Scarpetta

Cheese wheel at the pass

Pasta finishes at the table in a wheel of aged cheese, and Scarpetta in Shanghai keeps the Italian grammar close to appetite. Executive Chef Lorenzo Merolle, a Rome native from a restaurateur family, came to the house first as a consultant before taking the group Italian executive chef post, bringing fifteen years across Rome, London, Sydney and Shanghai with him.

The restaurant itself was built by an outsider to the trade. John Liu, a Chinese-American former financier, arrived in Shanghai in 2003 and opened it in 2011 as a cosy trattoria, drawn to Italian cooking for the parallels he saw with Chinese technique; his wife Yan Xiaoyan co-founded it with him, with the aim of setting Italian hospitality inside Shanghai's own dining culture. The clientele has since shifted to mostly local diners, which changed what the room has to prove. In it, handmade pasta, pizza dough, burrata, truffle, aged cheese and tableside service carry the house identity.

Forty eight hours in the dough

The program works in the familiar materials of Italian comfort, then asks for more control at the bench. Pizza dough rests for 48 hours before the kitchen sends it to the oven, giving the crust enough chew to hold the richer toppings without losing its edge. The Burratona Pizza turns on a 150g burrata made for the restaurant, a large, milky centre set against tomato acidity and basil.

Pastas lean into weight and gloss: Tomato & Gragnano Fusilloni, Alfredo Fettucine, Bone Marrow & Ragu Tagliatelle, and lobster Sardinian gnocchetti all sit inside the same appetite for sauce, starch and finish. The cheese-wheel service is not incidental theatre when the pasta is right; it is a final seasoning station, heat and fat working together at the table. The kitchen also reaches for 36-month Parmigiano Reggiano, Australian M9 beef for carpaccio, fried calamari with squid ink aioli, and garlic focaccia for the act that gives the restaurant its name, bread drawn through the last sauce on the plate.

A restored house with a quieter pace

The room spans two storeys in a restored old building, warm in tone after the 2018 refurbishment and more contemporary after the 2024 reopening, which brought a Japanese-influenced design and a few Japanese ideas into the Italian menu. It is not a hushed dining room, but the noise stays conversational enough for the pass to remain present: plates crossing the floor, a burrata presentation at one table, pasta loosened in cheese at another.

The setting carries a refined rusticity, with romance held in the lighting and the service rather than in decoration alone. Scarpetta has changed with the city around it, from an early international dining address into a local room for refined pasta, pizza, wine and cocktails.

Still measured by sauce

The house carries a curated wine program, and the plate that asks for bread at the end is still what it is judged on. If the restaurant has a future rhythm, it sits in the same gestures: dough proofed the long way, burrata cut open at the table, and Tomato & Gragnano Fusilloni finished with enough sauce to leave a trace.