The Place for Oodles of Noodles

HARBOR EAST | 1012 Fleet St.

With his Phillies baseball cap, Under Armour jacket, and white chef’s coat rolled under his arm, Julian Marucci looks more like a kid waiting at the bus stop on Fleet Street than one of Baltimore’s most gifted chefs standing outside his restaurant. It’s 10:30 on a Thursday morning in early fall, and Marucci is about to begin his 12-plus-hour shift at Tagliata in Harbor East. Although most diners don’t think about what happens in a restaurant prior to opening, Marucci says that morning is the most important part of the day. “If we make mistakes or are not paying attention to details, like we didn’t get a calamari delivery, or the pasta maker called out sick, it can put a huge damper on the day,” he says.

Tagliata chef Julian Marucci plating a dish.

With its dining room full of mover-and-shaker patrons, the stakes at this Italian steakhouse run high. At 37, Marucci is both executive chef and partner, spending much of his days overseeing his staff of 40 and running among the kitchens at “Tag,” Italian Disco, and The Elk Room—all owned by Atlas Restaurant Group.

On this day, he’s playing with vinegars, trying to create his own concord grape-saba vinegar mix that will, if all goes well, offer the sweetness of the fruit without the acid. He’s also composing a new fall menu, jotting down words in his notebook: “Chestnuts, turnips, pumpkin, pear, rabbit, butternut squash.”

Thanks to Marucci’s artistry, Tagliata is known for its toothsome pasta dishes —and watching him make pasta is like watching a sorcerer at work. With nothing more than semolina flour and water, the chef performs parlor tricks as he makes, massages, rolls, and cuts the dough by hand. On this day, with the sweep of his fingers, he turns out a long, thin twisted piece of trofie from Italy’s Liguria region. “Making pasta is creative and intuitive,” he says. “I can add mushrooms or spinach or chestnuts to the flour.”

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Marucci debated between being a cook or a car mechanic. “I can still remember my mom saying, ‘You should be a chef, you don’t like getting your hands dirty,’” he recalls with a laugh.

pear crostata with poached pear sorbetto.

After various kitchen jobs, he started as a garde manger and sous chef at Charleston, also in Harbor East, and then spent nine years as executive chef at Cinghiale before joining the team at “Tag.” When Marucci came on board, he says, “I had to rethink my style of cooking. I knew that if we were doing the classics like chicken Parm, it had to be the best chicken Parm.” So he decided to use air-chilled chicken, marinated in buttermilk, herbs, and sweet Calabrian chili, with breadcrumbs, tomato sauce, and mozzarella, all house-made.

As the day wears on, after various staffers have cleaned and cut artichokes for the fried chicken and the merits of paw-paw gelato have been discussed, Marucci stands at the pass waiting for guests to arrive. Tonight, some 200 diners will descend on the Tuscan-inspired space.

Hours later, caffeinated by gulps of iced tea, Marucci moves into overdrive. Tickets are expedited and then spiked on the spindle as the chef assembles a dish of squid ink campanelle with sea urchin cream sauce, snips microgreens for a swordfish dish, and finishes a tenderloin with a splash of olive oil. The lights in the dining room dim, the golden hour of dinner service is in full swing, and all the hard prep of the day has, at last, come together. Marucci pauses to reflect. When asked what inspires him to repeat the whole process by morning, the chef smiles broadly and says, “I’ve got this beautiful playground. What more could I want?”—Jane Marion