For one night, the people who usually have to cross-examine a menu get to just read it. Le Virtù, the Abruzzo-focused restaurant on East Passyunk Avenue, is turning its entire kitchen gluten-free on Thursday, November 5, and the restaurant describes the evening as celiac safe. The Le Virtù gluten-free night covers every course, from antipasti to dessert.
The Le Virtù gluten-free night runs from 5 to 9 p.m. at 1927 E. Passyunk Avenue. There are no tickets. Dishes are à la carte and pay as you go, and reservations are open on Resy. After Wednesday’s close, the kitchen, bar and prep areas get a deep clean and scrub down, which is what lets the restaurant turn its favorite dishes into gluten-free versions for a single evening.
What Is on the Le Virtù Gluten-Free Night Menu
The pastas lead. Buckwheat tortiglioni comes with octopus ragu, tomato, basil, peperoncini, cuttlefish ink and black chickpeas. Spaghetti arrives with a tomato-braised goat ragu, rosemary and pecorino. A green pea fusilli carries porcini sugo and seared local mushrooms, and the rigatoni alla Vittoria gets roasted butternut squash, Abruzzese saffron and double-smoked bacon. Le Virtù says these are the only gluten-free versions of those dishes in Philadelphia.
Around the pasta, the menu keeps its Abruzzo accent. House-cured salumi and giardiniera open the antipasti, alongside a Sicilian eggplant caponata, grilled provolone with Tropea onion agrodolce and pampanella Molisana, roasted pork belly skewers with cruschi peppers.
Mains include peposo, a red wine-braised beef shoulder over Yukon Gold potato puree, pollo al mattone, seared red snapper with saffron butter sauce, and a grilled pumpkin alla parmigiana. Toasted gnocchi comes with a raw tomato sauce and buffalo mozzarella.
Dessert at the Le Virtù gluten-free night is where the kitchen can show off. Lu Parrozz’ is a flourless almond cake with orange, saffron and dark chocolate ganache. There is a ricotta cheesecake with oranges and citrus syrup, a chocolate olive oil cake with red wine poached pears, and gelati in coffee, Nutella, pistachio and vanilla.
Why Chef Andrew Wood Created the Le Virtù Gluten-Free Night
Executive Chef Andrew Wood says the idea came from friends. Former servers, sous chefs, vendors and partners now eat gluten-free or live with celiac disease, and what he hears most is a list of things they cannot do. Wood wants to turn the “you can’t” into “now you can.” The restaurant already has plenty of gluten-free dishes on the regular menu, and guests keep asking for more.
Wood, who is leading the Le Virtù gluten-free night, came to Le Virtù after seven years running Russet in Center City with his wife, pastry chef Kristin Wood. His résumé also includes Le Bec Fin, Fork, Radius in Boston, Tru in Chicago, Terra in Napa Valley and Quince in San Francisco.
This is the first Le Virtù gluten-free night, and Wood says the plan was to go big. He wants dishes that guests will not find on another gluten-free menu within hours of Philadelphia, all cooked in the restaurant’s own Abruzzo tradition.
Eating out with celiac disease can mean fewer choices and a lot of questions about how a kitchen works. A one-night overhaul answers those questions before anyone has to ask. Guests with medical dietary needs should still confirm details with the restaurant when they reserve.
Planning Your Le Virtù Gluten-Free Night on East Passyunk
Seating is inside, across the restaurant’s several dining rooms and the bar. If the weather cooperates this late in the season, Le Virtù is also looking at opening its patio and garden on the Avenue.
Philadelphia restaurants have been trying the one-night menu this year. Little Walter’s turned its Polish kitchen fully plant-based for its first Vegan Night in August, and the same restaurant keeps a recurring gluten-free night on the calendar. Le Virtù brings the idea to an Abruzzese dining room that has been open since 2007.
Francis Cratil-Cretarola and Catherine Lee have owned the restaurant for that whole stretch, building it as a tribute to Abruzzo, where Cratil-Cretarola’s paternal family comes from, in Castiglione Messer Raimondo in the province of Teramo. The couple spend part of each year at their home in Penne, in Pescara.
The name Le Virtù, “the virtues,” comes from a minestrone made every May 1 in Abruzzo’s Teramo province. It holds whatever is left in the larder as spring arrives and is shared among friends and neighbors. The restaurant makes it once a year, on May 1, as tradition says, which makes the Le Virtù gluten-free night a different kind of one-off.
The cooking draws on the region’s cucina povera, the food of farmers and shepherds. For the Le Virtù gluten-free night, that tradition gets rewritten without gluten, and the East Passyunk neighbors who dine along the Avenue get one more reason to stop in.
Most nights, a menu is a list of questions. On November 5, at Le Virtù, it is just dinner.
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