So, I live in Forest, Virginia. It's a nice little town, next door to Lynchburg...another nice little town where I went to college.
Four years ago, I took an outlandish buyout offer and sold the family business; Mezilli Trash Hauling and Cartage to Waste International. (The guys who claim they know how to manage landfill's without ruining the drinking water.) I won't say how much money, but it was a gaudy amount and I'll never have to work again. Neither will anyone in my bloodline. Ever.
After about a year, my wife Angie and I decided that, as much as we love our hometown of Philadelphia, we just wanted the kids to grow up away from the city. So we moved here. We're five hours from home, and I can still watch the Iggles and Phillies on my satellite dish because the installer gave me the Philadelphia sim card instead of the Lynchburg Va. card. ...and don't get me started on the Flyers.
Anyway, life is very good. I'm 45, I have a dump truck load of money, a gorgeous wife and four great kids. I have a 6000 SF house, some nice toys, a 200 acre hunting camp 30 minutes away, and great neighbors. In fact...the only thing I don't have is really great local Italian food.
Now, make no mistake...Anj and I can both cook as good as anyone with a vowel at the end of their last name. We both learned from Nonna, and since both our grandparents were immigrants, we got the recipes straight from the old country. But who doesn't like to go out to eat now and then, right?
So we'd been here about six months when I asked my neighbors where they like to go for really good Italian food. You know what I get? Olive Garden! Yeah...Olive Garden! And they kept insisting it was really good! There is one local Italian place and it's owned by a Mexican. I finally had to have about four families over one Saturday evening and show them what real authentic Italian food tastes like. I had to drive back to Philly just to get half the ingredients, but it was worth it. I make eggplant so good you'd cry. We had Osso, Eggplant Parm, Linguine with white clam sauce, and mussels on the half-shell. Anj and I made canolli and sfinge for dessert. I swear I had to wave a gun around to get a couple of the neighbors to leave when it was all done. But I proved my point. Franchise Italian food isn't really Italian.
Look I have this theory about Italian food...it goes like this:
1: Real Italian food is, of course, made in Italy. Your Nonna learned to cook it over there from her mother, or, if Nonna was born here, she learned it from her mother who was born there. Either way, it has it's genesis in Italy.
Nonna made it the way she learned in Italy so it's as authentic as it gets. For all your life -or until Nonna dies- you eat it exactly the way she made it. If you even ask for salt, she'll start crying and shoot you the horns-of -death, so you know better than mess with her recipe. To be honest, it's darn near perfect as is so you don't tinker with it. Until she is gone or your move out on your own.
2: That brings us to stage two of my little flow chart. "Italian food cooked by Nonna's family"
That's what Angie and I both make. That's what everybody in South Philly makes, or any other Italian neighborhood in the US. We learned from Nonna, who learned from someone in Italy. When we move out on our own and Nonna can't see it, we add a pinch of this or that and we switch around something or other but we essentially stay true to the recipe because the recipe is what makes us Italian. Remember "A Walk in the Clouds?" at the end where there is just that one little grapevine root left after the fire? Yeah...that's Nonna's recipes. I might squeeze the grapes a little differently, but it's still the family grapevine.
3: That brings us to the next stage...the "Oh this is great...you should open a restaurant" stage. This happens in Philly a lot. Somebody gets one too many compliments on their cooking, decides everyone would like to eat their Nonna's tomatoes and tripe and decides to open a restaurant. Usually it succeeds because the quality is great. The quality is great because typically the owner didn't really know anything about the restaurant business, bought all his ingredients at the ACME (or the Kroger down here in Virginia) and lost money every month until he closed shop and went to work at the Navy yard welding old aircraft carriers. It's not cheap running a restaurant unless you buy cheap, and by the time these guys discover wholesale supplies, it's too late. A few of them make it, but that's because they had backing.
What does happen though is...
4: Some business school geek decides that all great Italian food needs is a business model so he graduates from business school, raises funds, and starts an Italian restaurant with a phony Italian name, and interior that looks like a cave, and Perry Como playing on the loudspeakers. He does well financially because everybody loves Italian food, he opens where there isn't a large population of Italian Americans, and he has business knowledge. He makes money, sells franchises, and pretty soon people are lined up outside after church on Sunday, waiting for pre-packaged Alfredo sauce that tastes like grilled cheese, and overcooked macaroni. Oh...and it's macaroni, not pasta. And it's gravy not sauce!
5: Eventually, people really want Italian food but they don't want to drive that long, arduous 13 minutes to "Pasta World" so they open a can of Spaghettio's and tell the kids they're eating Italian. These little cherubs grow up, go off to college, where they take Ramen noodles, add ketchup and some Parmesan in those little packets that they took from Dominos Pizza and call it spaghetti.
Like anything else, it progresses downward from there. If I don't step in, they will raise kids who think Chef Boyardee is a guy on Food Network and they'll go into a restaurant asking for Beefaroni.
That's why I cooked for my neighbors...Maddonn! I'm savin' the world here!
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