Share Caruso's Grocery, an Italian-American restaurant, opens at the Roost (pictured: homemade pasta alfredo with mushrooms). Photography by Stacey Windsor Some chefs reference family recipes from time to time. At Caruso’s Grocery, an Italian-American red sauce joint opening Wednesday, May 12 on Capitol Hill, partner Matt Adler says his menu is almost entirely drawn from Scoozi—a restaurant his father, Larry Adler, ran for a decade in their upstate New York town, and where the younger Adler worked for a year before heading off to the Culinary Institute of America. “I really try and look back at my father’s food because that’s an honest interpretation [of Italian-American cooking], not a chef’s interpretation,” says Adler, who spent recent years helming cheffy Italian kitchens at Osteria Morini and Alta Strada. “What’s the best way to make these dishes without micro-greens or deconstructing anything? I just want every dish to the best possible version—good ingredients, well seasoned, but not messing with it too much.”