Donatella Arpaia Discusses Bringing The Flavors Of Home To Noma - Exclusive Interview

Donatella Arpaia is back with her first new restaurant after moving to Florida over four years ago. Though not her first restaurant in the state, Noma Beach at Redfish is something close to Arpaia's heart. She may have started her career as a lawyer, but she felt pulled back into the restaurant world that she grew up in, even going back to school and earning a culinary degree. With this unique background, Arpaia brings her passion, knowledge, and uncanny business savvy to each of her projects in the food world. 

Whether it is running restaurants, judging on "Iron Chef America," or writing cookbooks, Arpaia always has something in the works. We caught up with her for an exclusive interview, where she told us all about Noma Beach and what makes it special, while also providing insight into the food world at large. We even got the "queen of meatballs" to spill her best tips on how to make her award-winning dish.

Your award-winning meatballs are on the menu. When you make meatballs, what is your preferred meat blend and why?

[laughs] The million-dollar question. I've tried many, many different versions. The version my mother did was all beef. When I won my awards in the New York City Wine & Food Festival, it was all veal. Right now, I am doing a blend of veal, beef, and a little bit of pork, but very little.

It's not only about the blend. People always talk about, "Why are your meatballs constantly winning?" It's extremely labor-intensive, and I follow the method that my mother and grandmother taught me, which is small batch. I do it in small batch cooking, and only fresh ingredients. We don't take any shortcuts. I pan-fry them for the golden crust, which most restaurants don't. They either bake them, or they boil them, or ... It's very time-consuming. It's very labor-intensive and time-consuming, but I'm very committed to them. That's why people come back for it all the time. It's a lot of love in my meatballs.

What's one mistake that people often make when making meatballs at home?

A lot of mistakes. First of all, they use a lot of not fresh ingredients — like for minced garlic, they'll use garlic powder. They'll use dried herbs instead of fresh herbs. I use fresh garlic; I use fresh herbs. The quality of meat is important. Ground meat in general is not expensive, so go for the hormone-free, go for better-quality ground meat, not too fatty. Also, I pan-fry mine for that golden crust. I also use bread. I don't use breadcrumbs ... Lots of tricks. I don't know if I should give you all of them.

Home cooks also think the more meat, the better; the bigger, the better. I think proportion size is very important. Too tiny, and it can be all crust, and too large, it's like ... We're not making meatloaf, we're making a meatball. Americans sometimes say, "The bigger, the better," and I don't think that's the case with meatballs.

Some things take time. When I grew up, and [for] most Italians that came from Italy, on a Sunday, we woke up to the smell of garlic and onions, not bacon and eggs. It's because our moms or grandmothers were making the meatballs for the day, and it would take five, six hours to make. It's a beautiful process and one that's why everyone wants to always come to Italians on Sunday, but it took time. You fry the meatballs first, and we'd go to church and we would steal the meatballs before going to church. I like them just fried, too, before they even go into the sauce.

Then the sauce takes time. You have to put it on a very low simmer to acquire all that taste, and [get] good quality San Marzano tomatoes if you can. Even local tomatoes, as long as they're ripe, are wonderful too.

In the early days when it was David Burke & Donatella, you were in charge of front of house. How did you make sure that the front of house ran smoothly?

I definitely love to welcome people in my restaurant, and it's such a lost art and hard to replicate. When you have that sense of service, it's really important ... When we talk about service, whether it's fine dining or quick service, it's all about the personal touch and caring.

That's what people remember, because you can go to the best restaurant where technically everything is perfect, but you're left cold. You can go to a restaurant where maybe nothing was perfect that night — because you can't always be perfect all the time, as much as we strive to — but you'll remember whether there was care in terms of knowing your name, whether there's care in terms of how you're treated at the door, which is so important. Still, one of the most neglected places is greeting people, making them feel at home, caring.

I'll give you an example. I have toddlers, so I understand what it's like to be a mom at a restaurant. There's a thing where if you have young kids, when you place the order, my servers know that they're going to tell the parents that their food comes out first because the kids want to eat, and if they don't eat, the parents can't eat. That's little things, but it's done in a gesture. I always have crayons and I always have placemats, and I have a little treasure box at the end where they can go and get something out. These little touches are things that a parent will remember [and] a child remembers.

I always say if you give quality food, good service, and you care — and you do it on a consistent basis — the rewards are going to keep coming back to you. The gimmicks don't last. They don't.

60% of new restaurants close within a year and 80% close within five years. What does it take for a restaurant to last through that first year or first five years?

It's so hard. There's so many variables. [For] a lot of the new timers, new people in the restaurant business, it's hard to understand what experience can give you. A lot of times, people are ill-prepared for outside business forces that you have no control over, and they don't have ... You should hopefully have a cushion of money to start with, because you need a cushion sometimes. That can be something where many, many restaurants that close maybe wouldn't have closed if they could ride out certain things that occur that are beyond their control in the beginning. But you don't know what can happen.

Then, people don't understand that the restaurant business is actually business. It's part of that. [You need] to have a sound business plan, to create good assumptions, and to understand, and then to adapt and change accordingly if you need to. Some people think as long as you have good food or good service, it's enough, and it's not. You have to have all those components, and you have to be able to adapt.

What are some of your favorite emerging food trends right now?

I guess I'm supposed to say vegan and the meat, but it's not. I don't like them. It's not my favorite ... The food trends that are most important are food that tastes like food. That is a trend, because sourcing foods that are not genetically engineered and local and farmers ... That's going to keep continuing because chefs, especially, are in search of flavor. It's very important.

I think that different ethnic [food traditions] are going to continue to rise, and interesting fusions are interesting, and heat. People are in love with different heat and chili peppers. I think that's here to stay as well. But I don't ... Us Italians, we like to keep it non-trendy. The trend is to go back to basics and to find a tomato that tastes like a tomato. That is my constant search. We're looking for the next best thing, and I just want a tomato that tastes like a tomato.

In what ways have Instagram, TikTok, and social media changed your approach to running a restaurant?

When you think about design, it's definitely a part of your design aspect. You're like, "What are the Instagrammable moments?" It changes the look, the design, the way we package things. The influencers are all around, and if you're at the marketing and PR, that's part of it now. That's a category. It's not just, "Oh, isn't that cute or fun?" It's a category that you have to budget for a lot and make sure that you have a lot of young, talented staff that keep up with the latest social media stuff to keep you current and feel fresh. It's really important.

It does also impact plating and thinking about things ... I love coconut cake, so we have a coconut cake now ... We're going to flame it with liquor. [My pastry chef, Chris] is so Instagrammable, and he's a young, talented chef. It's influencing me everywhere. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. You're right." Sure enough, influencers come in. You think about visually plating and visual cocktails and the design of your restaurant. It's impacted by this.

I'm lucky that I have such a gorgeous restaurant that, [in] my view, is very Instagrammable. It's interesting because ... if there's a photo shot and the water's in the background, it triples. It's just there. It's interesting. You'll start to learn.