Yet despite its simplicity, vodka sauce projects an allure that a basic marinara simply does not. “Vodka sauce is the mysterious girl in the corner at the party who you want to get to know,” Pelosi says. “She’s a pink or orange sauce, has alcohol in her, and you want to know what’s happening.” Like a bubbling curry or a hot skillet full of bulgogi, vodka sauce has undeniable sensory appeal, too, from the moment tomato paste hits hot fat and turns brick red and fills the kitchen with waves of sharp sweetness. “Not only is it inappropriately thick (same) and illegally glossy (also same), but it tastes how comfort feels,” writes Pelosi in the headnote for his recipe.

In spite of, well, everything, Isidori says that it took him by surprise when his spicy, exceptionally cheesy take on vodka sauce at Arthur & Sons went viral on TikTok last summer. Now, though, Isidori says vodka sauce has reached a point where it defies the bust part of the viral trend cycle. It isn’t “gimmicky stunt food,” he says. “It’s a wholesome comfort food.”

Accessibility, with a hint of that branded glamour, may be vodka sauce’s final form. Late last year, Rubirosa unleashed its famous vodka sauce by the jar for direct sale to customers anywhere in the country. So far? It’s been a “runaway star,” says Musacchio, who reports that it’s sold “like crazy” in Florida, Chicago, and California. Heinz and Absolut have just announced a partnership to peddle their own version of the concoction, in jars. Isidori has already been approached to bottle his blend too—Arthur & Sons’ vodka sauce is expected to hit the market this year.

He’s optimistic about vodka sauce’s future. “If you can combine pasta and cheese in a sexy, velvety sauce, you have a winner,” he says. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

Expensive but very good! I don’t have to make my own since this family sells their authentic homemade and bottled sauce.

https://carfagnasshop.com/product/homemade-vodka-sauce/

Use the locator to see if you can find Carfagna sauces near you. Their original pasta sauce is a must in our household.

Um, Ok. What a stupid name (vodka sauce). I’m a fan of Americanized dishes, but no self-respecting Italian would use vodka in place of wine.

I’ve made a pink sauce before; didn’t care for it. At all. This is what is popular now? Ironically, I literally said just the night before that I’d never open a 100% Italian menu restaurant. Why? I don’t believe the market exists. Evidence: See what passes for ‘italian’ these days (e.g., olive garden).

That stated, I will try the vodka sauce - once - but will likely stick to making sauces with wine and (go ahead: Call me racist) will segregate the red from the white sauces.

Vodka sauce can be yummy. Been around a long time. Got almost popular around here about 10 years ago. Seems to be on the up again.

My kids went to HS with the Carfagna grandkids. We used to shop at their market way before they went to HS with the grands. It was a really neat 1920’s mom n pop grocery store. At one point, they started bottling their sauce. It’s the real deal, and now they are expanding their territory. The original mom n pop location has closed. The neighborhood went downhill in the last 15-20 years. They relocated to a better part of town, and now have a restaurant as well as the store. It’s pretty cool but I miss the old place. Still, it’s the best stuff you’ll ever get in a jar. We buy it by the case (get a price discount, locally), and stop in there every few months, even though we don’t live in Cbus anymore. A true Italian gem. We have tried most of their sauces, and all are great!

Just watched the commercial. Lol, yes, those are some of the grandkids that my kids went to school with. Fun family. Good sense of humor. I’m gonna send that to my kids. They’ll get a kick out of it!

The theory behind Vodka Sauce is that the alcohol extracts flavors from the tomatoes which are not otherwise soluble in either oil or water. Since vodka is tasteless, and since the alcohol burns away in cooking, adding vodka does not impart any foreign flavor to the sauce. I make Vodka Sauce based on my own recipe, and I have made it with and without vodka, and there is a big difference between the two. I have also found that the absolute cheapest vodka works the best - don’t ask me why. The only problem is the embarrassment of going into the ABC store and buying a large quantity of cheap vodka, and telling them it’s for cooking only makes it worse.

“The dairy intrusion produced a mottled red-and-white Pollock which, after confident strokes with a wooden spoon, eventually coalesced into a thick, Nickelodeon-orange sauce, velvety enough to coat her conchigliette.”

Well. No wonder she likes it.

I first had delicious penne a la vodka at an honest to goodness Italian restaurant in Sonoita, Arizona in 1992. I have never forgotten that treat.

My late FIL loved the cheapest vodka around, for his martinis. I think it tasted like lighter fluid (not that I’ve actually ever tried that, just in my head what I think it might taste like). Made a great addition to vodka sauces. I agree with your analysis. It brings out a flavor in the tomatoes and then the alcohol burns off.

PS. I enjoyed your comment that you go to the ABC store to purchase. From the South, I take it? I don’t see those since I moved to the Midwest.

As stated, I will try it (as well as the ‘pink sauce’, one more time); we shall see. I appreciate the comments, which are motivating; perhaps it won’t be a waste of time.

I’m dubious, but it’s sensible to me.

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