Tana will offer fresh pasta finished tableside in a giant Parmesan cheese wheel. You just can’t get it yet.
“We had a special walnut cart made for the dish, but I’m not going to serve it until I have a designated staff member to handle it,” says chef Michael Gulotta. “I can’t be the one doing that. The first Instagram or TikTok video that posts, it’ll be requested all the time. I want us to be ready.”
The Italian restaurant has been brewing in Gulotta’s mind for decades, a melding of three of his greatest influences — Ligurian, Sicilian and New Orleans cuisine.
Tana is a startlingly original addition to the dining scene. The Metairie restaurant is a stunner, worthy of special occasions as well as regular date night dinners.
Gulotta left his position as sous chef at Restaurant August to open MoPho in 2014 with business partner and Brother Martin High School friend Jeff Bybee. The plan was to open the casual MoPho, a winning combo of Southeast Asian and Louisiana flavors, to fund a high-end Italian restaurant.
“MoPho was a fluke,” Gulotta says. “It just took on a life of its own.”
They opened the more refined Maypop, which melded Italian and Southeast Asian cuisines, in the CBD in 2016.
“People don’t always get Maypop, even still,” Gulotta says. “Maypop is what happens when you combine ingredients like coconut milk and lemon grass with fresh Louisiana seafood. People that get it really love it.”
Several years in the making, Tana is the swank Italian restaurant Gulotta had envisioned. The 5,000-square-foot restaurant is a showstopper, with a gorgeous bar and lounge area and multiple dining rooms accented with velvet booths and burnished custom walnut tables. There also is seating on the outdoor patio.
Gulotta and Bybee are joined by three other partners in the venture. Between Christmas and Mardi Gras on its heels, they've had a busy start. It’s eased up a little, but they are still serving 160-180 diners a night.
“We are only two months in,” Gulotta says. “The hardest thing when you are shooting for something very high end is to deliver that from the jump. There are so many touches that matter.”
Gulotta’s love for Ligurian cuisine dates back more than 20 years, when he staged for a year at a seafood and pasta restaurant on the Mediterranean, a 30-minute walk from the French Riviera.
The calamari on Tana’s menu is one example, a dish surprisingly light thanks to thin shavings of calamari and zucchini, coated with egg white, flour and rice flour and flash fried. The crackling puffed up bits of vegetable and squid are treated to a citrus vinaigrette, instead of the typical marinara.
House-made pasta is a menu hallmark. Dayle "Pasta Mama" Thornton has been making pasta with Gulotta for seven years at Maypop, and her impressive skills drive the fresh pasta dishes.
Trenette, a flat, long pasta favored in Liguria, is featured in the pasta vongole. The clam dish is given a New Orleans twist with bits of cured hot sausage patty in the sauce. There are four-cheese ravioli, especially popular topped with crabmeat thanks to an influencer’s TikTok video of the same.
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Gulotta’s Sicilian roots come into play for the radiatori in red gravy with burrata, as well as with the pork chop Parmesan. For the bone-in chop, the meat is butterflied and dusted with a spice blend that includes coriander and cumin, dredged in whipped egg whites and seasoned breadcrumbs, and flash fried. It is then layered with pork gravy, pickled peppers and melted caciocavello, a pungent southern Italian cheese reminiscent of provolone.
There are riffs on New Orleans dishes, like the oysters Bordelaise spiced with fennel, chili flakes and cumin, a nod to Sicily’s proximity to North Africa. Gulotta’s penchant for Asian flavors are just below the surface, such as using fish sauce to add umami to the seafood pastas whenever possible.
The menu also has a selection of steaks and chops.
Gulotta has received some blowback for opening his dream restaurant in Old Metairie, but he says it doesn’t bother him.
“I’m from Orleans Parish, and there are certain things about New Orleans that will always be true,” he says. “New Orleanians will always rage against Metairie, like Jesuits against Brother Martin. I get it. It’s fine. I have two restaurants in New Orleans, always happy when folks go there.”
