The Journal.

I · On Flour · 2026

You're not allergic to gluten.
You're allergic to what we did to it.

By Chef Devin Dedier — Vacanza Romana, El Dorado Hills

Let me say this up front, because it matters.

I'm a chef, not a doctor. If you have celiac disease — a serious autoimmune condition where your body literally attacks itself when it sees gluten — none of what I'm about to say applies to you. Stay away from wheat. Eat the gluten-free pasta. Take care of yourself. We'll cook for you, gladly, and we'll make sure you leave happy.

But I want to talk to the rest of you. The ones who say things like:

"I get bloated every time I eat bread in America. But when I went to Italy, I ate pasta every day for two weeks and I was completely fine."

I hear that sentence at least once a week at Vacanza Romana. Sometimes more.

I hear it because it's true. And once you understand what's actually in most American flour — and what isn't in Italian flour — it stops being a mystery.

What's actually in American flour

Here's a list of things the United States allows in commercial flour that most of Europe banned thirty-plus years ago:

Potassium bromate. Banned in the European Union in 1990. Banned in Canada in 1994. Banned in over 40 countries. Still legal in the United States. The FDA has recommended American bakers stop using it, because it's been shown to cause kidney, thyroid, and gastrointestinal cancers in animal studies. Recommended. Not banned.

Bleaching agents. Chlorine, peroxide, chlorine dioxide, azodicarbonamide. Banned across the EU since the 1990s. Still legal in U.S. flour. They make flour whiter and faster to age artificially, which is good for industrial bakeries and bad for everything else.

Glyphosate. The active ingredient in Roundup. In the U.S., it's commonly sprayed on wheat fields a week or two before harvest as a "desiccant" — the chemical kills the wheat plant so it dries down faster and the farmer can harvest sooner. The chemical residue is then in the wheat. The practice is restricted across most of Europe.

Now look at the other side. European flour regulations are, as one industry source puts it bluntly: "100% grain and nothing else" — no chemical bleaching, no chemical aging, no synthetic additives, no treatments of any kind.

That's not me being a romantic. That's literally the law there.

The other half of the story: ATIs

Now here's the part of the science that's getting more interesting every year.

Researchers have started studying a class of proteins in wheat called ATIs — amylase/trypsin inhibitors. These are natural pesticides the wheat plant produces to defend itself against bugs and fungus. The problem: in the human gut, ATIs activate something called the TLR4 immune complex, which is the same pathway that drives inflammation. When researchers fed ATIs to lab animals, intestinal and respiratory inflammation went up.

ATIs are now considered one of the leading suspects behind non-celiac gluten sensitivity — the condition that affects an estimated 6% of Americans, who get bloated, foggy, fatigued, and miserable when they eat wheat, even though they don't have celiac disease and don't test as wheat-allergic.

Different wheat varieties have different ATI profiles. Different milling traditions handle the wheat differently. Different agricultural systems grow the wheat differently. And then there are the additives — the bromate, the bleach, the glyphosate residue — which exist in the U.S. supply chain and don't exist in Italy's.

It is not a mystery, in other words, why so many people feel completely different eating wheat in Rome than they do eating wheat in Sacramento.

Why we import our flour from Italy

We import our flour from Italy.

Specifically, we use Tipo 00 flour — the finely-milled, soft-textured flour that has been the standard for Italian pasta and pizza for generations. It's grown without pre-harvest glyphosate. It's milled without bleaching agents. It's not aged with chemical additives. It is, by EU law, just wheat. The way wheat has been wheat for nine thousand years.

We pay more for it. A lot more. Cheaper American flour is sitting on a shelf at Restaurant Depot every morning, waiting to be picked up. We don't pick it up. The number one reason isn't taste, though the taste is better. The number one reason is what doesn't go into it.

We roll our pasta in-house, every day. We rest the dough — the way you're supposed to. We don't rush it. We don't bleach it. We don't add anything to it.

"Am I going to be sick?"

Almost every week, somebody walks into our dining room — the kind of guest who has spent the last ten years avoiding wheat — and apologetically asks the question:

"Am I going to be sick if I eat this?"

Here's what I tell them: I'm not a doctor. If you have celiac, please don't risk it. But if you're someone who has been told you have a "gluten sensitivity" and you've been miserable for years — try a small portion of our pasta and see how you feel.

I have lost count of the number of people who have come back the next week, sat at the bar, and told me they had no reaction. None. They ate it, slept fine, woke up fine, and were back in for more.

The science is starting to back up what those guests are reporting.

If you're one of the 6% of Americans who's been told you have a gluten sensitivity, there is at least a chance — and a growing one, as the research deepens — that gluten was never the problem.

The problem was what we did to it.

The pre-harvest glyphosate spray. The chemical bleach. The potassium bromate. The shortcuts. The factory-flour chain that exists to drive prices down and shelf life up. The ultra-processing of one of the most ancient, most nourishing foods on Earth.

The problem isn't a single grain that has fed the Mediterranean for nine millennia.

You're not allergic to gluten.
You're allergic to what we did to it.

The Roman test

There's a little experiment I tell every skeptical guest to run. The next time you fly to Italy — Rome, Florence, Naples, anywhere — eat pasta every day. Eat bread every day. Eat the real stuff. Track how you feel.

Almost nobody comes back and tells me they got bloated.

You don't have to fly to Rome to do that experiment. You can come sit at our dining room in El Dorado Hills. Same flour. Same standards. Same care. Same nine-thousand-year-old grain, grown and milled the way it's supposed to be.

We'll cook you a plate, and we'll let your gut decide.

— Chef Devin Dedier

Important: This article is not medical advice. If you have celiac disease, a wheat allergy, or any chronic gastrointestinal condition, please consult a qualified medical professional before changing your diet.

II · On the Card · 2026

If the label says "parmesan,"
it probably isn't parmesan.

A quick lesson in DOP — by Chef Devin Dedier

Walk into any American grocery store and pick up the green can.

The label says "parmesan."

It is not parmesan.

It's also not Parmigiano. It's not Parmigiano Reggiano. It's not even, technically, cheese in the way the rest of the world defines cheese. It is — depending on the brand — a powdered dairy product mixed with cellulose (yes, wood pulp), preservatives, and anti-caking agents.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad about anything in your pantry. I'm telling you because at Vacanza Romana, we use only real, DOP-protected Parmigiano Reggiano, and I think every diner who eats Italian food deserves to understand the difference. Once you do, you can't unlearn it.

What "DOP" actually means

DOP stands for Denominazione di Origine Protetta — Protected Designation of Origin. It's the Italian version of an EU-wide system (PDO in English) that legally protects specific foods that can only be made in a specific place, in a specific way, by specific people, with specific ingredients.

Real Parmigiano Reggiano has been DOP-protected since 1996. The rules around how it's made are some of the strictest of any food on Earth.

Here's what the DOP requires.

Geography. Every wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano must be made within a tiny corner of Italy: the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, and parts of Mantua and Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region. If it is made anywhere else on planet Earth, it is not Parmigiano Reggiano. Wisconsin "parmesan" is not Parmigiano Reggiano. Argentinian "parmesan" is not Parmigiano Reggiano. There is no such thing as "California Parmigiano Reggiano." It is a name that is, by international law, tied to a specific place.

Cows. The cows must be raised inside that zone and fed exclusively on locally-grown forage. Silage is forbidden. Fermented feed is forbidden. The animals' diet is regulated by law.

Three ingredients. That's it. Real Parmigiano Reggiano contains, by law: raw cow's milk, natural whey starter, and calf rennet. Nothing else. No additives. No colorings. No preservatives. No anti-caking agents. No cellulose. No "natural flavors." No emulsifiers. No vegetable oils.

Copper cauldrons. The cheese is still — by law — made in copper cauldrons. The same way it has been made for nine centuries.

Aging. Each wheel must age, inside the production zone, for a minimum of 12 months. Most commercially available wheels are aged 24 months. Many are aged 36. Some, the truly extraordinary ones, are aged 48 months and beyond.

The hammer test. Every single wheel produced is inspected, by hand, by a Consortium-trained inspector who taps the wheel with a small hammer and listens to the sound. A clear, even ring indicates a properly formed interior. An irregular or dull sound may indicate cracking or other defects. Wheels that fail get rejected. Only wheels that pass get fire-branded with the official Parmigiano Reggiano oval mark and the date stamp.

This is not a marketing claim. This is law.

What "parmesan" means in America

Now compare that to what "parmesan" means in the United States.

In America, the word "parmesan" is generic. It refers to a style of grated hard cheese. Anyone can stamp the word on the label of anything that loosely resembles aged cow's milk cheese. There's no aging requirement. There's no geographic requirement. There's no rule about what's in it.

The Consortium that protects Parmigiano Reggiano has actually published a public statement about this: "Parmesan" has nothing to do with the traceability of the king of cheeses, Parmigiano Reggiano.

When you see "parmesan" on a menu in America, it can mean any of three very different things:

1. Real, imported, DOP-stamped Parmigiano Reggiano — the king.
2. A domestically-produced "parmesan-style" hard cheese with no protected origin and no aging requirement.
3. Powdered industrial cheese product — the green can, the bagged grated stuff in the deli case — full of stabilizers and cellulose.

You almost never know which one you're getting. Unless the menu explicitly says Parmigiano Reggiano in full — ideally with the aging in months listed (24 mesi, 36 mesi) — you're guessing.

Why it matters in the pan

This isn't food snobbery. The difference matters in the cooking. It matters on the plate. It matters in your mouth.

Real Parmigiano Reggiano is, by weight, one of the most concentrated natural sources of glutamates — the savory, umami flavor compound — of any food in the world. Aged 24 months, it has a depth and a complexity that you cannot fake. It crumbles a specific way. It melts a specific way. It carries a sauce a specific way.

When you grate real Parmigiano Reggiano over a hot bowl of cacio e pepe, the cheese melts into the pasta water, emulsifies with the starches the pasta has released, and turns into the silky, glossy, almost-impossibly-creamy sauce the dish is famous for. The whole magic of cacio e pepe — the reason Roman grandmothers have been making it for centuries with three ingredients — is that emulsification.

Try the same dish with green-can powder. You won't get a sauce. You'll get a clumpy, oily, sad mess that breaks the moment you stir it. The emulsion never forms. The pasta sits there in a puddle. The dish dies.

That isn't a difference of opinion.
That's chemistry.

The same is true for carbonara. The same is true for lasagna, where the Reggiano in the besciamella is doing structural and flavor work at the same time. The same is true for a simple Sunday Bolognese, finished tableside with a curl of Reggiano shaved off a wedge that's been aged for two years longer than your kid's been alive.

Real Parmigiano Reggiano isn't a topping. It's an ingredient. It's a structural element. It's the reason Italian cooking can do so much with so little.

What we do at Vacanza Romana

Every wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano on our line is the real thing — DOP-stamped, made in Emilia-Romagna, aged a minimum of 24 months. We can show you the rind. The fire-branded oval is still on it.

When we shave it over a plate of carbonara — when we melt it into cacio e pepe, when we grate it over a Sunday Bolognese, when we fold it into a fresh ricotta filling for our agnolotti — the cheese is doing what it's been doing in Italian kitchens for nine centuries.

You are not eating "parmesan." You are eating one of the most carefully made foods on Earth.

You can taste the difference. We promise you can.

If you live in El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Cameron Park, Granite Bay, or anywhere in the greater Sacramento area, and you have never tasted what real Parmigiano Reggiano can do in a sauce — that's a fixable problem.

We'll save you a seat.

— Chef Devin Dedier

III · On the Region · 2026

What 850 strangers at a long table taught me about hospitality in El Dorado Hills.

By Chef Devin Dedier — Vacanza Romana

The first time you stand on the Sacramento Tower Bridge with a chef's coat on and 850 chairs lined up between the truss towers, the air smells like river water and somebody's wood smoke and the diesel of the catering trucks staged on the Capitol Mall side. The sun's still up when you start prepping. By the time the first course goes out, the bridge is gold.

I had the honor of being one of the four chefs leading the Tower Bridge Dinner — Sacramento's annual Farm-to-Fork finale — alongside Bucky Bray of Nixtaco in Folsom, Jeana Marie of Omakase Por Favor, and N'Gina Guyton of Jim Denny's Diner. For the first time in the dinner's history, the four of us didn't cook our own separate courses. We sat down months in advance, looked at what the farms in our region were going to be ready to harvest, and wrote one menu — together, as a team. Four restaurants. One table. One meal.

If you've never cooked for 850 people on a working bridge in a single night, I'll tell you what it's actually like. It's not romantic. It's logistics. It's rain plans and refrigeration plans and walking 200 yards from a hot line to a guest's plate. It's the dishwasher you brought from your own kitchen because nobody else's hands know how to keep up.

But somewhere around the second course — when you walk down that long table and see the woman in the linen dress who drove down from Auburn, the family of farmers from Yolo County, the couple who'd just moved to Folsom and didn't know anyone yet, all eating the same dish, pouring the same wine, leaning into each other to talk — somewhere around there, you remember why anybody does this in the first place.

Hospitality is a local sport

There's a reason the Tower Bridge Dinner is held where it's held.

Sacramento — and the foothill communities around it: Folsom, El Dorado Hills, Cameron Park, Granite Bay, Roseville, Rescue, Shingle Springs — sits in one of the most agriculturally rich corridors in the country. We are surrounded by farms. We are 90 minutes from oysters. We're 45 minutes from olive groves. We are an hour from one of the best wine regions in California — El Dorado County — and another hour from the next one over.

If you cook in this region and you don't take that seriously, you're not cooking. You're just heating things up.

Hospitality, in a region like ours, is a local sport. The cheese on your cheese course was made at a dairy you can drive to. The farmer who grew your tomatoes might be sitting at table 12. The winemaker poured you a glass himself two weeks ago in his tasting room off Pleasant Valley Road. When you cook here, you cook for your neighbors. And when you cook for your neighbors, it changes the whole way you think about a Tuesday night service.

That's what Farm-to-Fork is supposed to be, when it's done right. It's not a marketing slogan. It's a way of life that's been here longer than any of us.

What the bridge showed me about El Dorado Hills

I cook in El Dorado Hills. We opened Vacanza Romana in spring of 2023 with a single idea: build an authentic Italian restaurant — a real Roman osteria — that feels like home to the people who actually live up here. The whole project has been a love letter to this community.

What the Tower Bridge Dinner reminded me is that El Dorado Hills and Folsom aren't suburbs of Sacramento. They're their own thing. People up here drive into Sacramento for an event — the Kings game, the Crocker, the symphony, the Tower Bridge Dinner itself — sure. But the dinners that matter most happen up the hill. They happen on a Friday after a long week. They happen when somebody's parents are in town. They happen when the school pickup line was hellish and you don't want to cook and you don't want a drive-thru, you just want to walk into a room where somebody knows your name.

The four of us cooking on that bridge came from four different corners of the region — Folsom, midtown Sacramento, El Dorado Hills, an old diner in Del Paso Heights. And the conversation we kept having, in the planning meetings and in the parking lot at 2 a.m. after a tasting, was always the same: we don't get enough chances to cook for each other's people.

That sentence has stayed with me.

What I want for Folsom and El Dorado Hills

I'd like for Folsom and El Dorado Hills to become a real food destination. The way Healdsburg did. The way Yountville did. The way Truckee is becoming. I think we have all the ingredients — literally and figuratively. We have the farms. We have the wineries. We have an audience that's hungry for something that isn't a chain.

But we're not going to get there as one restaurant. We're going to get there as a community of restaurants.

That's the part the Tower Bridge Dinner makes me believe. Four restaurants from four different parts of the region can sit in a room and write a menu together and serve it to 850 people on a bridge over the Sacramento River, and the meal can still feel like one voice. That's not a fluke. That's the future of how this region eats.

I want to see more of it. I want chefs from Folsom and El Dorado Hills cooking together more often. I want winemakers from El Dorado County pouring at restaurants in Granite Bay. I want farmers from Apple Hill pulling up at our back door with a pickup full of stone fruit in August. I want our diners to know the names of those people, not just the names of the dishes.

Hospitality, the way I was taught it,
is not a transaction.
It's a series of relationships
that show up on a plate.

Come see us

If you live in El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Cameron Park, Granite Bay, Rescue, Shingle Springs, Placerville — or you're driving through on a Saturday and you smell garlic — come find us. Vacanza Romana sits on Vine Street in El Dorado Hills. We're open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Aperitivo hour at the bar is the best deal in town and most of you haven't been told about it yet.

Bring your neighbors. Sit for as long as you want. We'll cook for you the way we'd cook for ourselves.

That's the only way I know how to do this job.

— Chef Devin Dedier