100 Favorite Dishes, No. 33: Italian Sausage Tortellini at Carbone's

Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2016 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year. In an era of over-the-top food, Carbone's menu is refreshingly simple. Linguine with shrimp scampi. Spaghetti and meatballs...

By Beth Rankin

August 11, 2016

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Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2016 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

In an era of over-the-top food, Carbone's menu is refreshingly simple. Linguine with shrimp scampi. Spaghetti and meatballs. Eggplant parm. When keeping things simple, it becomes even more important to make those dishes well. On a recent visit, not everything dish proved worthy of the $17 to $19 price tags, but one certainly did: the tortellini of Italian sausage alla vodka.

There's something magical about a well done vodka sauce, which combines the best parts of red sauce with heavy cream and straight-up vodka. Carbone's tortellini filled with Italian sausage proved perfectly rich and herbaceous when combined with fresh herbs in the sauce, and the freshness of the tortellini took this dish from easily forgotten to downright memorable.

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Beth Rankin is an Ohio native and Cicerone-certified beer server who specializes in social media, food and drink, travel and news reporting. Her belief system revolves around the significance of Topo Chico, the refusal to eat crawfish out of season and the importance of local and regional foodways.

Contact: Beth Rankin

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