Meaty pasta sauce...without the meat
At his fast casual Porano Pasta, St. Louis chef Gerard Craft offers create-your-own bowls by mixing and matching pastas, sauces, proteins and toppings. He makes his signature sauce, Smoky Sunday Sugo, by cooking smoked pork shoulder and ham in a braise. When he first opened, the Sugo option was available with pieces of the braised pork, served over pasta for $8.95, but Craft discovered that the braising technique itself released enough flavor and gelatin from the meat to give the sauce the taste and body he was after. Now he removes the meat and sells the pork under the protein options for an extra $3.