Chefs bring taste of Tucson to Italian Republic Day dinner in Boston

Tucson chef Mat Cable was beyond thrilled last September when he returned from more than a week cooking in Parma, Italy.

On Monday, he reunites with his Italian host, chef Mario Marini, to pick up where the two left off.

But this time, the pair are meeting on neutral turf.

Cable, chef-owner of Zio Peppe, Fresco Pizzeria & Pasteria, and First We Eat Catering, and fellow Tucson chef Obadiah Hindman, executive chef of Mountain Oyster Club, will team up with Marini to prepare a holiday dinner Monday for the Italian Consulate of Boston.

Monday’s dinner for 350 guests commemorates the 79th anniversary of the Festa della Repubblica Italiana — aka Republic Day — which celebrates the Italian reformation vote that led to the country becoming a republic.

Cable and Hindman are representing Tucson as City of Gastronomy chef ambassadors, which is how Cable and Hindman met Marini. Cable and fellow Tucson chef Devon Sanner were repaying Parma’s January 2024 gesture, when the Parma City of Gastronomy sent its chef ambassadors, Marini and Nicole Zerbini, to spend several days exploring Tucson‘s food scene; Hindman was part of the Tucson chefs entourage guiding the Italian chefs’ culinary tour.

Before they got on a plane Friday, Cable and Hindman ordered a pantry of Tucson-centric ingredients from their hosts including chiles and napoles; the Italian embassy wouldn’t let them bring those with them, but they were allowed to ship 40 pounds of mesquite wood to Boston as their dominant flavor contribution to the dinner’s centerpiece, the iconic Rosa di Parma — a beef tenderloin stuffed with prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Cable said the meat will be seared on an open mesquite fire, imparting the quintessential Tucson flavor to the traditional Italian dish.

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Normally, the dish, made from a fileted whole beef tenderloin stuffed with prosciutto and Parmesan — Parma’s world-renowned signature ingredients — is seasoned with fresh rosemary, garlic and sage before being pan-seared. Marini, a fan of American barbecue who ate his way across Tucson’s taquerias during his 2024 visit, sampled all manner of grilled meats and determined that mesquite was a big flavor profile of the Old Pueblo.

The dish is finished with a sweet marsala wine reduction, which Cable and Hindman want to shake up with a bit of what Hindman called “Tucson soul”: an oil-based salsa macha with spicy and mild chiles and fresh corn that will complement the sweet from the marsala wine reduction.

“We don’t know exactly what we’re gonna try to do until we get in there,” Hindman said Saturday as he and Cable drove the 58 miles from Providence, Rhode Island to Boston. “But we’re definitely going to get some mesquite flavor on there, which I think is going to add definitely to the dish.”

Cable and Hindman also will prepare a “charpachio or char tar” — the meat would get a quick turn on the mesquite fire — to include in Chef Marini’s antipasto. Cable said he also is considering incorporating a caper-brined nopales aioli that he’s been working on.

But Monday’s menu will focus on Parma, including the city’s best-known dessert, the Zuppa Inglese, a custard-layered sponge dessert anchored with sponge cake or lady fingers soaked in liqueur of cocoa cream.

This marks the third time chef ambassadors from Tucson City of Gastronomy collaborated with Parma City of Gastronomy chef ambassadors and the fourth Italian-Tucson collaboration in the past 18 months. Hindman was in Bergamo, Italy, last fall to welcome that city to the Pueblos del Maiz festival celebrated annually in San Antonio, Tucson and Merida, Mexico. Tucson’s four-day event this year is Sept. 25-28.

In addition to representing Tucson City of Gastronomy, Cable and Hindman also are founding members of GUT — Gastronomic Union of Tucson — a collective of more than three dozen Tucson chefs and food professionals who host pop-up community dinners and other events that support Tucson chefs and the city’s culinary traditions.