By Kimberly Kinchen

For our final edition of Bookkeeping and a look at the books local businesses love so much they keep them in easy reach, CHS ventures to Montlake for another chat with a member of the Lago family. Way back in July, we stopped through Portage Bay for a perusal of the shelves inside Little Lago. At  sibling Cafe Lago in the lowlands of Montlake, owner Carla Leonardi and chef Lucas Neve reach high to draw on Italian classics served in an accessible style.

How does a book make it onto these shelves? Neve: A lot Carla has collected over the years. A number are the pasta chef’s [Justin Dissmore]. Most of mine stay at home…. Sometimes we need recipes that we borrowed from in the past. A lot of them are just reference points, especially pasta and bread books. We bake our own bread here so we need to troubleshoot sometimes or find a new pasta shape for this week’s special …. They are mostly all purchased for home use. You’ve read it a couple times, and then it ends up on our shelf here.

On the spectrum of complete prescriptivist — following a recipe very closely — to completely improvising, where do you fall? Neve: If I’m trying to do a new pasta, especially a classic sauce, I try to find as many recipes for it as I can, and take the parts that I like from one or another and meet somewhere in the middle. So not completely subscribing to the recipe, but always trying to use the recipe to find the right direction.

What was your first or favorite cookbook? Neve: I think the first one that I really had a connection with was the Momofuku cookbook. A lot of it doesn’t really come into play in a lot of the cooking that I do, but I like a lot of the meat processes….I also love a restaurant-focused cookbook that has the stories behind it, the successes and failure and the problem-solving. Dave Chang talks about the accident that brought him to their pork belly: Somebody had left the oven at 500 degrees when it was supposed to go in at 350. And they said, Oh, shit, and turned it down to 200. And just kind of let it slow cook all the fat that had rendered….That happy accident brought them their crispy confit pork belly.

What are some important early books for you, Carla? Leonardi: My ex-husband and his mom, who started the restaurant with me, were the actual pasta makers and making the food. I was in charge of desserts and pizza. So the River Cafe books for desserts. Back in 1990, if it wasn’t for those, I would have been at a lack for desserts. We still have recipes on a rotating dessert menu from them. Lemon tart. The chocolate truffle cake. Chocolate nemesis. Those have been here from the get-go.

There’s the Al Forno cookbook, Simpatica. Even though they grill their pizza, I was still inspired by the look of their pizzas when I first started with that. The Italian Baker by Carol Field. That might be at my house right now. Every once in a while I steal them and take them home for a minute.

What else is in heavy rotation? Leonardi: There’s a really old school pasta book, written by [Giuliano] Bugialli back in the 80s. My ex-husband’s mother actually studied with Bugialli. We have a couple of his books. And that’s what we started the restaurant with: his recipes, his philosophy, his way of cooking. My pasta chef [Dissmore ] loves the one called Mastering Pasta [by Marc Vetri]. Justin actually took a class with him. So he loves looking at that for inspiration. So there’s the Bugialli, the Vetri, Autentico, but that’s not strictly pasta. But we are quite inspired by [Autentico author] Rolando Beramendi, who’s a friend of ours.

[For bread] mostly we go with King Arthur as a start, because we’re never going to be a bread bakery. So the recipes have to be accessible. So King Arthur has that fine line between being …What do I want to say? Researched? All the recipes are so researched, but not so complicated that it’s going to take up half of our day here.

When you first get a cookbook, do you read it from cover to cover? What do you do? Leonardi: I get out a sticky pad. And I don’t start by reading it, per se. But I do go through every page. And something that strikes me as a recipe I’d like to look further into. I just sticky pad it. And so I ended up with you know, 20, if it’s a good book, and then go back and read the chapter, read the recipe.

Whose idea was it to organize the titles by color? Neve: I’ll just say . . . not mine.

Leonardi: It’s not my idea, either! I kind of hate it. Normally the books are more accessible, they were three rows down. But when we switched this particular section to a grocery store situation, a friend of mine did that. And I don’t hate the way it looks. But I hate it intellectually.

Because how do you find your books?! Leonardi: Yeah, you don’t. Well, luckily, most of these books I have memorized. So if I’m looking for the River Cafe book, it has a yellow cover. So I know to go to yellow. But eventually, when we rearrange all this, they won’t be like this. [Laughs] Don’t judge me.

Cafe Lago is located at 2305 24th Ave E. Learn more at cafelago.com.

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