Some chefs reference family recipes from time to time. At Caruso’s Grocery, an Italian-American red sauce joint opening Wednesday, May 12 on Capitol Hill, partner Matt Adler says his menu is almost entirely drawn from Scoozi—a restaurant his father, Larry Adler, ran for a decade in their upstate New York town, and where the younger Adler worked for a year before heading off to the Culinary Institute of America. 

“I really try and look back at my father’s food because that’s an honest interpretation [of Italian-American cooking], not a chef’s interpretation,” says Adler, who spent recent years helming cheffy Italian kitchens at Osteria Morini and Alta Strada.