Tratto

Tratto is chef Chris Bianco's second restaurant in Phoenix, opened in 2016 to focus his attention on handmade pasta and the simple, honest cooking of central Italy. Where Pizzeria Bianco made Bianco's name on the international stage, Tratto operates at a quieter register — a small, candlelit room on E Pierce Street where the menu consists of perhaps eight or ten items and the philosophy is radical restraint. The pasta is rolled, cut, and shaped daily by hand: pici (a thick hand-rolled spaghetti) is tossed with lamb ragù that has simmered for hours; tagliolini arrives with butter, sage, and seasonal vegetables; cacio e pepe is made at Tratto with the same obsessive attention to creaminess and pepper that Bianco applies to pizza dough. The antipasti are simple and seasonal — burrata with stone fruit in summer, roasted brassicas with aged vinegar in winter. The all-Italian wine list spans approachable whites from Friuli and Campania to Barolo and Brunello for serious drinkers. Seating is limited and the restaurant fills Tuesday through Saturday. Reservations are accepted and recommended; the room is intimate enough that a walk-in rejection is a real risk on weekend evenings. Tratto has no ambitions beyond doing a small number of things extraordinarily well, which in Bianco's hands turns out to be quite enough.