The Encounter Cafe

How Two Different Loaded Baked Potato Pastas Popped Up on Menus Across LA | Eater LA

"Drawing on Midwestern nostalgia, I see Thomas Kalb’s loaded potato dumplings at Agnes in Pasadena as a level-up of his mother’s baked-potato-bar from Iowa City — the childhood memory of sour cream, shredded cheese, broccoli and green onions — rendered into a refined, approachable pasta dish. He bakes the potatoes in salt to pull moisture out, mills the scooped interiors, then folds in a bit of flour, egg yolks and ricotta to achieve a really fluffy dumpling; the dumplings are dressed with a butter sauce lifted with lemon and pasta water and finished with bacon bits, shoestring potatoes, roasted broccoli and Milton Creamery Prairie Breeze cheddar. The dish evolved from a potato-stuffed ravioli (which felt too refined) into its current gnocchi-style form, and Kalb says each change has made it more recognizable, producible and enduring on the menu." - Cathy Chaplin