Chef Boyardee, Cute Italian Boys, & Cacio e Pepe — My Pasta Memories

Pasta was at the center of many of my memories, in many different places

One of God’s Great Gifts: Spaghetti (Photo by Mandy Bourke on Unsplash)

Pasta has always been a love of mine. Now, to be honest, by “pasta” I mean “spaghetti.” I know that there are a ton of different types of pasta. I watch the Food Network religiously and they frequently use pastas I have never heard of in my life.

That’s fine and good. But where I grew up in Florida, “pasta” was spaghetti. The be-all-end-all. Don’t get prideful. And that was fine. The funny thing is, we used macaroni for mac n’ cheese, shells for tuna salad, and so forth. But that’s not pasta folks. If you went to an Italian restaurant (and who didn’t?) you were getting spaghetti. Ok, maybe lasagna. But mostly spaghetti.

As a child, there were two types of spaghetti.

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The fast, easy kind was Chef-Boyardee out of the can. Just so you know, I count SpaghettiOs, SpaghettiOs with Meatballs (when we got fancy), Beefaroni, and the Chef’s Ravioli as all of that as well. Yeah, I know it’s technically not spaghetti, but come on, let’s not split hairs here, ok? I loved this stuff. And as I got older — into my teen years — I started to “doctor it up”, as they say, adding things like butter, cheese, and herbs to make it “fancier.” And let’s face it, what I did wasn’t really that amazing: you add enough butter, cheese, and herbs to a flip flop, it’ll taste better.

Ironically, as much as I loved spaghetti, I was not a fan of tomato sauce; I’m still not. The only tomato sauce I like is a homemade sauce my husband makes.

[He says the secret is, he whispers “love” every third stir of the spoon. He’s a keeper.]

But I digress.

The second kind of spaghetti I ate as a child had butter, salt, and pepper on it. A lot of butter, salt, and pepper. I don’t think there was ever a time I gave my plate back to my Mother and said, “there’s too much butter in this.”

This dish was simple.

It was wholesome.

It was decadent.

And good Lord, I loved it. To this day, if you asked me what I might request as part of a last meal, that spaghetti would be one of the dishes I’d have to seriously consider.

Vintage menu card for Riccardo’s Italian restaurant — for me, the “atmosphere” included the waiters

During my teenage years, we lived near Daytona Beach and when we wanted to go to a “fancy” restaurant, we went to Riccardo’s. Riccardo’s was a family-owned Italian restaurant, right off the beach. It was a small, lovely place and I loved it there. The food was amazing; the bread in particular could make a grown man weep.

Lord, the food was good, but for a teenage girl, the “atmosphere” certainly didn’t hurt (Ahtziri Lagarde, Unsplash)

But as a young, teenage girl, I especially loved the fact that the waiters were the college-age sons of the owner. Good Lord, those boys were cute. They were tall and they wore white t-shirts and pants that fit quite nicely over their lean, dancer-like frames. When they came to take your order, they would lean over, their dark hair falling across their brow.

I would look into their brown eyes, and they would look earnestly back at me and ask: “can I get you some extra Parmesan?”

Have mercy.

They could have put their boots under my bed any day, folks.

Of course, my father was sitting right there, and he was also eyeing those boys, but he was not as happy about them as I was. He was polite, just cautious. I’m sorry, we were talking about pasta, weren’t we? Their spaghetti and meatballs were wonderful too. Yes. That’s why I went, the spaghetti and meatballs.

But I digress.

Beautiful Garmisch, Germany and Zugspitze

When my husband and I were both in our Ph.D. programs we had the opportunity to present papers at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

Neither of us had been to Germany before, so we were quite excited to go. We actually spent some time in the town of Garmisch, in southern Germany. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place, situated at the foot of the Zugspitze — Germany’s highest mountain.

[I will spare you the tale of how we decided to hike down that mountain without a guide OR a map, got lost, and came out of the woods hours later looking like something out of the movie Deliverance.]

The only issue I had with Garmisch was the food. Now, I will stipulate right here that this is my opinion — I am sure there are people who love German cuisine and to those people I say, “Go with God” and “You do you.” But for me, it was schreckliches essen. Everything seemed to be schnitzel this or that.

And dear God, they served baloney for breakfast, people! I’m not kidding.

We were starting to lose hope, but then we found . . . the Italian restaurants. And we’re talking Italian restaurants.

Owned by actual Italians.

From Italy.

We walked into one, and the smell was as if God himself came down and hugged us. We sat down and before we even looked at the menu, the waitress was putting food on the table. Good food. Buon cibo.

Right away, I knew I had found my people.

Fettuccine alfredo — a gift from the Baby Jesus (engin akyurt, Unsplash)

I ordered the fettuccine alfredo. I took a bite and almost wept. It was so good. It was creamy, luscious, simply divine. Just the right amount of cream. Just the right amount of pepper. We had tiramisu for dessert, and it was amazing too, but that first bite of pasta made the angels sing, I’m telling you.

Years later, I was teaching for a semester in the UK, about an hour from London.

On my son’s twelfth birthday, the three of us took the train into London for the weekend to enjoy the city, see a show, and take a ride on the London Eye. We had a room in a hotel right across from the King’s Cross/St. Pancras train station. Once we got settled, we went out in search of a quick meal because we were pretty tired. We found a little, family-owned Italian place down the block and went inside. They were so kind and took very good care of us.

The front of a small, Italian restaurant, like the one we visited in London (Mohamed Jamil Latrach, Unsplash)

The food was great. My son had pizza, so for him, all was right with the world. I had spaghetti — nothing special, just simple comfort food. And it was terrific. It made me feel comfortable, safe, and settled. In a big, international city, I had found something I knew and loved. We had a great time. And we ended up going back there the night before we left. When we went back in the second time, we were greeted like friends. [Another day, we found the best Indian food I have ever had in my life, but that’s another story.]

I guess the last pasta story I want to tell was when I went to another conference in the Motherland, Italy. I just realized that makes me sound like I am of Italian heritage — I am not. I don’t have an ounce of Italian blood in me (more’s the pity). But in terms of food, Italy feels like the Motherland to me.

Varenna, Italy, at the base of the Swiss Alps (personal photo)

I was in a little town called Varenna, on Lake Como. I love Varenna — it’s become one of my favorite places on the planet. Later, I took my husband and son there so they could enjoy it too. But on this trip, it was just me. One evening, I was with several research colleagues, and we found a small (all the restaurants are small there) restaurant and went inside. It was cozy, dark, intimate, and the ambiance was wonderful. This time I had a dish called Cacio e Pepe. Translate that and it simply means, “cheese and pepper.”

Isn’t that wonderful? The dish is simplicity itself. Spaghetti, Pecorino Romano, finely grated, and coarsely cracked pepper — lots of it. That’s it. There’s no cream in it. The chef uses the starchy water the pasta cooked in, mixing the cheese into it carefully to create a sauce and adding the pepper as the star ingredient. To me, it’s like magic — I’ve never been able to figure out how to make it the way it was there in Varenna. But that night, it was like a symphony on the tongue.

Me, in a little restaurant in Varenna, enjoying Cacio e pepe (personal photo)

Pasta is universal.

I think that’s because it can be whatever you want it to be. Simple, complex, saucy, spicy, buttery, you name it. But for me, the spaghetti I’ve had also comes with memories. Of my Mom making me a bowl of buttered spaghetti to eat in front of the TV while I watched MAS*H. It’s the spaghetti and bread I savored while I also swooned over the gorgeous guy serving it in Daytona Beach. It’s the alfredo I had with my hubby in the Italian oasis we found in Garmisch. It’s the simple but satisfying spaghetti we had in the little place across from King’s Cross in London. And it’s the magical Cacio e Pepe I was lucky enough to share with friends in Italy herself.

When food creates memories for you, it’s a gift, and I’ve been lucky enough to find that more than once.

I hope you do too.