These days, there are no rules for dining at home. You can stock your fridge and pantry with some of the very best produce in the country at the click of a button and have the one and only Maggie Beer show you exactly what to do with it on Instagram. You can score a meal kit from one of the finest restaurants in town for a fraction of what it would normally cost to eat there and enjoy it in the comfort of your pyjamas. You can even order a wheel of pecorino cheese to stir your pasta in, because why the heck not?
Yes, that’s right, the boys from Darlinghurst’s Buffalo Dining Club are now giving you the chance to re-create their signature dish under your own roof for the very first time. The pocket-sized Italian eatery has been offering takeaway meals for the better part of a month, but strands of housemade pasta peppered to the high heavens and tossed through a while of aged Sardinian sheep’s milk cheese haven’t been part of the line-up until now.
“We’ve been thinking about how to do this for a very long time,” says co-owner Marcelo Garrao, “because the challenge with our cacio e pepe is that it doesn’t travel well.”
To that end, he and fellow co-owner Peter Kypreos have put together a DIY kit with 150 grams of fresh pasta and a jar of black pepper and parmesan sauce for you to cook at home for $22. If you want to take it to the next level and follow in the restaurant’s footsteps, you can add a 16-centimetre, 1.5-kilogram wheel of pecorino cheese to your order for $75. Just grab a pair of tongs, toss your cooked pasta around before serving, and you'll be good to go.
Think that seems a tad excessive for a simple pasta dish? Think again. Remember that Italians are the queens and kings of using every last bit of every ingredient, so the restaurant will email you updated recipes and serving suggestions so that you can make the most of your purchase. Then again, there’s no shame in going for gold and eating straight from the wheel until you whittle it down to the bottom, either.
Cacio e pepe and cheese wheels are available from the online Buffalo Goods Store, and orders need to be placed before Thursday at 5pm for a Friday pick-up at the restaurant. For more information, or to place an order, click here.