I recognized “sgombro” in the title of one of the pizzas at Pizzeria Du De Cope the other evening in Verona.  Mackerel.  In a just-post-pandemic dining landscape where reservations are a near-must in most somewhat popular restaurants in Italy, we were happy and felt lucky to be able to get seated very soon after the doors had opened.  And this pizzeria is from Verona’s star chef and restaurateur Giancarlo Perbellini, who has nearly ten restaurants in Verona and elsewhere and a couple of Michelin stars at his flagship, Casa Perbellini, so maybe it wasn’t that odd to see a chef-y license with the pizza toppings.
 
One of our large group, maybe on my suggestion, ordered an unusual pizza: “Sgombro, cipolla e burrata” as it is listed on the menu.  Along with the mackerel in substantial pieces, it had buffalo mozzarella, burrata, mascarpone, halves of small perfectly ripe tomatoes, pickled red onions, pieces of basil and gratings of reserve Grana Padano cheese arrayed in nearly perfect circle of dough bounded by a high crown.  There was not just fish on the pizza but in the traditionally thought-to-be-unholy in Italy combination of fish and cheese; fish and grated cheese, too.
 
I swapped a quarter of my pie for the sgrombo and company one.  It was different, but not too different.  The firm pieces of the mackerel were mild, so the pizza was not assertively and offputtingly fishy tasting like the cheap anchovy pizzas of my distant youth.  That it was from an establishment of a top chef and in a city known for its seafood in restaurants, helped ensure that the fish was of good quality.  The bit of acidity from the pickled onions and fresh tomatoes provided a nice complement to the fish – though I might have liked a lemon wedge on the side for some more of that – and the trio of different cheeses rounded out the flavors going with the fairly sturdy crust.
 
That wasn’t the only fish on pizza during the recent two weeks in northeastern Italy.  Just across the autostrada from Soave where we spent a terrific day tasting wine is San Bonifacio, home of I Tigli, the fourth best pizzeria in all of Italy according to the reputable and useful 50 Top Pizza, which, unfortunately, did not fit into the schedule that evening or another.  It has long served a Polenta and Baccalà pizza, a version of the popular regional appetizer, whipped salted cod over polenta.  Among the fifty or so pizzas at the excellent Al Cantonet in Conegliano that I stumbled into one night were four seafood-topped ones.  A couple with swordfish carpaccio and a couple others with shrimp including that surprisingly named Tony Esposito also with pesto, tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.  I’m pretty sure that he didn’t have anything like that when he was expertly tending goal for the Hawks in the Chicago Stadium, or on the road for that matter.
 
I was surprised to encounter fish on pizzas during this trip, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.  Fish on pizza, at least in a tamer and more famous form, has been around for forty years, ever since Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon along with crème fraiche and caviar on a pizza for the actress Joan Collins on the road to stardom.

Chianti is the most recognizable name and image in Italian wine – the Chianti flask – and a fixture at Italian restaurants since there were Italian restaurants in this country.  Though the name “Chianti” is certainly well known, the region and its range of wines not so much.  There is actually a lot to Chianti.  These are both the recognizable, easily consumable and also the hearty and serious red wines from the beautiful, tourist-trafficked heart of Tuscany. 
 
What these have in common is a distinctive, familiar Italian red wine taste: slight bitterness, with a definite tartness along with an earthiness or dustiness, plus cherry, plum or strawberry notes, all of which help make them eminently food-friendly.  These are the prototypically Italian wines for many, and range fairly widely in terms of richness, tannins and complexity, and price, of course.
 
The famous emblem of the Gallo Nero, the black rooster, of Chianti Classico denotes the birthplace and historic heart of Chianti and is home to the most of the most renowned and expensive bottlings, some of which don’t carry the Chianti name at all – those Super Tuscans that grew out from the slow-moving bureaucracy of the wine region a few decades ago.  In addition to Chianti Classico, there are seven, soon to be eight, other subregions plus the overarching Chianti DOC.  So, ten appellations for Chianti, in all.  The Chianti name is spread over larger area of Tuscany than ever before, with well over 3,000 producers.  It’s also better than ever, and maybe more confusing. Then, Chianti Classico has eight subzones.
 
I have certainly drunk a lot of Chianti over the years, purchase it on a regular basis, and have even visited the area a few times, but my knowledge about it was comparatively limited.  A seminar in January hosted by the Chianti consortium helped to grow my understanding.   
 
In 1996, the Chianti Classico zone became independent from the Chianti DOC and the terms for one are a little than for the other.  The larger Chianti area – from Chianti DOC – regulates that wine under the Chianti banner must be between 70% and 100% Sangiovese, including up to 10% that can be white.  Chianti was once known a white wine region, after all.  There are three main categories, which are predicated on aging: annata, the wines that are ready on March 1 after the harvest; Superiore, with at least a year of aging; and Riserva that has two years aging in the cellar.   
 
The fresh young Chiantis, the annata bottlings, are among my favorite wines to consume when I am in central Italy.  These more inexpensive wines are not as imported as readily and are meant to be consumed quickly.  I do enjoy each of the styles when well made, as the good bottlings are “always in balance,” something that the brand ambassador at the seminar and tasting stressed.  The eight wines in the tasting certainly were.  Delicious, too, for the most part.  At events like this, I put a check mark for the wines I am impressed with and truly enjoy.  I checked six of the eight.  My favorites were an annata from Colli Senesi, which is my favorite subzone, where the wines are about the richest in all of Chianti, being the furthest south and often made from Brunello producers who might also have very similar tasting Rosso di Montalcinos.  Three of my other favorites were also 100% Sangiovese like that one, but Riservas from 2018.  Even bigger, more deeply flavored, more complex.  All the wines were indeed very balanced, with very nice fruit – often missing in lackluster bottles – noticeable acidity and a proper amount of tannins depending on the style.  And the wines were without the hint of mustiness that I often associated with Chianti.
 
I’d recommend learning more about Chianti.  That means purchasing and drinking more Chianti.  It will make your meal taste better, and for more than with pizza and tomato sauces.  Nicely, these can still be price performers, making the exploration easier.

Somewhat for an upcoming trip to Italy, the first overseas since the advent of the pandemic, I was recently reviewing notes from one I took to the region of the Marche with the Gruppo Ristoranti Italiani (GRI), an organization that the celebrated restaurateur Tony May helped found back in 1979.  May’s recent passing help remind me what an influence he had on moving Italian cuisine and restaurants in this country to become more Italian, grander, and generally much better.
 
May was exceedingly knowledgeable about the fare throughout Italy, and he was happy to share his insights with me on a few occasions.  Born Antonio Magliulo south of Naples, May had traveled extensively throughout the county and was familiar with the leading restaurateurs, chefs and food producers.  His pan-Italian Palio in Manhattan’s then-new Equitable Building that opened in 1986 took its name from the annual horse races in Siena, which featured a noteworthy, dramatic mural from the Tuscan artist Sandro Chia, and had a kitchen headed by a top chef from the far northern Alto Adige.  After departing Palio, he opened San Domenico – long regarded as the best Italian restaurant in New York – a transplant of sorts from the famed restaurant in Emilia-Romagna that has carried the tradition of the cooking for Italian aristocratic households, along with great attention to its locale not far from that rich gastronomic capital of Bologna. 
 
As I learned more about Italian food, the food of Italy, it seemed that it was really local or regional cuisines, all largely tied to a particular area.  That was reinforced in many books and articles over the years including a couple at home.  My copy of the long-useful The Italian Food Guide from the Touring Club of Italy a couple decades ago wrote in its introduction to the country that “It is a short step from local produce to local dishes.  To tell the truth, local cooking has always fascinated even the most refined intellectuals” (even if I might not be one of those).  In a similar vein, the phone book-sized resource resting by my stovetop, La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy from the impressive-sounding Accademia Italiana della Cucina, describes that the “most striking aspect of the book remains the enormous quantity of recipes and their close relationship to the places where they are eaten.”
 
So, it was interesting for me to learn that May had a different – and even controversial – idea about Italian cooking.  “There is no regional cuisine.  Italy has always had two cuisines, that of the aristocracy and that of the people” was what he said to me in the seaside town of Pesaro on a GRI trip there in 2011.  “The cuisine of the aristocracy was always much lighter than that of the regular people,” while the poorer “Italians were just limited by their local products.”  And “today you can find Milanese in Palermo, Romans in Naples, and people from the South in the North.”  The local diets have become much more diverse.  And much richer, more protein, more meat.  And there are more and nicer restaurants with dishes moving about.  First, spaghetti and clams and more recently cacio e pepe can be found throughout a large part of the country plus a number of others.  At the least, May was on to something, and before most others.

Tajarin with white truffles at the San Marco in Canelli near Asti a few years ago

I somewhat recently included Lobster Fra Diavolo on a list of the best Italian-American dishes of all time.  Most popular in the northeast, especially the New York area and Boston – near where lobsters are caught – the dish takes the southern Italian tradition of shellfish with factory-made pasta to feature sumptuous lobsters.  It’s been found on Italian-themed restaurant menus since the 1930s, at least in New York where it is probably the most popular.  Featuring tomato sauce seasoned with plenty of chopped garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes, it’s another exuberant of Italian-American cooking.  “Fra diavolo” means “brother devil” in Italian and might suggest the heat of the red pepper flakes and also the red of the tomato sauce and cooked lobster.  The name might also reference the nickname of a legendary and vicious bandit in southern Italy who was the subject of a nineteenth century opera.
 
Lobster Fra Diavolo can be a rich and fun dish.  It might also have had a practical, or devious, reason for its creation.  On a gastronomic trip to Italy nearly a decade ago sponsored by the Gruppo Ristoranti Italiani, a restaurateur from Massachusetts mentioned to me that he believed Lobster Fra Diavolo likely was created many years earlier because restaurants had to cover the taste of seafood going bad.  If so, that gives an additional layer – maybe more substance, too – to the name of the dish, a slightly devilish one at that. 

A version of Lobster Fra Diavolo from Tagliata restaurant in Baltimore

That might seem to be an odd question, especially so if you are not as into that kind of food as am I.  If you ask an American what is Italian food, there is a good chance that you’ll get an answer that names dishes featuring a long-simmered tomato sauce like spaghetti and meatballs and chicken Parmesan along with garlic bread.  If you ask an Italian, someone from Italy, the response won’t include any preparations remotely like those, which they certainly don’t regard as being Italian.  They consider those American creations, rightly so.  Their answer might include some of the dishes from their town or region, and those items will likely depend on where the person comes from in Italy.  But, food served under the banner of Italian food here, at restaurants on supermarket shelves, will be seen as Italian food no matter the veracity.
 
I believe that Italian-themed restaurants in this country can be placed as under one of broadly three banners: Italian-American, Americanized Italian, and Italian.
 
Italian-American easily claims the largest number of restaurants and also dishes in the popular mind.  These restaurants serves items that come largely from the Italian-American tradition like those spaghetti and meatballs.  The preparations in the Italian-American tradition are rooted in the big wave of Italian immigration from the 1880s until 1924.  The vast majority of these people came from the Italian south where the tomato has a prominent place, and about half the dishes in the Italian-American canon originate in the Naples area like long-simmered tomato sauce, pasta and clams, and lasagna made with tomato-sauce and ricotta.  These dishes might have had roots in Italy, but were adapted and grew with American tastes, abundance, industrialization and pace of life.  The people who were eating these dishes were Americans, as the immigrants’ offspring and descendants were plus the generations of restaurant patrons.  The preparations at these restaurants, regardless of the provenance of the recipes, are generally much heartier, and meatier and cheesier than in Italy and frequently sporting some red color.  And, if a restaurant's menu touts its sauce, it's Italian-American.
 
But restaurants need to serve what people want, and the menus are not static.  These might often have pasta carbonara, fettuccine Alfredo and penne alla vodka, dishes born in Italy after the big emigration to America, but have become very American in interpretation here.  Steaks, too.  Americans love steak.
 
Similar to the Italian-American restaurant is the newest type, the Americanized Italian.  These do not hew to the Italian-American traditions for the most part, and use more contemporary ideas and products from Italy, but the food is generally different than it is in Italy.  These are often from a skilled chef who puts their spin on Italian dishes, or their notion of Italian dishes, and might use the Italian cooking philosophy as an inspiration.  The quality of ingredients is usually high, and sometimes expensive.  Italian descriptions are often used to portray a greater sense of authenticity or understanding, at least, even if the Italian is often mangled.
 
Restaurants that might be called Italian try to mimic how food is prepared in Italy, or in very capable and knowing hands, express the ethos of Italy and with Italian products when necessary.  The chef is almost always from Italy or has cooked there.  They know Italy.  Italian can be in one its regional or local variations, and from rustic to high cuisine to creative.  In the U.S., traditional and mostly authentic Italian usually features several dishes that are popular outside of Italy or popular in across a lot of Italy, especially the touristed cities and towns (e.g. cacio e pepe).  Truly Italian food can be tough to do, and its appearance in America is actually somewhat recent.  Tony May of the landmark San Domenico in New York was quoted in 2008 saying that "twenty years ago it was very difficult to reproduce regional Italian cuisine…..A chef couldn't get imported Parmigiano-Reggiano or buffalo milk mozzarella, virgin olive oil, prosciutto di Parma, or balsamic vinegar. Now, everybody can buy the finest of such ingredients, and it's made a tremendous difference in the taste of the food."  But, even so, the way we eat in this country is different than in Italy, what customers want is not the same, and restaurants need to make money.  "There's no point in being strictly authentic with an empty dining room," as Lidia Bastianich was quipped a few decades ago.  That’s one reason why authentic Italian restaurants can be hard to find here.
 
In Italy, Italian food means all of different things.  In this country, it can mean even more, and often items that are really more American than Italian.

The meat ravioli at the original Carrabba's in Houston

Playwright Neil Simon once quipped that, “there are two laws in the universe: the law of gravity and everyone likes Italian food.”  But, Simon’s Italian food is not the food of Italy, it is Italian-American food.
 
These are the familiar and long-popular dishes that came from the immigrants, along with their descendants, who arrived from Italy in the big wave of immigration from there that began in the late 19th century and ended with the restrictive immigration laws passed on them in the early 1920s; the dishes often feature long-cooked tomato sauce and melted mozzarella or provolone cheese, preparations that are mostly rooted in the area around Naples.  Beginning with preparations and ideas from Italy, these dishes grew in this country adapting to what was available – more accessible and better meat, most notably – and the tastes of the Americans, whom they eventually became. 
 
Below are the twelve greatest dishes, listed alphabetically, for what still might be America’s favorite cuisine.  The criteria is deliciousness and popularity, even if that popularity is mostly local or regional.  The first eliminates any dish featuring amazingly dull-tasting chicken breasts.
 
Caesar Salad – A fixture also on steakhouse menus across the country, and found on most restaurant menus regardless of cuisine, it seems, the ubiquitous Caesar Salad is certainly the best Italian-American preparation from Mexico.  Created by an Italian immigrant – or his brother – to this country who had opened a restaurant in Tijuana just across the border to be able to serve alcohol to diners during Prohibition, this mix of romaine lettuce, egg, garlic, Parmigiano, olive oil, lemon, and anchovies was a created out of necessity on a busy night in 1924. It become a smash hit with the Hollywood set and other well-to-do folks who traveled south from Los Angeles.  Interestingly, the original version of the Caesar Salad did not contain olive oil, anchovies or lemon juice, and used whole romaine leaves, rather messily.  Olive oil was unobtainable in Tijuana in the 1920s, at least when the salad was first made, so a fairly neutral oil like corn oil was used instead.  The slight taste of anchovies was found in the on-hand Worcestershire sauce that was used in their place.  Lemons are not terribly common in Mexico; limes are.  It was lime juice that was used in the first Caesar Salads.  In Mexico, the word for lime is limon.  When the recipe was transcribed for Americans, they thought limon was lemon, and so the substitution was made, all for the better.
 
Chicken Vesuvio – This classic Italian-American dish from Chicago that hasn’t trekked far from its birthplace, is big, robust baked dish featuring a whole chicken and potatoes that might have originated at the Vesuvio restaurant in Chicago in the 1920s.  Named after the volcano near Naples, the restaurant was owned by a native of far-away Turin, though there were many Neapolitans in Chicago that might have been drawn to the name. The best version of it that I have had was at the tourist-laden Harry Caray’s restaurants – namesake Harry Caray was an Italian-American – both downtown and in the suburbs.
 
Cioppino – The famed fishermen’s stew necessitating a bib from San Francisco featuring Dungeness crab along with whatever else is readily available like clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops, squid and a white fish in a tomato-y broth, is mostly an area favorite; a coastal location is very helpful for serving this.  The name is clearly an adaptation of a Genoese word for a seafood stew, ciuppin, which makes sense as fisherman from around Genoa were the first Italians to ply the waters for seafood around the City by the Bay.  Cioppino is cooked with tomato sauce – the Genoese use tomatoes, and somewhat sparingly – and this is a staple of Sicilian cooking, the homeland of the fishermen who largely succeeded the Genoese in San Francisco and whose offspring opened restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf.  So, it might be actually be a combination of the regional heritages from both areas in Italy and the bounty of the Bay and beyond.  No matter the provenance, it’s a terrific dish when made with fresh catch, usually not far from the water in San Francisco.
 
Eggplant Parmesan – A dish found throughout much of Italy now, the version popular here comes from the Italian south with its marinara or longer-cooked tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil.  It is heavier here, as with all dishes translated from the Italian, with the eggplant slices breaded and more cheese used, used as a main dish rather than a side.  The name can be puzzling, as Parmesan is not from the south, and the name in Italian is melanzane alla parmigiana means eggplant in the style of Parma.  One Italian food historian credits the Calabrians for the dish, with the Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top, resulting in the name, not brought from the north, but a similar cheese obtained from Cistercian dairies in Calabria.
 
Fried Calamari – This dish is a hit even if the frying is overdone and the squid has spent a lot of time in the freezer and absolutely delicious with high quality seafood and expert frying.  The side of marinara sauce might not be found in Italy with this preparation but it seems to make a lot of sense here.  Deep-fried goodness is certainly some part, most part, of its appeal.
 
Italian Beef – Thinly sliced roasted beef swimming in plenty of its cooking juice that’s usually served as sandwich with a Italian-style roll and topped with the piquant pickled vegetable mix, giardiniera, this particularly Chicago creation is a wonderfully messy treat that deserves to be more easily found elsewhere.  The product of the plentiful beef from the stockyards in Chicago and Italian-Americans who needed to stretch the less savory cuts, this has been around since at least the late 1930s.  These days Italian beef is often sirloin or top or bottom round cooked for a while in broth with garlic and oregano and other spices creating plenty of the signature jus. The roast is cooled, sliced thinly with a deli slicer and then put back into the cooking broth, the jus, that’s been reheated, usually for a few hours.  Italian beef is always the main protein at the Riccetti family reunion in the Chicago area.
 
Lobster Fra Diavolo – Taking the southern Italian preparation of shellfish with factory-made pasta to include instead the large and sumptuous lobsters found readily near the coastal big cities in the northeast where Italians settled, this had been on Italian-themed restaurant menus since the 1930s, at least in New York where it is most popular.  Featuring tomato sauce seasoned with plenty of chopped garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes, it’s another exuberant of Italian-American cooking.  The seemingly frightful name “fra diavolo” means “brother devil” in Italian and refers to the heat of the red pepper flakes, which rarely used with reckless abandon in this, and also the red of the tomato sauce and cooked lobster. 
 
Meatball Sandwich – Beefy meatballs in tomato sauce that are topped with mozzarella melted in a restaurant’s salamander broiler all in a fresh crusty roll to absorb the sauce is one of the best-loved Italian-American sandwiches, maybe any type of hot sandwich.  It can be absolutely delicious in spite of its seeming simplicity with quality components, as the combination can seem perfect at times. 
 
Pizza – Pizza is amazingly popular; it’s an easy canvas on which to embrace a wide variety of ingredients and flavors, and can be done so affordably.  I enjoy pizza in most of its forms – there are more than a few – as seemingly most people do.  The vast majority of the pizza eaten in this country is much more American than Italian or Neapolitan evolving from the style that developed in New York City beginning in the early 20th century that grew distinct from its Neapolitan antecedent.  Pizza originated in Naples, the big, chaotic and historic port city in southern Italy, but pizza actually spread more quickly throughout the U.S. than it did elsewhere in Italy, as odd as that may seem.  Maybe not, as we still eat a lot of pizza here. 
 
Shrimp Scampi – A dish of sauteed shrimp cooked in olive oil with plenty of garlic, some white wine and finished with lemon juice and chopped parsley, this has long been a staple of Italian-American restaurants.  You know what you are going to get reading “shrimp scampi,” which has been on menus for decades, though the dish’s name is a misnomer.  Scampi, which is plural, is the Venetian dialect for langoustines, small lobsters that are a different family from shrimp, and there is nothing like this dish in Venice.  No matter, it is delectable when made well with high quality, fresh shrimp from the Gulf.
 
Spaghetti and Meatballs – An decidedly American creation, maybe starting by the 1920s, the combination of meatballs from the traditional Italian protein-based second course and the pasta from the first to meet the demands of the much faster-paced American lifestyle, it probably still is the most commonly served pasta dish at Italian-themed restaurants here.  Though it might be scoffed at Italian food traditionalists – and pretty much every Italian – it remains a staple on American tables and it can be delicious with top-notch meatballs, whether the usual predominantly ground beef ones or softened with pork or veal, tasty tomato sauce and quality pasta that is not too overcooked.  Kids love it, regardless.
 
Veal Parmesan – My favorite dish growing up is derived from Eggplant Parmesan using the much tastier veal, an item that the Italians seemingly adapted from their immigrant brethren from central and eastern Europe.  Tender, mild but still flavorful veal cutlets that have been battered and pan-fried pair beautifully with the tomato sauce and melted provolone or mozzarella.  Once a star attraction at most Italian-themed restaurants, the now-pricier veal long lost out on many menus to the comparatively much more boring and texturally less pleasant Chicken Parmesan.  Understandable, but unfortunate.

​Mixing Southern Italian foodways – mostly Southern Italian foodways – with the ingredients and abundance of meats on hand and the need to make money, restaurants created dishes that are as much or more American than Italian, with some going on to become well-loved regional specialties over the decades, specialties that might seem a little odd to outsiders, at least to an outsider like me.  Even if seeming unusual, I do enjoy some of these.
 
Chicken Riggies – Utica, New York – This odd name doesn’t immediately signal any connection to an Italian-themed preparation, and doesn’t seem very appetizing, regardless. “Riggies” here means rigatoni.  It’s a heaty pasta dish featuring sauteed chicken breast, sweet and hot peppers, onion, heavy cream and tomatoes over rigatoni.  A chef named Bobby Hazelton is credited with creating the dish at the Clinton House restaurant in the village of Clinton, which was taken by one of his cooks to the Chesterfield in nearby Utica where it first appeared on a menu in 1982.  It’s popularity in area where Italian-American flavors are a mainstay ensured it became a specialty of that part of upstate New York.

Cincinnati Chili, Two-Way (to Five-Way) – Cincinnati – It's not the chili that's Italian but the spaghetti here.  Invented by immigrant restaurateurs from Macedonia in the early 1920s incorporating a regional love of chili along with the Americans’ affection for spaghetti, this is take on chili can include a bazaar’s worth of spices in addition to cumin and chili powder: cinnamon, allspice, cloves, paprika, turmeric, coriander, nutmeg, and oregano. And also Worcestershire sauce and unsweetened chocolate, all mixed into ground beef that has not been browned.  As someone who grew up with Texas chili, I find the slightly sweet and certainly very different-tasting Cincinnati chili rather unappealing; pouring a lot of it over spaghetti, even more so.  That’s called two-way.  It goes all the way to five-way with warmed red kidney beans taken from a can, diced onions, and then topped with thinly shredded cheddar cheese with the chili and spaghetti at the bottom.
 
Joe’s Special – San Francisco – The famed, nearly namesake dish of Original Joe’s restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach – not New Joe’s – can be thought of an Italian-American take on the frittata.  At least my father and his father called it the frittata when he lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and frequented the restaurant.  It is actually a mess of scrambled eggs with garlic, sauteed onions, mushrooms, ground beef, chopped spinach.  The popularity of this dish has remained very regional, just the Bay Area for some reason though it is quite versatile, working well for breakfast, lunch and dinner and reputedly is welcome when suffering from a hangover, plus pairing well with a cold light beer for any of those meals.  It’s easy to make at home, too, and quite tasty, if one of the ugliest Italian-American dishes around.

Johnny Marzetti – Columbus, Ohio – This is a hearty baked casserole of ground beef, cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta dish that is probably as much middle American as it is Italian-rooted.  It’s seemingly disappeared entirely from restaurants in the city associated with it, though.  The name has been associated with a long-shuttered restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, Marzetti’s, with Johnny Marzetti, being the brother-in-law of the owner.  But, the connection between the dish and the restaurant might have only started after the proprietor Teresa Marzetti’s death in 1972.  No menu from the Marzetti’s restaurants over many decades has the dish.  A recipe for a broadly similar preparation and the name Johnny Marzetti appeared in a Columbus newspaper in 1916.  And there are comparable dishes in nearby states bearing different names, as those in the Mideast and Midwest love their casseroles.  Teresa Marzetti’s restaurant has received some actual renown that you might have noticed in the supermarket aisles: the T. Marzetti salad dressings that began with a Marzetti restaurant in the 1950s.

Pepperoni Roll – West Virginia – A yeasted and shelf-stable roll filled with sticks of pepperoni sausage that was probably first made by the wives of Italian coal miners looking to provide a food that could be easily carried to and eaten in cramped worksites, the pepperoni roll had its commercial start with Giuseppe Argiro at the Country Club Bakery in the town of Fairmount in the 1920s or 1930s.  There are versions filled with peperoni slices and ground pepperoni, too.

Spiedies – Taking its name from the Italian word for skewer, this sandwich specialty of Binghamton, New York features marinated cubes of meat – usually chicken or pork these days for the traditional versions – grilled over an open flame to develop a nice caramelization on the exterior that are then placed into a big, crusty Italian-style roll.  Spiedies have been around since the 1920s, when the meat was just lamb, and the popular Italian dressing-like marinade has been available commercially since 1951.  An example of a hyper-local item, these were completely unknown in Ithaca just fifty miles away when I lived for a couple of years.

Toasted Ravioli – St. Louis – Deep-fried ravioli that is sprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese and served with a side of marinara sauce for dipping is a St. Louis specialty that has slowly grown in popularity beyond the Gateway Arch and that works well at casual Italian-American restaurants and for a bar snack.  It was the result of an accident in the 1950s at a restaurant called Angelo Oldani's on the Hill, the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis, when a new cook, a German, thought that the boiling oil was meant for the ravioli and dropped in the pasta.  The deep-frying made for a different, if still enjoyable dish, especially when paired with some grated cheese and a tomato sauce.

Utica Greens – Utica, New York – This is the second dish from Utica, which is only about 60,000 folks, but a large number of Italian-Americans, and the basis for this was a commonly planted vegetable in the gardens of the southern Italian immigrants and their descendants, escarole.  This is even from the same restaurant that put Chicken Riggies on the menu, Chesterfield.  Called Greens Morrelle there and its successor establishment, it was named for the chef who invented them in 1988.  It’s Utica Greens elsewhere: escarole with fried prosciutto, hot cherry peppers, grated Romano cheese and seasoned bread crumbs, a regional favorite that hasn’t spread very far.

Pepperoni rolls from Barney's Bakery in Weirton, West Virginia

In a review of an Italian restaurant a few years ago, the doyenne of local food writers raved that "the house-made pastas here are so good, so springily al dente..."  Not the correct choice of words; not the "springily," which my spell-checker flagged, but "al dente."  The mistake is forgivable, as most food writers - and most everyone - are quick to use "al dente" when describing pasta whether or not the pasta is actually al dente.

Concerning the attributes of house-made, or freshly made pasta - pasta fresca in Italian - the words "al dente" are never correct.  "You cannot do fresh pasta al dente!" screamed the longtime, Italian-bred chef at San Francisco's famed Fior d'Italia some years ago on a Travel Channel show, Pasta Paradises.  And a cookbook on the subject, Pasta Fresca, similarly related that "fresh pasta will not have the al dente quality of dried pasta, but instead will be meltingly tender to the bite."  It is the commercially made dried pasta - pasta secca - made with hard wheat flour like the familiar spaghetti, linguine and penne found in supermarkets is what can be - and, according to Italians, should be cooked al dente.  This is the toothsome texture, neither too hard and certainly not mushy, but a bit chewy.

There is a caveat or two.  Freshly made pasta using hard wheat flour is a tradition in parts of southern Italy like the orecchiette in Puglia that can be cooked al dente.  It is quite rare here, as soft wheat flour - such as all-purpose - requires much less effort to make into pasta by hand.  You might find some pastas made in this age-old fashion at restaurants, but it is very much an exception.  Also, hard wheat flour is found in the egg pastas imported from Italy that are often used as a substitute, as I'm apt to make, for fresh pasta.  These are typically packaged as little nests or balls of pasta.  By law in Italy any packaged dry pasta has to use hard wheat flour even if that type flour might be traditional for that style of pasta.

I think that the biggest reason "al dente" is thrown about is that its use signals that the diner knows the subject.  Knows pasta, like how catchwords and -phrases are quickly thrown about by most of us.  The words "pasta" and "al dente" just go together when talking about food, whether or not they should go together for that particular preparation.  Americans typically like their pasta like spaghetti cooked to a much softer consistency than al dente.  That might not be an issue.  It just shouldn't be called "al dente" and that phrase should be used much more sparingly.

Spaghetti alle vongole in Sorrento, cooked nicely al dente

Always taking the brief restaurant reviews in Texas Monthly with a grain or two of salt, I wasn’t too surprised to find in an otherwise positive review published last month for Tonight & Tomorrow in the recently refurbished La Colombe d’Or on Montrose a demerit like this: “Less successful was the bucatini, an undercooked pasta that heirloom tomatoes and pistou could not save.”

I immediately understood the phrase “undercooked pasta” as meaning that the pasta was cooked al dente or, more likely, even beyond that.  The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink defines it as being “somewhat chewy, neither hard nor mushy.”  In one of her cookbooks Lidia Bastianich describes that “al dente is a sensation of slight resistance, generated by the pressure of chewing.”  Cooking dried pasta – only dried pasta can be cooked al dente – to a soft, near-resistance-free consistency, not al dente, is what the vast majority of Americans do.  This is why the box of DeCecco linguine in my pantry gives two different instructions for boiling – “Cooking Time: 12 Min / Al Dente: 10 Min.”

The owner of Perbacco, the longstanding Italian eatery in a corner of the Pennzoil Building downtown that does pasta well, made it a point to complain to me once how Americans like their pasta overcooked.  He didn’t seem too happy about it, but for me, I don’t see it as really a problem unless the pasta gets mushy or loses some of its flavor being too soft.  Let people cook it how they like it.  And Americans largely like their pasta fairly soft; Italians like their pasta more toothsome, al dente.  Though Italians might disagree, I believe it’s mostly a matter of preference.

And I believe that pasta cooked al dente is certainly not undercooked.

​Italian cuisine encompasses a lot of things, but pasta might be the most emblematic.  In a recent issue of the Italian Gambero Rosso electronic magazine, Cristina Bowerman, the Michelin-starred chef of Glass Hosteria in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood answers the question of what Italian cuisine is to her with: “…if there is a characterizing trait, I think of pasta, in particular dry pasta…And in cooking, in the texture and sensitivity with which we handle the pasta we distinguish ourselves, it defines us.”  The product is not the freshly made soft pasta that many restaurants tout, but the commercial product you can purchase in the supermarket.
 
Despite her non-Italian surname, Bowerman is a native of Puglia in southwestern Italy.  She lived over a decade in the U.S., in California and Austin, Texas; her English faculty, in addition to her restaurant prominence and knowledge, has made her a frequent presence on American food shows on Italy in recent years.
 
In somewhat of a corollary to her assertion, dry pasta is both the Italian item that is most cooked by Americans and resonates most as Italian.  Of course, the way we cook pasta in America is different than is done in Italy, usually with exuberance, fewer or no rules, and typically much more sauce.  Pasta can be delicious in Italian, or not.

​A few months ago I came across a quote in the Wall Street Journal from a well-regarded chef and restaurateur Douglass Williams of MIDA in South Boston: "No other food appeals to as many people, as easily, as Italian. It doesn't matter where you're from, when you sit down to pizza or pasta, you get it." 
 
There is a lot of truth to that, and the sentiment probably applies to diners in most of the world.  Italian is popular.  Italian-themed food, whether or not it is tethered closely to Italy, is seemingly more approachable – and maybe enjoyable – than other cuisines.  Pizza has been part of nearly all this country’s dining habits for decades and pasta even longer.  Plus, the inevitable splash of tomato sauce or the greasy fingers from the pizza helps ensure that many of the dining experiences are fun, appealing, or at least can’t be taken to seriously.

Probably the best ravioli dish I've ever had, in Parma.

​Pizza originated in Italy, to be sure, but it is not originally Italian.  This is because pizza is specifically Neapolitan in origin.  It’s from Naples, the big, chaotic and historic port city in southern Italy, and pizza actually spread more quickly throughout the U.S. than it did elsewhere in Italy, as odd as that may seem.  Pizza initially traveled with the immigrants from Naples and its environs, of whom there were many to the U.S.  To note, the Sicilian pizza is also fair part the pizza landscape here.  Arriving later, it was derived from the sfincione served in Palermo, a type of spongy focaccia, but that’s for another tale.
 
A brief history of pizza in America until it become popular
 
One of the most important events in the gustatory history of the country seems to have begun officially in 1905 when Gennaro Lombardi, a native of Naples, opened the first licensed pizzeria in America in Manhattan’s Little Italy, Lombardi’s.  He had been making versions of this strictly Neapolitan fast food at the bakery in which he worked, which was also being done elsewhere, at least in his neighborhood.  The New York Tribune noted a couple of years earlier in 1903 in Little Italy that “apparently the Italian has invented a kind of pie. The ‘pomidore pizza,’ or tomato pie.”  These pizza pies were just the province of these Neapolitans; in Italy at the time, it was not found outside of the vicinity of Naples. “There are only two places in New York where you can get real, genuine Neapolitan pizze. One is on Spring Street and one on Grand. The rest are Americanized substitutes,” reported an informed source, “the Dago,” in a Sun piece in the summer of 1905.
 
These pizzas first found an audience with those recently arrived Neapolitans and quickly spread to all the Italians living in the neighborhood.  Pizza has proven to be a very easy sell over the years.  In the 1920s and 1930s Lombardi’s former employees, all Neapolitans, opened pizzerias in Brooklyn, East Harlem and uptown Manhattan that would be destined to become icons in their own right.  But, pizzas were really an ethnic, mostly Italian, specialty until after the Second World War, even in New York City.   Also in the 1920s, pizzerias were opened by Neapolitan immigrants in the Italian neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut, Trenton, and Boston.  Philadelphia and Chicago were two of the few other cities with Neapolitan pizzaioli and pizza before the Depression. 
 
Pizza spread throughout the country after the Second World War, as it began to be served well beyond the Italian neighborhoods.  Starting and growing in areas with virtually no competition from pizzerias with Italian antecedents, several regional, national and international pizza companies got their start in the mid-1950s to 1960: Shakey’s in Sacramento in 1954 – the name referencing one of its malaria-damaged owners – Pizza Hut in Wichita and Pizza Inn in Dallas in 1958, Little Caesar’s in suburban Detroit in 1959, and Domino’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1960.  Commercially made gas and electric pizza ovens, along with large mixers for the dough introduced in the mid-1950s, helped make the creation of the pizzas easier, far less dependent on a seasoned pizza-maker. American business know-how helped even more.  The franchise system increased the number of branches and market presence quickly.  Even if far from the best pizzas around – the pies usually featured doughier and blander crusts and lower-quality toppings – these pizza chains have been greatly enjoyed by millions over the years.  Not incidentally, with tremendous insight, or luck, Pizza Hut, Dominos and Pizza Inn first opened right near colleges and universities whose enrollment grew tremendously from the 1950s on, something that these chain pizza joints rode to continued and continuing success.
 
An even briefer history of pizza in Italy outside of Naples
 
“Pizza, which was unknown in north Italy before the war” recounted cookbook author Marcella Hazan in her memoir Amacord.  Pizzas was difficult to find anywhere outside of the Naples region through the 1950s. Even in southern Italy beyond the greater Naples area, it was not be found.  A family friend from Reggio Calabria, the city at the toe of the boot, did not have her first pizza until she arrived in New York in the late 1950s.  She said that Naples was the only place in Italy to get pizza then.
 
It came to those other cities with transplanted Neapolitans who traveled north to find work in the industrial boom after the war.  For example, in Hazan’s northern region, Parma, a well-to-do and university city, got its first pizzeria in 1960 started by a person from Salerno, south of Naples.  Though now popular throughout Italy, pizza has taken hold the most in a city closer to Naples, Rome, which has developed a couple distinctive versions.  The first was pizza tonda, a round pizza with a blistered cracker-thin crust that grew out of the Neapolitan versions.  Then came pizza al taglio, a long rectangular pizza without Neapolitan antecedents, which is more like a focaccia and sold mostly in take-away places.  It has become synonymous with Roman pizza outside of Rome.  The Eternal City also currently boasts some excellent pizzerias making version similar to those in Naples.    
 
It is true what Carol Helotsky wrote in her book Pizza - A Global History: “Pizza went from being strictly Neapolitan to being Italian-American and then becoming Italian,” though I’d clarify, adding that it became American after Italian-American.

Brandi in Naples, the birthplace of the margherita pizza, and the home of the best margherita pizza I've ever eaten.

​Some years ago, a longtime friend who is an avid cook, asked me if my family had a good recipe for meat sauce.  I responded no, a little surprised with the question, as I think that we had it at home when I was a kid, though I don’t have any memories of it.  And, these days, it’s not something that I make very often at all.  But, meat sauce with spaghetti used to be seen on just about every Italian-themed restaurant menu in this country and is still to be found.  It can be quite satisfying if done well, to be sure. 
 
This Italian-American meat sauce is distinct from the famed and delicious ragù Bolognese that’s typically served with wide strands of freshly made pasta and originally comes from Bologna, the capital of the rich-food region of Emilia-Romagna.  The main reason is that hardly any of the Italian immigrants came here from that area.  Also, it’s made differently than what is called meat sauce.  True ragù Bolognese was almost unknown on restaurant menus until the mid-1970s with the introduction of “Northern” Italian cooking to the U.S. that included Marcella Hazan’s inaugural cookbook.  This had a terrific recipe for the dish, which gained a lot of traction among adventurous home cooks.  Meat sauce is also not what Italian-Americans often call “gravy” or “Sunday gravy,” a very long-cooked sauce featuring several types of meat that comes from the Naples area.
 
Prompted by my friend’s query, I did some research into the origin of the Italian-American meat sauce.  From what I found and as far as I can tell, it is typically just ground beef sauteed until done with a little onion or garlic, or both, and then added to a cooked tomato sauce.  It is easy with tomato sauce on hand, better homemade even pulled from the freezer on a weekday night.
 
Something much tastier is a preparation that my brother and his wife have been making for years.  Soon after it was published in 2000, my brother and I had copies of The Italian-American Cookbook by John Mariani, the longtime food and restaurant writer, and his wife Galina, a book that seemed to fit quite well how we liked to eat and cook.  John Mariani happened to be part of the small group along with me on a gastronomic trip to Pavia near Milan in late 2019.  I had to quickly tell him that my brother and sister-in-law were big fans Galina’s Meat Sauce (page 126-127) – as I was of their efforts – though they ended up modifying the recipe in his cookbook.  He seemed quite pleased, though I couldn’t tell if he minded the desire for changes to it.  Mariani mentioned that the meat sauce was entirely Galina’s creation, bay leaves weren’t part of his mother’s Neapolitan-rooted cooking, and has been a favorite of his and his sons for years.  I can see why.
 
The adjustments that Gene and Cara made gave the sauce a little more complexity and richness.  They added milk, additional dried spices – fennel, parsley and thyme – replaced the water with wine, seasoned the ground beef when it was cooking separately, omitted the  sugar, and simmered the sauce for three hours instead of forty-five minutes.  It was now not too unlike a ragù Bolognese, if with still the familiar Italian-American taste.  You might want to give this a try when you have a few hours to cook.
 
Cara’s and Gene’s version of Galina’s Meat Sauce – Not the most elegant name, but I couldn’t come up with anything better.
 
Ingredients
 
Olive oil – 1 cup
Yellow Onions – 3, chopped
Carrots – 2, grated
Celery stalk – 1, finely chopped
Garlic cloves – 6, minced
Ground Beef – 2 pounds; alternatively, 1 pound each of ground beef and ground Italian sausage
Milk – 1 cup
Red Wine, dry – 1 cup
Peeled Tomatoes – 3 28-ounces cans
Tomato Paste – 1 6-ounce can
Bay Leaves – 3
Oregano, dried – 2 teaspoons
Fennel, dried – ¼ teaspoon
Thyme, dried – ¼ teaspoon
Parsley, dried – 1 teaspoon
Salt – 5 teaspoons
Black Pepper – 1 teaspoon
 
Directions

1. In a large stockpot, heat over medium heat a little more than ½ cup of olive oil.  When sufficiently hot, add the onions then carrots and celery and cook until these have lightly browned, about 10 minutes.
2. In a separate large sauté pan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil on high heat then add the ground beef.  Add about 1 teaspoon of the salt and ½ teaspoon of the pepper and stir in thoroughly.  After about 5 minutes add the milk and cook for a few more minutes until a fair portion of the milk has evaporated.
3. In the stockpot with the vegetables, add the garlic then add 2 teaspoons of the salt and ¼ teaspoon of the pepper and cook for 2 more minutes.
4. Add the ground beef into the stockpot. 
5. In the stockpot add the bay leaves, oregano and the other dried spices, tomato paste, cans of tomatoes with its liquids and the red wine.  Stir well, crushing the tomatoes.  Season with the remaining 2 teaspoons of salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
6. Raise heat to high and bring to a boil.  Lower the temperature to low and cook for 3 hours.
7. Serve with pasta, with grated Parmigiano, or use in a lasagna.

 
I’ve made this sauce, albeit without the fennel seeds, which I don’t usually have.  It was still excellent.
 
It is better the next day as the Marianis mention, and it freezes very well, too.

The very well-used cookbook

OK, “magical” is too strong of a word, but this wine was really good, and good in an unexpected way, something completely different from what I had experienced with this varietal.  Among the two-plus cases of wine from Italy I was shipped several months ago by a PR person whom I had met on a wine trip there some years ago was a Moscato from Sicily, Moscà from Barone Sergio.  I wasn’t familiar with any Moscatos from Sicily, or the producer, but the varietal, called Moscato di Noto there, is the same Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains that is used famously in Asti and in every region in Italy under several different names.
                      
So, the grape was the same as the well-known Moscato d’Asti, with which I had become much better acquainted a couple of years before on a trip to Piedmont that was sponsored, in part, by the Moscato d’Asti consortium.  Moscato d’Asti are aromatic, lightly sparkling wines – frizzante in Italian – that courtesy of a stuck fermentation, are vinified to a low alcohol amount of alcohol, 4.5% and 6.5%.  Often tasting of honeysuckle, pear, lemon, and orange, Moscato d’Asti wines are somewhat sweet, with a high amount of residual sugar, 120 to 130 g/l, which is a lot.  But, due to the considerable acidity that helps makes for wines that are rather balanced, if still sweet. These wines can be terrific, a far cry from the cheap, overly sweet, unbalanced and simple replications of Moscato d’Asti from Australia, California and elsewhere in Italy.
 
This Sicilian Moscato from Barone Sergio was something unlike these Moscatos from Asti.  Not entirely unlike, as it had flavors such as the citrus and honeysuckle recognizably Moscato-esque, but it is a still wine and one that is 13%.  I found it nicely aromatic, dry, balanced, with a medium body and firm structure, and very enjoyable with food with a touch of spice.  Delicious, even, and a type of wine that I would like to consume on a regular basis.  Its uniqueness was another reminder of the wonderful diversity that exists among Italian wines today, a wonderful diversity of very well-made wines. 
 
Barone Sergio Moscà is distributed by Artisanal Cellar in this country, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to get to my part of it in southeast Texas.  Something that I’ll have to keep looking for.

​There is no family recipe of tomato sauce – or gravy – in my immediate family.  This is because my Italian heritage is limited to my great-grandfather from the Marche region in central Italy and my great-grandmother whose parents were from Tuscany and Venice.  These are all areas that don’t have a tomato sauce with pasta tradition, at least the familiar ways that Italian-Americans and Americans love.  So, no Riccetti family sauce.
 
Long having an interest in perfecting a tasty long-cooked pasta sauce recipe, I recently queried a few of my Riccetti cousins, who all live in the Chicago area.  My cousin Celeste responded with her go-to recipe, one that she calls a marinara sauce.  It’s cooked for just an hour, before the possible onset of any possible astringency.  The result is something between the 20- to 30-minute simmered quickly cooked tomato sauces I have been cooking often in recent years and the hours-long sauce that many and many restaurants make.  I have made this a couple of times now and it has been terrific, both with DOP-certified whole peeled tomatoes and the cheapest ones sold at the supermarket.  The vibrancy evident in most decent quality canned tomatoes remains in the finished sauce while also having some depth and complexity.  I’ve just paired the sauce with pasta so far, but Celeste mentioned that used it with veal braciole for Christmas to very good effect.
 
Of possible interest, the recipe has a strong Sicilian influence: the use of tomato paste, the addition of sugar, the combining of both garlic and onion at its base, and the use of oregano for something other than saucing pizza (or making a pizzaiolo sauce).  Celeste’s mother, my Aunt Josephine, is Sicilian-American, so it is expected.  For tomato sauces for a while, I’ve been using mostly those rooted in Naples that use fewer ingredients along with one from Marcella Hazan, but this one will be getting much more my attention going forward.
 
Tomatoes, peeled – 28-ounce can, crushed
Tomato paste – 6-ounce can
Water – 1 cup or so, more if desiring a thinner sauce
Onion, medium-sized – 1, finely chopped
Garlic – 3 cloves, finely chopped
Parsley, fresh – 1 teaspoon, finely chopped
Oregano, dried – 1 teaspoon
Salt –  1 teaspoon
Black pepper – ½ teaspoon
Sugar – 2 teaspoons
Olive oil – 1 tablespoon olive oil
Basil, fresh – 2 tablespoons, chopped

1. Sweat onion, garlic and parsley in the olive oil.
2. Add the tomato paste, stir in well and cook for 30 seconds.
3. Add the crushed tomatoes and water to create the desired thickness
4. Add the salt, pepper, oregano, and sugar.
5. Simmer for 1 hour.  No more.
6. After sauce has been cooked, add the chopped basil.

 
I made a couple of small adjustments when I’ve prepared the sauce.  For years, I’ve been in the habit of cooking onions down somewhat first when these are part of a recipe.  I also used a food mill to remove the stems of the tomatoes and provide a smooth consistency for the sauce.