Where Have the Real Italian Restaurants Gone?

It was after 3 bottles of decent Barolo and a belt loosening dinner of veal Milanese and a side of fettuccini Alfredo that conversation took on a bitter tone when the subject of chain Italian restaurants lurched in. The table was dotted with chefs of differing talents, from old school Italian to new Italian fusion. Each been in the cooking business for years, working long hours, nursing aching legs, explosive hangovers and many burns. All had eaten dinner at each others places, dazzled by food that was not on the menu, unfettered by customer expectations and restrained only by imagination.

At one point or another we were all treated to the "reserved" ingredients, the special bottles of wine and the attentive service given to the "chef's friends" at table 4. We felt the passion, talent and human touch in every dish. And like the use of "snail" mail, those qualities were being heaped on the "where are they now" pile by a slick crop of neon lighted "authentic" chain restaurants that not only pulled the wool over American diners eyes, but jammed it into their eye sockets as they sold them "real Italian" dinners so devoid of passion and human touch that they would crumble any true Italian chef like he was gut shot. And that, dear diner, is wrong.

The "authentic" Italian places that dot the urban landscape like pimples on a teen aged face are the culprit. The "all you can eat garlic bread sticks" and pastas that supposedly use recipes dating from ancient Rome. The cookie cutter versions of Italian classics right out of either a box or a sealed and pasteurized bag "o" sauce, that, in the snip of a scissor, can be squeezed onto a plate and slid in front of the hungry guest, a piece of fresh parsley that's position on the plate the only thing requiring any real thought. These outposts of faux Italian food are brainwashing the American public into believing their dinners are the product of authenticity. But do not despair.

There are still places in every city where garlic is cut by hand, tomatoes crushed as they come out of a can, basil fondled gently and picked off the stem and meat cut and pounded daily. Places where a chef has to think of specials and utilization of ingredients. Kitchens where cooks work their way up the ancient hierarchy of the profession, learning from those who came before them.

There are places where menus change daily, ingredients brought in fresh every day because there is not 6000 square feet of freezer/refrigeration storage space. Places where dishes may taste subtly different each time, a direct reflection of the kitchens mood as it grows and changes. There are places where old men stand hunched over pitted and cracked butcher blocks, pounding veal cutlets until they are thin enough to feel a breeze through. Pasta is made from semolina, egg and water, not cardboard and corporate zeal for profits. Little spots where the red checkerboard patterned table cloth is made of real cloth and not reams of cheap paper from China.

Those are where the real flavors of Italian cooking dwell. Recipes buried deep in the mind of Mama or Papa, handed down over generations, family cook books brought over onto Ellis Island on their backs, not pencil whipped by some suit whose only experience with Italian food is watching Molto Mario while drunk at some sports bar over stale nachos and flaccid chicken fingers. It is a food of heritage and love, whose ingredients that are grown and not chemically engineered by a lab at MIT, vacuum sealed and shipped out to cookie cutter restaurants all over the country.

It took another bottle of Barolo to calm us down. We ranted late into the night, wishing evil, and at times, blatant destruction, on these charlatans of Italian cooking. But as the wine ran low, our hubris ebbed and we left each other with the hope that American diners would someday see through the ruse and pay Mama and Papa a visit before they become the relics you tell you kids about.