PSA: Missy Robbins Is Bringing Her World-Famous Pastas to Your Kitchen
If you have an Italian grandmother, you probably think she’s the greatest cook of all time, and I’m certainly no exception. Like a wizard wielding a wand, my Grandma Tess twirled giant pots of simmering red sauce with her wooden spoon, serving up the closest thing there is in this life to real magic. It was impossible not to fall under the spell of her “mozzarella in carrozza,” an ambrosial deep-fried Neapolitan grilled cheese sandwich, which translates to “mozzarella in carriage,” because, when pulled apart, the oozing strands of melted cheese hanging down resemble the reins of a horse and buggy.
I’m exceedingly particular about this regional dish, so you’ll excuse my hopeful skepticism when chef Missy Robbins served her version during a recent visit to Misipasta, the grocery-cum-restaurant she opened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last year.
I sat with Robbins in Misipasta’s backyard garden shaded by tall trees, the carrozza and a smattering of other antipasti arranged before us: smoked anchovy atop rich Corbarino tomatoes spread on crusty bread, stuffed cappelletti dressed in a simple pistachio butter sauce, and, one of her favorites from the menu, a zippy bowl of zucchini swimming in a retro Italian vinaigrette. As the story goes, just before opening her first restaurant, Lilia, in 2016, Robbins experimented mad scientist-style with various olive oils and herbs to get the dressing just right. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, it tastes like Wish-Bone, but with real ingredients,’” she says, heaping spoonfuls onto her own plate. The sauce has since become a staple in her repertoire, and is available for purchase at Misipasta, along with other in-house sauces and pastas.
Taking inspiration from Roscioli, a 200-year-old Roman salumeria and specialty shop, Robbins envisions Misipasta as a destination to both eat and shop. Her favorite olive oils, red wine vinegars, and Calabrian chilies are stocked on shelves lining the walls. Ten types of pastas are available for purchase every day, plus meatballs and chicken cutlets. The simple red sauce is a big seller, and so is a semi-dried mafaldini pasta. You can dine there and order small plates like I did, or you can shop those shelves and try your hand at making an Italian dinner at home.
Though not Italian (Robbins has Eastern European roots), she has embraced the country’s cuisine with best-selling cookbooks, restaurants with lines wrapped around the block, and even a stint on Top Chef Masters. When she first came up with the idea for Misipasta more than five years ago, the goal was to get as many of her favorite Italian ingredients into as many homes as possible. “It was something I always wanted to do, but couldn’t because I didn’t have enough name recognition,” she says.
Now that Robbins does, her ambitions for Misipasta have only grown. “I want to make this a company and a brand, and get to a point where we can open more of these kinds of stores all across the country,” she says. If the roaring success of Lilia and her other restaurant, Misi, are any indication, that shouldn’t be a problem.
I take a satisfyingly crunchy first bite of carrozza, and as the molten mozzarella center begins to seep out, I pay her the highest compliment I can: “Grandma Tess would approve.”
A few weeks after our interview, Robbins flew to the Lake Garda region of northern Italy for a chef-in-residency with her friend chef Jeff Michaud’s gastronomic tour company La Via Gaia. Afterward, she solo-traveled through Rome, Milan, and Venice. She was there on business, but when you are a James Beard Award winner who has held a Michelin star at two restaurants, work travel looks a little different. Robbins talks animatedly about checking out food markets and snagging a reservation at the Milanese trattoria Trippa, which, she says, “at least 10 people have told me I have to go to.”
After studying at Peter Kump’s New York School of Cooking (renamed The Institute of Culinary Education) in the ’90s and then bouncing between Manhattan restaurants, she “fell in love” with Italian cooking during a five-month peregrination in the Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna regions of the country. “I just knew that I wasn’t right for a French kitchen—they were strict, or my impression of them was strict,” she says. “I hadn’t cooked Italian food except in Italy, and I was like, ‘I really have to learn.’ So I dove headfirst into it, and then it just became kind of an obsession.”
Back in America, Robbins received a call from a culinary headhunter about an opening at chef Tony Mantuano’s Spiaggia, the Obama family’s go-to restaurant for birthday and anniversary dinners in Chicago. She jumped at the chance to learn from the Michelin-starred Italian-American, who quickly became a close friend and inspiration. “Once you’re in an environment like that that’s so Italian, it’s really hard to go back,” she says of working alongside Mantuano.
In 2008, Robbins moved back to Manhattan to be the executive chef at A Voce where, under her guidance, both restaurant locations earned a Michelin star. She left after five years to focus on her own ventures, opening pasta-forward restaurants Lilia in 2016 and Misi in 2018. From the outside, it seemed like Robbins had it all. “But I always wanted to have a pasta and sauce company,” she says. “When I left A Voce, it’s what I really wanted to do.”
Beloved by even the harshest food critics, both Lilia and Misi developed instant cult followings. Finally, Robbins felt she had enough cachet to pursue her dream. In January 2019, she pitched the concept for Misipasta to her business partner, Sean Feeney. “I spent all of that year working on packaging and product and branding, which I love as much as I love cooking,” she says.
It wasn’t that Robbins was tired of being in the kitchen. “I just think I got to a point in my career where I had done a lot of the same thing, and I wanted to express myself in other ways,” she explains.
The day of my visit, Misipasta was a flurry of activity. Chefs swirled pasta in huge pans from an open kitchen. A barista expertly poured a cappuccino. Some people were drinking espresso martinis at counter stools, while others shopped for dinner. “Everything I use in my restaurants is on these shelves,” Robbins says, pointing to a wall of shelves full of product. “Well not everything, but my favorites are. It’s very curated. This is never going to be a grocery store where you can come in and get everything you possibly need, but we do have three kinds of anchovies.”
Cheffing is an art form, but if you’ve seen The Bear, then you know it’s also a very demanding sport. Robbins told me she is recovering from back surgery. “I used to be in the kitchen every single night, and the kitchen is open, so I was interacting with guests,” she says. “I no longer can stand in a kitchen every night for seven hours, and it’s not a good use of my time, anyway.” Instead her energy goes into expanding brand awareness for Misipasta, and making sure things continue to run smoothly behind the scenes.
Stepping out of the kitchen has also given her time to reflect on her managerial style. “If you took a poll of 100 people that worked for me in the past, they would tell you I was their toughest boss,” she says. “I’ve gone through many phases of being a good leader, a shitty leader, and a frustrated leader, but you never stop growing. My expectations are very high, but my parameters have gotten wider for mistakes.” Getting to this point has been “a big learning curve,” she admits. “I used to be like, ‘Do this,’ and they would say, ‘Yes, chef.’ I grew up in kitchens that were tough, where expectations were very different from what you can expect in kitchens today.”
Robbins has been consulting the “most life-changing” executive coach, who is helping her unlearn all those bad habits. “One of the things that we’ve worked on a lot for me is this idea... shit, what did he call it? I’m going to botch this...oh, yeah, it’s called, ‘Gain before gap.’ So, as a chef, it’s a blessing and a curse that I notice everything. I’m really hyperaware of my surroundings, like there was a basil leaf in here that didn’t look good,” she says, gesturing to a dish on our table.
“I notice everything,” she continues. “When I go to Lilia and I haven’t been there for a day, I walk in and find the 20 things that are wrong, before the five things that are right. I’m so quick to say, ‘That’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong.’ I’m still not amazing at [not doing that], but I’m conscious of when I do it.”
Until now, she hadn’t given much thought to her legacy either. “I realize that I can have an impact in making a difference and in inspiring younger women, and that’s become important to me,” she says. “There are a lot of women coming into this industry, and I’m a symbol of someone who has done really great things in the industry. It’s important from a mentorship perspective, and only from a mentorship perspective, to say, ‘Hey, guys, if you think you can’t do this, you can.’”
Still, like any good chef, she recognizes you can always improve the recipe for success. “There are moments where you’re in your restaurant and you’re like, ‘What happened tonight?’” she says. “We have really young people doing the baking for the morning, and they try so hard, but they make a lot of mistakes, and it’s devastating to me. But we keep pushing, and we keep trying.”
It’s one of the reasons Robbins will never open a second location of Lilia or Misi. “I know how hard it is to find the people to make them run, and I also know that there’s only so much bandwidth I have, and I’m still really involved,” she says. “We’ve gotten many offers to bring our restaurants all over the place, but I think what makes Lilia Lilia is that it’s a very specific space on a very specific corner. Restaurants are hard to replicate, and when you do replicate them, they lose some of their soul, right?”
Robbins pauses, then clarifies: “There are people who have done it very successfully, of course. I don’t want to shit on the people who’ve done it, because people can do it and they do it well. It’s just not what I want to do.”
On the heels of Misipasta’s one-year anniversary, her new dream is to make the speciality shop a household name. “There’s no exact timeline for that,” she says. “If we get to a point where we can open more of these stores, we do want it to be national, but I don’t have an exact business plan. Those are all the things that are swirling around and will happen, they just take time.”
Though knowing Robbins, she’s not going to wait around for that pot to boil.
Simple Sauce
Boxed Rigatoni
Italian Vinaigrette
This story is part of our Chef’s Kiss series. Click the link below for all the stories.
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