Rao’s at the Russacks

Red sauce and ruined dreams

What’s red, has one room, four letters, and only ten tables? Ask a New Yorker, and they may answer you: Rao’s, the old Italian restaurant in East Harlem, famous for its intimate dining room, red facade, and, above all, impossibly unattainable reservations.

But we are in St Andrews, not New York...right?

These days, it can be hard to tell. At every corner, one hears the bellow of an American accent; rents are soaring to £1,200 for a single room in a dingy share-house; fashion shows are abundant, as are the fashionable people who keep them alive. And now, we even host a New York institution.

For a limited time, Rao’s has opened a pop-up at the Rusacks. The crowds went wild. My expectations went with them.

We began with the ‘famous’ meatballs. Two steaming, fist-sized spheres (I’m being generous) arrived at our table, smothered in luminous red sauce. For a moment, I thought: this looks tremendously appetising. Then I remembered they cost £22 and were about to be shared among six girls.

A writer for The Courier, who had these same meatballs, declared: “These are insane.” I think that is insane. I would have gone with “these are unremarkable”. Moist and tender, yet almost entirely flavourless mounds of meat in a pretty but equally flavourless red sauce. Rao’s is also known for selling jars of its marinara in supermarkets. I suspect that is what they dumped on these.

The pasta followed a similar trajectory. The penne alla vodka arrived in a disappointing sauce, lacking both the richness one expects from the cream and the tartness one hopes for from the tomatoes. Perhaps its provenance is also a jar.

The veal ragu casarecce was the sole redeeming moment: the pasta was cooked to perfection, and the veal was fragrant.

We had made our reservation months in advance, curious to discover what lay behind the mystical curtain of New York’s most exclusive restaurant. We had not, however, prepared ourselves to spend a small fortune for the privilege.

We were eventually persuaded into dessert, which, in retrospect, was a positive. The affogato, served in a martini glass, did slightly elevate my mood. Then again, how difficult is it to scoop vanilla ice cream and douse it in espresso?

At these prices, one hopes to be paying for an experience, where every detail has been thought through. It did not quite feel that way while eating off the same cutlery and dinnerware as the One Under, the restaurant Rao’s has temporarily replaced.

They at least attempted to manufacture the atmosphere of its New York counterpart, in what felt like a movie set. The usual One Under golf photographs were replaced with pictures of Frank Sinatra and the families who frequented the original Rao’s in East Harlem. It is, after all, a family business, famous for its unusual “table ownership” tradition: families and celebrity regulars have effectively claimed particular tables on particular nights for decades, with coveted spots sometimes passed down through generations. There is even a legend that the mob was willing to shoot one of these patrons to secure a table.

None of this mystique or urban legend quite survived the Atlantic crossing. It is difficult to transplant something whose entire charm depends on being impossible to enter.

And so, our little Scottish seaside town has plunged further into absurdity. Following in the footsteps of T-Squared, Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods’s golfing venture, comes the latest American import: a restaurant whose entire business model is essentially you can’t sit with us.

They know their clientele. Apparently, it’s here.

In 1977, Rao’s famously received a gushing three-star review from The New York Times’s food critic Mimi Sheraton, transforming the restaurant forever. I’m afraid the Rao’s pop-up at the Rusacks will get anything but.

For now, it is just another expensive American gimmick washed up on the shores of St Andrews.

Image from Anna-Marie Regner