Disclosure: I was a guest of the restaurant for this meal.
I used to be pretty resistant to eating Italian food in a restaurant – mainly because I was raised on my mother’s, and it feels criminal to pay $20 for a plate of pasta that isn’t as good as the bottomless bowl I can have for free at her house. But in recent years, Paris has become home to quite a few excellent Italian restaurants, and I’ve been spending more time in Italy, where dishes that my mother never made when I was growing up – amatriciana, cacio e pepe – are far more prevalent. All that to say that I was pretty excited by the prospect of discovering the fresh pasta at Sugo.
This restaurant has been open for nearly a year, located just steps from the Bourse, which, founder Arthur Dumait told me, makes the spot particularly popular for the lunchtime crowd. Given the portion sizes – and the too-good-to-stop flavors – I’m not sure how Paris’ financial district is getting anything done in the afternoon.
The menu is short, sweet, and affordable, with a roster of six fresh pasta dishes (four of which are vegetarian) and a seventh option that varies depending on the day of the week. (Monday, the night we visited, was puttanesca night.) The recipes themselves are simple stalwarts – cacio e pepe, pesto, amatriciana, ragù, or the namesake sugo, which forms the base of many of the others, seeing Sardinian tomatoes slow-cooked for four hours in the oven.
The appetizer list is short and sweet, focused chiefly on top-notch products, both from Italy and nearer to Paris: Local mozzarella from Nanina is paired with sun-dried Sicilian tomatoes (10), while Puglian artichokes and tomatoes are paired with Piedmont hazelnuts and Taggiasche olives (10). We went for the latter and were far from disappointed. While the artichokes were perhaps a bit too toothsome, the flavor combo was on-point, with candy-like tomatoes and briny olives deftly complemented by the superlative Piedmont hazelnuts.
Sharing a starter is the move for those who want to take full advantage of the massive pasta portions – and trust me, you do. Cacio e pepe (17) is silky, cheesy, and impossibly moreish, the cheesy sauce coating each strand of tonnarelli. The pasta here is cooked al dente, but – mea culpa – thankfully a bit more than it is in Rome. (I found the Italians teeth a bit more robust than mine.)
There was, of course, no universe in which I could not order the pasta all’amatriciana (17), studded with loads of salty guanciale and topped generously with more of the same. Meltingly tender in the sauce and crispy on top, it was pure perfection – and impossible to stop picking at long after I was full.
That said, I saved a bit of room for a bite of dessert. Tiramisu (7) was ultra-rich and decadent, with a luscious mascarpone base. If I could offer just one criticism, it would be in the balance of this dessert, which was nearly devoid of biscuit and thus was pretty much just a plate of whipped mascarpone. Delicious, yes, but more of that moist cakey layer would have been welcome.
(Though to be fair, if things are to be unbalanced, I’d rather it be in this direction – which is to say, the sloppier one.)
I couldn’t resist a scoop of the house-made lemon sorbet (4), which was pleasantly puckery – pretty much the perfect conclusion to such a rich meal.
The excellent food and very reasonable prices would be reason enough to recommend Sugo, but the genial service and cozy dining room push it over the edge. Plus, with great vegetarian options – and service every day (lunch only on Sundays), it’s the kind of go-to I’m sure I’ll be recommending and returning to time and again.
Sugo – 16, rue Saint-Augustin, 75002