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Life After Couch Cafe: Scampi Brings the “Italian Diaspora” to Queen Village

Liz Grothe made a name for herself in Philly with Couch Cafe, a quirky series of semi-private dinner parties themed for whatever whims were striking her fancy: her travels through Italy, nostalgic takes on ’90s restaurant chains, and the comfort dishes from her childhood in Oklahoma, to name a few. From her apartment, she fried perfect arancini, presented homemade pastas to guests gathered around her living room, and once even crawled through her window to serve seafood boils to hungry guests. And it was all gearing up toward this moment: opening Scampi, a permanent restaurant that captures the intimacy of Couch Cafe with an even better menu supported by, you know, a real professional kitchen.

Grothe is opening Scampi on December 4th in the former Neighborhood Ramen space just off South Street. The menu will be prix-fixe like the pop-up, priced at $115 (inclusive of tax and tip) for five courses, and will have two seatings a night at 5:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. Prepaid reservations are available on OpenTable.

In a city of Italian restaurants, Scampi stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, the decor speaks specifically to Grothe’s niche “fearlessly silly” sense of humor. The entire dining room is painted pink and green, like cactus flowers in bloom, and on the walls, shrimp-themed pop-art and photos of things Grothe loves, like her chubby white cat named Heavy Cream. She has even removed Neighborhood Ramen’s host stand to make room for a small bar where she hopes people will eventually be able to walk in for “just a bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine.” Second, the cooking isn’t what you think of when you think Italian; she calls it “Italian diaspora cooking.”

“It’s regional Italian food with influences from everywhere Italians have gone,” she explains. That means pasta, yes, like the plump culurgiones that got her a shout-out from Bon Appétit earlier this year. At a preview dinner, she served them stuffed with trout, sitting in sour cream and topped with trout roe. Fans of Couch Cafe will find some beloved classics (including fancy hot dogs), but Grothe is also excited to experiment with her bespoke cooking style in a real restaurant kitchen. “We’ve got a real stove, a dishwasher that cleans stuff in two minutes,” Grothe says, excited. “It means we can do things we couldn’t do in literally an apartment.”

Her dishes are both familiar and surprising, driven by her own cravings and palate, and made with a lot of care. Take, for example, the handmade pici she rolled for the recent preview dinner, topping them with a chili and pecan-laden sauce that landed somewhere between mapo tofu, salsa macha, and macaroni and cheese. Grothe’s tiramisu is another representative dish — a decidedly classic iteration, made modern and punchy with the addition of crushed Frosted Flakes on top.

The personal nature of her cooking and the journey she’s taken to get to this point is reflected in the restaurant. Her friends at Pietramala gifted her the restaurant’s pasta extruder. The restaurants’ chairs and glassware were hand-me-downs from Randy Rucker, the first person to give Grothe a shot in the restaurant. And the space itself is essentially Neighborhood Ramen passing the torch as they move toward their goal of opening a ramen shop in Japan.

For as fun-loving as Grothe is, she’s also pretty thoughtful and sentimental. She’ll tell you she thinks shrimp are hilarious, but there’s a deeper meaning behind “Scampi,” the beloved shrimp dish you can get at Red Lobster. It’s a reference to the way that Italian food has changed in the United States. In Italy, Grothe explains, scampi refers to langoustines, whereas in the United States, it refers to the way most Italians would cook their langoustines with butter, lemon, and parsley. And at Scampi, the evolution of Italian food is sure to continue.