Recently finishing the draft of a book about the history of Italian restaurants in this country, I thought I should watch Big Night again. I had not seen the film since I had caught in an arthouse cinema – at time when there were actually a number of arthouse cinemas around – soon after its release in 1996. With a notable cast, especially for a small-budget film that was made for just over $4 million, which included Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Ian Holm, Isabella Rossellini, and the singer Marc Anthony in a seen-but-not-heard role, the story centers around a couple of immigrant brothers from Italy, Primo and Secondo, played respectively by Shalhoub and Tucci, who operate a struggling Italian restaurant in small town in coastal New Jersey. A central theme is the apparent irreconcilability between serving authentic Italian cooking and commercial success in 1950s America. A grand baked pasta dish, a timpano, became the movie’s most significant image, and inspired special dinners in Italian restaurants in the years afterwards. This is the endeavor that prefaced by a quarter century Tucci’s two seasons of culinary adventures throughout Italy featuring glorious cinematography. Big Night is co-written and co-starring Tucci. I happened to enjoy it less in the recent re-watch – re-watches, actually – as I now know much more about Italian dining in America over the years. Ignorance had been bliss; I found it tough not to nitpick during the recent viewings, to the detriment of my appraisal of the film. Inaccuracies and anachronisms abound in it, if not nearly to the Braveheart level.
Very early in the film, a customer at the brothers’ nearly empty restaurant, named Paradise, asks if her order of risotto comes with a side of spaghetti much to the chagrin of the brothers, especially Primo, the chef, played by Shalhoub, who is furious. Though not explicitly stated in the film, most of the commentary around the film assert that the brothers come from Calabria in the Italian south, where Tucci’s family’s roots are. It would have been highly unusual that restaurateurs from Calabria to have served risotto in a restaurant in America then.
Risotto had been frequently served at Italian restaurants until about the Second World War. The large number of Italian restaurant owners who had hailed from the northern regions where risotto was a common first course like Piedmont and Lombardy started to be replaced in numbers by southern Italians and their descendants after Prohibition. These were people from the regions, including Calabria, where pasta was king and risotto was essentially unknown, being very far from the rice-growing areas in northern Italy. Though not alluded to in the film, it could have been that the brothers might have experienced cooking and serving risotto while working in a restaurant elsewhere in Italy before emigrating. Later in the film, Primo is shown calling an uncle in Rome who has an eatery. There might have been some restaurants in Rome serving risotto then, but it might have been a single preparation or two from what I have seen looking at a number of postwar restaurant menus from Roman restaurants. Dried pasta was at the Roman heart that showed in the trattorie and ristoranti, often written as “ascicutte” on the menus then. Risotto was, and still is, an afterthought in the Eternal City. Maybe they worked not in Rome but in Milan, Turin, or even Venice, much less jammed with tourists then. Maybe. The film is set just before the great migration in Italy durn the 1950s from the south to the northern industrial cities, though. Primo does describe the joy of the lush lasagne alla bolognese to his crush played by Allison Janney. Maybe Primo had worked in Bologna, which is north of Rome. But, known as La dotta, La grassa, La rossa, the prosperous university city of Bologna is famously the epicenter of fresh pasta that gives scarcely a thought given to anything with rice.
The use of risotto early in the film and during the great feast later was, most likely, because risotto was a dish that started to gain traction at the more expensive Italian restaurants in America in the 1990s when the film came out. It was a symbol to many diners at that time of authentic Italian food, something more sophisticated than the numerous spaghetti dishes that ruled menus for decades. Risotto was also very familiar to the film’s culinary consultant and Tucci’s tutor in preparing for the role, Gianni Scappin, who was from the Veneto in northern Italy, another northern region where risotto is typically served.
Also, no matter how clueless a customer might have been about risotto, they would not have expected a side of spaghetti. The risotto dishes, if any, on menu during the 1950s would have been listed among the pastas under a title like “Farinacei,” “Farniceous” or “Italian Paste.” It would have been clear on the menu. A small pasta dish in addition to the main choice would have been served typically just with a full dinner option, a legacy of the fixed menu table d’hôte meals that were the default option at most Italian restaurants up until the war. Then they would not have expected meatballs with it. Spaghetti and meatballs starting to become really popular during the 1950s, but as the main dish for someone visiting a restaurant, never as a side.
After that slow dinner service, the restaurant closes early and Tucci’s Secondo makes the very short walk across the street to another small Italian restaurant, but that is busy and lively, Pascal’s Italian Grotto. Midcentury was still a time when ”Grotto” or “Italian Gardens” was often included in the name of an Italian eatery. Ian Holm plays the proprietor Pascal. He is presented as a sellout, a restaurateur denigrating the true cuisine of Italy in the pursuit of commercial success. Spaghetti and meatballs are shown a couple of times as the camera spans the restaurant and Pascal prepares a flaming dish for a table. Flamboyant and gauche, he is shown as a stark contrast to the staid and serious Secondo. Holm’s often histrionic and strangely enunciated performance seemed unnatural to me when I first watched it. Even more so in the rewatches. Speaking in chopped, heavily accented English, the accent presumably coming from his learning the language as a native Italian speaker. But his English sounds much different to me to than any of the many native Italian speakers I’ve talked and listened to over the years. He also looks to be wearing an American school ring on his right hand, not something you see Italian immigrants with. But Holm’s Pascal is given some very sage, and true, advice to offer to Secondo: the customer doesn’t want to eat something that he has never seen; “give the people what they want.” Then the restaurant can serve the more adventurous or authentic food. This has been a truism in restaurants almost no matter the cuisine. He then offers to get the popular Italian-American musician Louis Prima, who happens to be performing nearby, to come to their restaurant, which will provide some much needed publicity. Spoiler alert: this gesture is rather hollow.
Before that spiel, Secondo walks past a Faema brand espresso machine. This type of horizontally mounted machine was not introduced until in 1961, several years after the film’s setting. That particular model even seems to be from the 1970s. Espresso, becoming much more common in the US when the film was made, is not treated accurately in the film. Later, before the first hour is out, at the brothers’ restaurant, Primo quickly and easily works a giant, old pre-war espresso machine, which is strangely silent, with just a simple push of a level. His espresso was made much more easily and more quickly than a Nespresso at home today. This was quite unlike how the old machines actually worked. These required some time plus experience and skill in getting out an espresso from the contraption while avoiding getting splashed with scalding-temperature water.
Concerning other beverages, spirits and wine are not treated so accurately, either. When Secondo heads to Pascal’s restaurant, Primo walks over to his barber friend, who offers him grappa. The distilled grappa was not a product of southern Italy, presumably the birthplace of the barber, too. At the time, grappa was almost solely popular in its home area in the region of the Veneto. Very few people from there came to the US prior to when this film was set. And grappa was not commercialized until after the war and did not make it to American restaurants until the 1980s or later. In restaurants during when the film was set, there would be cognac, scotch, bourbon, Benedictine and from Italy, Strega and anisette. There was never grappa. It would have been the widely available anisette, popular with southern Italians, that the barber would have shared with Primo. The barber also doesn’t seem to mind that Primo makes a call to Italy – at about 10 PM or so in the scene, about 4 AM in Rome – on his phone. International rates were not inexpensive then.
Then the wines. The half-dozen or so bottles of red wine that are placed on the table for the feast noticeably sport a purple-colored DOC color on the necks. DOC is the Denominazione Origine Controllata system implemented by the Italian government in an attempt to improve wine quality. That started in 1966, a decade after the film’s was set. That purple color tag was used for red wines until 2011. Those bottles are Villa Antinori Chianti, a big-name brand that has been around since 1928. Its front is displayed in a scene later on. It is clearly a bottle from the 1990s, when the movie was filmed, much different than the brand’s labeling a couple of decades earlier, much less from the 1950s.
The feast made for Prima is elaborate, gorgeously filmed, and lengthy, even if Primo and Secondo have very little assistance and are away from the kitchen at varying extended times during the preparation of the many dishes. Waiting for Prima, the dinner starts late. There does not appear very much in the way of antipasti in the movie, a big part of the glories of the southern Italian tables, and perfectly suited to late-starting dinners. A portion of it is only shown is when Secondo is explaining to a seated guest a small plate with focaccia and crostini. Oddly two breads. Crostini, a Tuscan preparation, and its bready brethren bruschetta were never found on menus in midcentury America. These only started showing up in the 1980s. But crostini was popular in Tuscan restaurants where Tucci trained and Scappin worked.
When the guests are seated and the feast properly begins, its first course is prefaced by the words on screen, “La Zuppa,” the soup. The thin-looking soup, mostly broth, would have been a common way to start a meal. But a zuppa is a thick soup, “semi-liquid” according to Italian Cuisine by the master restaurateur Tony May. What was served was minestra. Then comes three versions of risotto, misspelled on the screen as “Il Risotto” instead of “I Risotti,” the risottos. These are followed by the elaborate, baroque baked pasta timpano that was modeled on a Tucci family dish from Calabria. Guests are starting to get full. The secondi, the meats and fish courses follow. There are roast chicken on one tray. A large whole fish is another – something never found on Italian menus then – and finally an impressive roast pig. The side dishes, contorni in Italian, given no introduction are interspersed with the proteins: artichokes, tomatoes, asparagus, and potatoes. It is a tremendous amount of food, even if Prima and band were there. It ends with “I Dolci,” the sweets, which are rather mostly fruits and nuts in the Italian fashion, with amaretto cookies. The trick with the fired then floating amaretto wrappers is shown, which is always fun to witness. The pears poached in red wine are shown after all the guests have left. It is a dish from Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta in Italy’s northwest that crossed to America in the last decade or so of the last century, something else that the brothers would not have served. Another spoiler alert. The wait for Prima and turns out like that for Godot. The brothers give up at 3 AM. Everyone was having fun for six or seven or so hours before acknowledging that there would no Prima with his band.
It was fun time for most. At least everyone enjoyed the foods. The choice of those dishes were colored by Tucci’s roots in Calabria – where one of my great-grandmothers was born – possibly his time in Florence with his family when young, certainly his work in the kitchen of the popular Tuscan restaurant Le Madri in New York, the Italian restaurant trends of the 1990s, and the influence of the film’s consulting chef. No matter the provenances, the dishes do look enticing throughout Big Night. What is served is just not terribly historically accurate for a restaurant, especially one from a couple of Calabrian brothers.
Very early in the film, a customer at the brothers’ nearly empty restaurant, named Paradise, asks if her order of risotto comes with a side of spaghetti much to the chagrin of the brothers, especially Primo, the chef, played by Shalhoub, who is furious. Though not explicitly stated in the film, most of the commentary around the film assert that the brothers come from Calabria in the Italian south, where Tucci’s family’s roots are. It would have been highly unusual that restaurateurs from Calabria to have served risotto in a restaurant in America then.
Risotto had been frequently served at Italian restaurants until about the Second World War. The large number of Italian restaurant owners who had hailed from the northern regions where risotto was a common first course like Piedmont and Lombardy started to be replaced in numbers by southern Italians and their descendants after Prohibition. These were people from the regions, including Calabria, where pasta was king and risotto was essentially unknown, being very far from the rice-growing areas in northern Italy. Though not alluded to in the film, it could have been that the brothers might have experienced cooking and serving risotto while working in a restaurant elsewhere in Italy before emigrating. Later in the film, Primo is shown calling an uncle in Rome who has an eatery. There might have been some restaurants in Rome serving risotto then, but it might have been a single preparation or two from what I have seen looking at a number of postwar restaurant menus from Roman restaurants. Dried pasta was at the Roman heart that showed in the trattorie and ristoranti, often written as “ascicutte” on the menus then. Risotto was, and still is, an afterthought in the Eternal City. Maybe they worked not in Rome but in Milan, Turin, or even Venice, much less jammed with tourists then. Maybe. The film is set just before the great migration in Italy durn the 1950s from the south to the northern industrial cities, though. Primo does describe the joy of the lush lasagne alla bolognese to his crush played by Allison Janney. Maybe Primo had worked in Bologna, which is north of Rome. But, known as La dotta, La grassa, La rossa, the prosperous university city of Bologna is famously the epicenter of fresh pasta that gives scarcely a thought given to anything with rice.
The use of risotto early in the film and during the great feast later was, most likely, because risotto was a dish that started to gain traction at the more expensive Italian restaurants in America in the 1990s when the film came out. It was a symbol to many diners at that time of authentic Italian food, something more sophisticated than the numerous spaghetti dishes that ruled menus for decades. Risotto was also very familiar to the film’s culinary consultant and Tucci’s tutor in preparing for the role, Gianni Scappin, who was from the Veneto in northern Italy, another northern region where risotto is typically served.
Also, no matter how clueless a customer might have been about risotto, they would not have expected a side of spaghetti. The risotto dishes, if any, on menu during the 1950s would have been listed among the pastas under a title like “Farinacei,” “Farniceous” or “Italian Paste.” It would have been clear on the menu. A small pasta dish in addition to the main choice would have been served typically just with a full dinner option, a legacy of the fixed menu table d’hôte meals that were the default option at most Italian restaurants up until the war. Then they would not have expected meatballs with it. Spaghetti and meatballs starting to become really popular during the 1950s, but as the main dish for someone visiting a restaurant, never as a side.
After that slow dinner service, the restaurant closes early and Tucci’s Secondo makes the very short walk across the street to another small Italian restaurant, but that is busy and lively, Pascal’s Italian Grotto. Midcentury was still a time when ”Grotto” or “Italian Gardens” was often included in the name of an Italian eatery. Ian Holm plays the proprietor Pascal. He is presented as a sellout, a restaurateur denigrating the true cuisine of Italy in the pursuit of commercial success. Spaghetti and meatballs are shown a couple of times as the camera spans the restaurant and Pascal prepares a flaming dish for a table. Flamboyant and gauche, he is shown as a stark contrast to the staid and serious Secondo. Holm’s often histrionic and strangely enunciated performance seemed unnatural to me when I first watched it. Even more so in the rewatches. Speaking in chopped, heavily accented English, the accent presumably coming from his learning the language as a native Italian speaker. But his English sounds much different to me to than any of the many native Italian speakers I’ve talked and listened to over the years. He also looks to be wearing an American school ring on his right hand, not something you see Italian immigrants with. But Holm’s Pascal is given some very sage, and true, advice to offer to Secondo: the customer doesn’t want to eat something that he has never seen; “give the people what they want.” Then the restaurant can serve the more adventurous or authentic food. This has been a truism in restaurants almost no matter the cuisine. He then offers to get the popular Italian-American musician Louis Prima, who happens to be performing nearby, to come to their restaurant, which will provide some much needed publicity. Spoiler alert: this gesture is rather hollow.
Before that spiel, Secondo walks past a Faema brand espresso machine. This type of horizontally mounted machine was not introduced until in 1961, several years after the film’s setting. That particular model even seems to be from the 1970s. Espresso, becoming much more common in the US when the film was made, is not treated accurately in the film. Later, before the first hour is out, at the brothers’ restaurant, Primo quickly and easily works a giant, old pre-war espresso machine, which is strangely silent, with just a simple push of a level. His espresso was made much more easily and more quickly than a Nespresso at home today. This was quite unlike how the old machines actually worked. These required some time plus experience and skill in getting out an espresso from the contraption while avoiding getting splashed with scalding-temperature water.
Concerning other beverages, spirits and wine are not treated so accurately, either. When Secondo heads to Pascal’s restaurant, Primo walks over to his barber friend, who offers him grappa. The distilled grappa was not a product of southern Italy, presumably the birthplace of the barber, too. At the time, grappa was almost solely popular in its home area in the region of the Veneto. Very few people from there came to the US prior to when this film was set. And grappa was not commercialized until after the war and did not make it to American restaurants until the 1980s or later. In restaurants during when the film was set, there would be cognac, scotch, bourbon, Benedictine and from Italy, Strega and anisette. There was never grappa. It would have been the widely available anisette, popular with southern Italians, that the barber would have shared with Primo. The barber also doesn’t seem to mind that Primo makes a call to Italy – at about 10 PM or so in the scene, about 4 AM in Rome – on his phone. International rates were not inexpensive then.
Then the wines. The half-dozen or so bottles of red wine that are placed on the table for the feast noticeably sport a purple-colored DOC color on the necks. DOC is the Denominazione Origine Controllata system implemented by the Italian government in an attempt to improve wine quality. That started in 1966, a decade after the film’s was set. That purple color tag was used for red wines until 2011. Those bottles are Villa Antinori Chianti, a big-name brand that has been around since 1928. Its front is displayed in a scene later on. It is clearly a bottle from the 1990s, when the movie was filmed, much different than the brand’s labeling a couple of decades earlier, much less from the 1950s.
The feast made for Prima is elaborate, gorgeously filmed, and lengthy, even if Primo and Secondo have very little assistance and are away from the kitchen at varying extended times during the preparation of the many dishes. Waiting for Prima, the dinner starts late. There does not appear very much in the way of antipasti in the movie, a big part of the glories of the southern Italian tables, and perfectly suited to late-starting dinners. A portion of it is only shown is when Secondo is explaining to a seated guest a small plate with focaccia and crostini. Oddly two breads. Crostini, a Tuscan preparation, and its bready brethren bruschetta were never found on menus in midcentury America. These only started showing up in the 1980s. But crostini was popular in Tuscan restaurants where Tucci trained and Scappin worked.
When the guests are seated and the feast properly begins, its first course is prefaced by the words on screen, “La Zuppa,” the soup. The thin-looking soup, mostly broth, would have been a common way to start a meal. But a zuppa is a thick soup, “semi-liquid” according to Italian Cuisine by the master restaurateur Tony May. What was served was minestra. Then comes three versions of risotto, misspelled on the screen as “Il Risotto” instead of “I Risotti,” the risottos. These are followed by the elaborate, baroque baked pasta timpano that was modeled on a Tucci family dish from Calabria. Guests are starting to get full. The secondi, the meats and fish courses follow. There are roast chicken on one tray. A large whole fish is another – something never found on Italian menus then – and finally an impressive roast pig. The side dishes, contorni in Italian, given no introduction are interspersed with the proteins: artichokes, tomatoes, asparagus, and potatoes. It is a tremendous amount of food, even if Prima and band were there. It ends with “I Dolci,” the sweets, which are rather mostly fruits and nuts in the Italian fashion, with amaretto cookies. The trick with the fired then floating amaretto wrappers is shown, which is always fun to witness. The pears poached in red wine are shown after all the guests have left. It is a dish from Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta in Italy’s northwest that crossed to America in the last decade or so of the last century, something else that the brothers would not have served. Another spoiler alert. The wait for Prima and turns out like that for Godot. The brothers give up at 3 AM. Everyone was having fun for six or seven or so hours before acknowledging that there would no Prima with his band.
It was fun time for most. At least everyone enjoyed the foods. The choice of those dishes were colored by Tucci’s roots in Calabria – where one of my great-grandmothers was born – possibly his time in Florence with his family when young, certainly his work in the kitchen of the popular Tuscan restaurant Le Madri in New York, the Italian restaurant trends of the 1990s, and the influence of the film’s consulting chef. No matter the provenances, the dishes do look enticing throughout Big Night. What is served is just not terribly historically accurate for a restaurant, especially one from a couple of Calabrian brothers.
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