The Restaurant Guys

John Mariani on How Italian Food Conquered the World *V*

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 132

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This is a Vintage Selection  from 2011

The Banter

The Guys discuss fast food marketing including one which makes them wonder how we became the rat pressing the button in the lab experiment.

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys hear from John Mariani how politics, models and the mob impacted the world adopting the now ubiquitous Italian food. From Italian fine dining to Chef Boyardee we learn the rich history of the rise of what some believe to be the best cuisine on the planet!

The Inside Track

The Guys operate an Italian-American restaurant named after Mark’s grandmother who enjoyed filling his belly. 

John: So the Italian immigrant woman in American, quite literally became empowered. To become the best cook on her block, the one whose meatballs were renowned in the neighborhood whose Sunday red sauce, tomato sauce was better than anybody else's. And to take pride in being able to fatten up your kids and your husband and to show the abundance of the American way of life.

That's what Italian American food is all about 

Mark: … and grandchildren. 

John Mariani on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2011

Bio

John Mariani is an acclaimed food and wine writer, historian, and author of more than a dozen books, including The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and How Italian Food Conquered the World. For 35 years he was the food and travel correspondent for  Esquire and a wine critic for Bloomberg News for a decade. He is known for his insightful commentary on dining, culture, and culinary history. His work has earned him awards, acclaim and recognition as one of America’s leading voices on food and wine. For over 20 years he has written his own newsletter Mariani’s Virtual Gourmet. 

 

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Mark:

Good morning, mark. Good morning, Francis. How are you today? I'm well. How are you this morning? I, I'm doing well. I, I find it ironic that, you know, Francis and I always have a, few little things in our bag of tricks, things that we want to talk to, uh, you guys about on a, on a given day when we're, doing these, these shows. And today we both had a Burger King, uh, Presentation for you today, and this

Francis:

is not an advertisement for Burger King.

Mark:

Well, a, a few weeks back, and, and Francis knows this because I told him about it the day I did it, that on a day we were gonna do a show. I stopped into a Burger King'cause I was gonna bring Francis the Burger King, jalapeno and Cheddar BK Steakhouse Burger.'cause I was gonna bring it to him. I heard about that thing and I heard

Francis:

about that and I left the state today.

Mark:

But anyway, I was gonna bring you one so we could try it together'cause I know you don't, uh, watch a ton of tv. Mm-hmm. These commercials had been out and they had been everywhere earlier in the year they had been out and they'd been everywhere. It was one of those things in the back of my brain that every time I saw this commercial, I thought, that is the worst looking food I've ever seen in my life. You

Francis:

know, I, I know that we're really far outta the mainstream because more and more I watch commercials and they're like, look at the fu and like the pictures of the food. And I think that's to tell, disgusting

Mark:

to tell. I see a lot of the chain restaurants and fast food restaurants showing you food, and I'm like. Oh, I'd be so embarrassed. I would be so embarrassed to, to take a picture of that. Right. And, and I understand that the food, when you go to a fast food chain isn't gonna look like the, the picture on the wall, but oh my God, what if it does?

Francis:

But no, this is a particularly abominable and you have brought me mark a lovely picture, though. I never did get to try the burger. Well,

Mark:

I, I did bring you a picture and Francis, you can describe the picture if you'd like. Oh, I don't think I can because Burger King will sue me. I would think that most of you have seen the advertisements and it, and it just looks like, you know, they put, they put pieces of, looks like your dog had a bad day. They, that's what looks like put

Francis:

pieces of cheese inside the burger. So when the cheese and jalapenos, but the cheese is disturbing mark because you can't put cheese inside a burger unless you do really unnatural things.

Mark:

It's really,

Francis:

it's gotta be a certain thing, a cheese that will hold together inside a burger when you're cooking it and it doesn't melt into the burger. How frightening is that? Whatever your burger is made of.

Mark:

Okay, so the part I didn't tell you about the story is, yeah, I went into a Burger King to order this sandwich thing. Burger King's, jalapeno Cheddar, stuffed Steakhouse. Thank God no one saw you. The radio show's canceled. I, I went in and I said I would like one of these jalapeno. And they looked at me like I was from another planet. I guess they're

Francis:

not, they're not going over that well. Is that in the particularly king you were in?

Mark:

Basically, they looked at me and, and with, with, with their eyes. They said, really? You don't really want one of those, do you? And I was like, I do, I do. I want one. And they were like. We don't sell those anymore. Really? That, uh, that's at least the Burger King I went to. Oh, that's great. They got kiboshed'cause they were hideous. It's really scary. Okay. Okay. That, I mean, I, I literally, I printed this out in color so Francis could see how awful they were. Yeah. It's

Francis:

scary looking. That's color Copies cost us 5 cents more so. And Mark's pretty cheap, so, you know, that Totally worth it.

Mark:

Totally worth it.

Francis:

Alright, well I have, I have my own Burger King thing that I brought to you. Yes. Which, and this is totally by accident. It is in a, um. Nation's restaurant news reports, uh, favorably by the way. So don't take my tone as the tone of nation's, restaurants, news about, uh, a brilliant, and I put that in air quotes'cause you can't see it'cause I'm on the radio. A brilliant marketing campaign.

Mark:

Um, Francis, here's what I'm gonna say to you. It is a brilliant marketing campaign. Maybe the, the, the. A bad day Burger for picture. That was not a brilliant marketing campaign, but this is a brilliant marketing campaign.

Francis:

Okay, I see. I don't watch a lot of tv, so I haven't seen a lot of what's going on with, uh, with, uh, various marketing things. Um, but this is in the trade publication, nation's Restaurant News. Miami based Burger King is offering a coupon for free Whopper to any person who watches Direct tv. Channel one 11 where footage of the chain's signature sandwiches playing. On an endless loop through Friday. Well, this is a couple weeks. This is a way a while back. It's hard to argue, um, that someone's staring, staring the television for five minutes is working very hard toward a tangible goal. But in the case of Burger King's Whopper Lust Promotion, what a great name. Uh, it lasts. Uh, this is the Crisper, Crispin Porter Agency is their agency. What, what they, what they're doing is the last little advertising campaign they're doing with them. So I think this was Christian Porter's bid to hang on. You have to stare at the screen and to prove that you're giving the rotating whopper your undivided attention. Viewers must press a series of buttons when prompted by the screen and staring at the sandwich for five minutes. Earns a free whopper coupon. But people can keep going. And when two whoppers, if you stare uninterrupted at the screen, or three sandwiches, if you stare at your television for 30 minutes, no,

Mark:

no. Stare at the whopper on the screen of your television for 30 minutes, and you know, looking away, no looking away. Or you'll miss your little instructions. Does

Francis:

this scare the hell out of anybody but me? Well. I don't know it. It depends. And if you chant, I love the Whopper. I love the Whopper. And you,

Mark:

it's brainwashing. It's much better than that. You're the little rat pressing the bar for a fruit loop. The little rat. Okay. That's what you are. I remember I did these psychology studies when I was in college. You're the rat who presses the bar. And if you press enough times. A little fruit loop will come out for you. And if

Francis:

you go to their offices and let yourself be hypnotized, they'll give you four whoppers. I mean, this is, I don't know how anyone doesn't find this disturbing, but check this out. The, uh, the video has been viewed of a total of 406,000 times as of the Wednesday in the promotion it was offered. Alright.

Mark:

There's a lot of unemployment out there, right? Yeah. Okay. So look here, you're not looking at this the right way. Yeah. Okay. So I can win three whopper coupons in 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. Whopper costs what? Three, four bucks. Yeah. Okay. I don't

Francis:

think so. I think it's less than that. Okay. So let's call it three bucks. Okay.

Mark:

All right. So I can get three Whoppers in 30 minutes. Yeah. That's nine bucks. That's basically an 18 hour,$18 an hour job you got working right there. You gotta sell'em though. You gotta sell

Francis:

your coupons.

Mark:

I, I just, I I, do you find this as disturbing as I do? Oh, it's awful. I told, listen, I, I, I compared it to the rat. In the cage, pressing the bar for a fruit loop.

Francis:

This is really above and beyond. I mean, we've talked about different kinds of advertising. I may be right, maybe be wrong, but this is really crazy. Above and beyond. Alright. It, it goes on more. I didn't realize that all this other crazy stuff was happening here. Um, Benjamin, uh, who is this? The guy, guy Benjamin from Burger King. Um, he says, the Christian Porter and Burger King structure the offer to make it a branding opportunity, not just a giveaway, mind control opportunity, a giveaway. There was, there were some other promotions where they did, whether you could just like something on Facebook and get a free product, but this was a better value exchange. You said we'd rather have our consumers spending five minutes staring at the Whopper than just clicking, like, or sending their name and address. Yeah, I bet you would.

Mark:

I know, I, I actually just figured out what Crispin Porter's alias is. He's the ridler.

Francis:

They had run, they had run a program ready for this mark. They had run a program, um, in the past called the Whopper Sacrifice, where fans could get a free whopper coupon if you ended your Facebook friendship with 10 people. What? And if you smacked your mom, what'd you get?

Mark:

You kick the dog. Two ops. Oh, what the hell? Double

Francis:

quarter pounder

Mark:

with cheese. Are you serious? If you beat the neighbor, boy,

Francis:

oh my. If you stole money from your mother, well, all you got was the money you stole from your mother, but there it is. Okay. Other campaigns for the signature sandwich have included the Whopper freakout. I saw this one on TV in which the chain pretended to no longer sell the whoppers and recorded the customer's tirades when they told them. And they're like, no, we don't sell that anymore. And then they watch their customers freak out, oh, is this like a hidden camera thing or was it a fake thing? Yeah. And they'd be like, no, I'm sorry. We don't sell that anymore. And they record the tirades. Oh, all I have to say that is. Ha. Ha ha. That's funny. You know, it's, it's really twisted. What the hell's wrong with you? It's really, really twisted marketing. We

Mark:

are going the wrong way.

Francis:

Yeah, we're we're. Well, maybe they shouldn't, so I don't know. That's just, it's, it's, this is the most bizarre thing I've read. We're

Mark:

going the wrong way. This is

Francis:

the most bizarre thing I've read. Alright. Hey listen, we got a great guest coming up in a couple of minutes. Stick with us. You're listening to the Restaurant Guys on restaurant guys radio.com. our guest today is John Mariani. He is, uh, Esquire magazine's, food and travel correspondent, and his book, his new book is How Italian Food Conquered the World.

Mark:

John, welcome to the show.

John:

Thanks so much for having me.

Francis:

Didn't Italian food always, wasn't it? Always in control of the world. No, maybe America about 10 years ago, but, uh, it's taken a little longer to, uh, conquer the rest of the world.

Mark:

John, this book really goes into the history of, you know, the Italian, Italian food and the Italian American food. I don't know if you know, but, but obviously I'm Italian American and, and we own a restaurant called Cafe Lombardi, which is mm-hmm. Which is based. Off the, kind of the food that, that my grandmother had in the house on Sunday afternoons as long as I can remember, to probably 30 years before that. So from the, from the thirties and forties to, or even before that, till she passed away. And we call our restaurant an Italian-American restaurant because we always felt it was a, and really what we call it is a Brooklyn Italian restaurant because we always felt it was a misnomer to call it, having been to Italy, to, and. To call it an Italian restaurant.'cause there really any, aren't any restaurants like that in Italy are there?

John:

No. And I think you're being very, uh, both candid and honest about an authentic. Italian American cuisine, which is in fact, uh, largely different from what you're gonna find in most regions of Italy. The, um, the difference between the two is, as I said, the, the region so that the food of Lombardia and the food of Laia don't resemble each other very much at all. And then as you move south, the cooking that they do in Florence and Tuscany has very little to do with the food in Naples and uh, and Sardinia and Sicily and Campania. So as you alluded to your, your grandmother, as did my grandmother, I am sure that she probably gained from southern Italy, and I'm sure she was not a wealthy restaurateur or a chef

Mark:

over

John:

there. And that the basis of the Italian American experience was one of women just like her, who back in the old country, their sole reason for being was to have children. And to feed those children at just the subsistence level because there was nothing to waste. And when they got here, uh, what those same women found with their husbands and families is that they had been spending 75% of their meager income back in the old country. Here they were only spending 25% of their, their income

Mark:

on food.

John:

So the Italian woman, uh, the Italian immigrant woman in American, quite literally became empowered. To become the best cook on her block, the one whose meatballs were renowned in the neighborhood whose Sunday red sauce, tomato sauce was better than anybody else's. And to take pride in being able to fatten up your kids and your husband and to show the abundance of the American way of life. That's what Italian American food is all about

Mark:

and grandchildren. Mark being the grandchild. Yeah.

Francis:

Well, now it's funny, you, you talk in your book. I mean, it, it's, it's illustrative and it's really great where you begin your book talking about how you can't really talk of an Italian food until you before there was, even in Italy, which is a relatively recent development, and yet we talk about these food traditions in the various regions of Italy that weren't even a, it wasn't, it wasn't even a country yet that are cited in in Roman times, but. When people talk, what people need to realize is that in old historical books, when people are referring to Italy, they're return referring to the Italian Peninsula. In the same way you might refer to Asia, you know that it's, it's not a single country with a single culture and certainly not a single food culture.

John:

Not at all. It was, as I alluded to before, uh, laurian food was different from Sian food and so forth, but you also had these myriad influences because everybody conquered or tried to conquer Italy at one time or another from the Venetians to the Visigoths, from the oss to the Moors, from the Moors to the Spanish and the, the, um, Austrian and the French. So everybody added a little bit to it, but. There was no such thing as Italian food until the unification of Italy took place in 1861. And when you talk about ancient, uh, cookbooks and ancient Roman texts, those were written exclusively for slave cooks for the noble houses. So they bore their recipes, Bo almost nothing, uh, no resemblance to what the poor, what the most people were eating. Uh, most of whom did not have much to eat. And those who did and maybe lived in the cities and were merchants, um, ate. Further higher on the hog, but, um, to identify anything as Italian food, uh, until 150 years ago was just almost bogus.

Francis:

So what, what are today some things, uh, that have for the, the, in recent history bound Italian food together, are there characteristics that that, that you can say legitimately our Italian food.

John:

Yeah, there, there are at this point, and I would say, uh, as of the early 20th century, one could certainly identify certain characteristics. They would be that pasta was foremost, um, which would range from macaroni to polenta to risotto, not all of which was served in every region. Of, uh, Italy by a long shot. Um, you could say that in the south, the tomato and tomato sauces, uh, really did, uh, predominate as they did in Italian American food and that as. After World War ii, as Italians became, uh, more of a, had more wealth, and there was a strong middle class, that's when you start to see more meat of, of what was literally growing on the hillside. So that you have this famous Abaki Ham of Rome, which is a tender baby lamb. They serve at Easter, which has been feeding on the mint leaves, in the, uh, Roman Hills. Um, so these have kind of coalesced into an Italian food, um, but it's still very, very distinctly regional over there. I was there just, uh, a month ago and I was in touring and Venice and the two regions are three hours apart by train, but they couldn't be more different. Mm-hmm.

Mark:

And, and that's exactly true. I mean, every place that we've been to in Italy, Francis and I, together and separately, you don't have to go very far to have a completely different food culture in Italy. Yeah. It's quite the adventure. It's, it's kind of like saying New York versus Pittsburgh and food culture, you know, They're not that far apart, but culturally, the, the, the foods that they're eating are pretty different.

John:

Uh, very much so, just as the, and even farther apart would be the Food of the South. Mm-hmm. The Food of New England or the Food of New England and the Food of the Southwest. except for the fact that at this point you can walk into any supermarket in Phoenix, Arizona and find.

Mark:

Lamb chops,

John:

so wanna cook the lamb chops, whatever. And um, the big shift, as I say in my book was that back in the late uh, 1970s and early 1980s, uh, Italian cooks in the United States who were kind of badgered as to why their food didn't taste as good as it did in the old country. It was a simple. Ingredient, it was the ingredients and they couldn't obtain them at any price. So when they started to bring in extra virgin olive oil, true prosciutto, which had not been allowed into the United States by the FDA, um, before that to protect the. Domestic ham industry basically. And you started to get, um, uh, you started to get the great Italian wines that hadn't existed even 10 years before that, and true parmigiano cheese, which was not imported before that. All of these things made it possible for, uh, the Italian chefs of this country or anybody who wanted to cook Italian food as at your place, um, to approximate the flavors and the genuine goodness and wholesomeness of true Italian cooking.

Francis:

So what has changed in the last, um, 15 years? I mean, you've written the book now, and how has Italian food conquered the world? And, and how do you mean that? How, how, how do you view Italian food as having conquered the world?

John:

Have you seen Mario Batali's? Birth certificate. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sylvia Berlusconi, this is Mario Batali is a plant, and Sylvia Barla has been planning this for 20 years. Uhhuh and Mario Batali in the 1990s was a signal figure. Um, uh, joking of course, but, uh, he was a signal figure in the 1990s who built upon basically three things that came before him. I alluded to the, uh, improvement in ingredients. Um. And the wish among American foodies, um, to be as authentic as possible, to be as rigorously authentic as possible in cooking anything. Chinese food, German food, uh, Mexican food, um, they tried to get the best. So that was in place by the eighties. What also happened was that Italian food became very stylish as, as the fashion world shifted. Monumentally and very quickly from Paris and French fashion to the. Of the Italians, the Fes, the Dolce Gaana Armani. These were the darlings of the 1980s and continue to be so. Um, and this was all played out in fashion shows in Milan where the, uh, fashion directors of the big houses and the designers would have lunch at a little Tuscan Bistro in Milan. Uh, Tuscany is. Mullan is not in Tuscany, but they seem to play out in Tuscan bistros for some reason. And that the uh, buyer from Bloomingdale's would be sitting with Johnny Versace on Wednesday at this tro of year, and all the models would go to a place called Paper Moon for these thin pizzas. This became reported on. In all the media, this was, uh, you started to see the cover of Vogue with Italian models or, or being, um, on a Vespa on the Via veto in, in, uh, in Rome. Um, it was all created to give Italian food a very chic do image. And these restaurants of that stripe I just featured started opening in the late eighties places like dj, places like Harry Ani, places like La Madre, many others, which really were. Insisting that they were gonna be serving the authentic regional food. And then, uh, very important also in the 1990s, uh, when the Mediterranean Diet idea came in

Mark:

uhhuh, that

John:

concept allowed people who previously had dismissed Italian food as being

Mark:

too heavy,

John:

full of garlic, full of cheese, too much sauce, too much food. Um, the Mediterranean Diet Show. You know what? Italians aren't fat. And they eat pasta every single day. Italians aren't fat and they use olive oil and they don't have heart disease. Well, this just clinched the deal.

Francis:

Well, you know, I, I, I think that's a pretty interesting recap of how we got to where we are today. But one of the things that I found most interesting about your book was how Italian food came into being in America in from Italian immigrants to being in restaurants and pizzas and, and to processed food as well. But we're gonna, I we're gonna take a quick break. We'll come back on the other side and we'll talk about the history of Italian food in America. Our guest is John Mariani. His book is How Italian Food Conquer the World.

Mark:

John, when I, when I was a kid and, and certainly even more so when my mother was a kid, I. An an Italian person, an Italian American person, would never have considered eating out in, in an Italian restaurant, just because that was kind of the food that you had every, every day or certainly every Sunday. How did those restaurants gain traction without the Italian Americans in them?

John:

Well, it's, uh, I, I think what you say is largely true of a lot of Italian Americans. In my particular family, my parents used to like to go out to eat and they would go to a steakhouse. They would go to a continental restaurant. Mm-hmm. And they would also go to Mae's if they wanted to. So it was really just a night out. And we, we used to go to a terrific, terrific Italian restaurant in the Bronx called Errigo's, which is no longer there, which sorted out as a pizza city back in the 1930s. And as these, it's interesting that as these, these guys who own these pizzerias, um, started to serve more food and they got a better clientele, they shut down the pizza oven as being low class. Mm-hmm. Um, funny thing is that today no Italian restaurant would dare open without a pizza oven, even a fancy place. But to get back to your question, was that the Italian food. Of, let's say, for lack of a better word, the little Italy's around America. And they're everywhere. They're in Cincinnati, they're in Cleveland, they're in St. Louis. Um, this was very lovable food, uh, that people went to, uh, non Italians went to, um, because it was very lovable and it was very cheap and it was very abundant and. They love the flavors. What's not to like about tomatoes and cheese and a little bit of garlic, uh, great pizza on a Friday night. So the consequently, the, um, connection between Italian Americans and just plain Americans, uh, was very tight. Even before World War ii. After World War ii, what happened was that. As a detail of the book, um, the Italian movies, LA Dolce Vita most specifically, and movies like that, that showed a new breed of postwar Italian being very glamorous, and also American movies made in, uh, Italy, which was very, very cheap to do. So you had. Audrey Hepburn on eating gelato on the Spanish steps with Gregory Peck. You had Rosano Zi in about 10 movies seducing everybody from, uh, Catherine Hepburn, um, to, just about everybody in the Hollywood Pantheon. Uh, Olivia de Avi and Rosano was always after them. And these were, this was a New Italy that people had never seen before because they had always, they had always thought of Italy as the wonderful, that wonderful scene in, Wal Disney's animated feature. A lady in the t trium of the big rolly Polly, Tony and his, uh, cook playing the violin, uh, with the red checker table, claw pe bottle with, uh, straw and eating spaghetti and meatballs. Um, this was a lovely image. But it was also a corollary image to the, which I know you probably share the Italian American Fine, despicable, was the linking of all Italian restaurants with mobsters and mafia.

Mark:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And

John:

this has been persistent. Uh, the Sopranos was the, the worst example of that, which, I mean, I remember there was one I didn't watch very many of. There was one episode, which like. 15, 20 of'em have a big meal in Italian restaurant and they go outside into the alley and the waiter says, well, you know, you didn't tip very much. And they shoot the guy.

Mark:

Mm-hmm. Oh

Francis:

yeah,

Mark:

yeah,

Francis:

yeah. That's right.

John:

This is, this is horrible. I thought,

Francis:

I've thought about doing that sometimes when people don't tip enough, but I've never, I've never had the guts to follow service.

John:

Yeah. So those were the two strains. You had the, uh, the Rollie Ply Lady in the Tramp Train, the Strain and the Chef Boyardee, um, type of, image. And then you had this other image was, am I gonna get shot if I go to, uh, you know, Umberto's Clam Bar or Spark Steakhouse because somebody got shot there 40 years.

Francis:

And you talk about in your book that you feel that was, that was really, that inhibited some of the general population from going to Italian restaurants.'cause even though they were serving really good food, it wasn't accorded the same respect as say a French restaurant will be accorded. you know, it was a cheap restaurant. Kind of a kind of an idea.

John:

Well, so was other, every other ethnic food, the Italian was no different. Um, you just were not supposed to charge anywhere close to what you could charge a French restaurant for, I mean, if you take a piece of veal in a French restaurant, you treat it to just lemon butter. They can charge anything they want. They can charge$30 for it. You take a Vitello, Alimo, um, a Scallopini, and you try to serve the same exact dish in an Italian restaurant, and you had to cut, you had to cut the price by half.

Francis:

I know that it was Del Posto and then there was somebody before that who was really going for the first to be the first three star Alto Alto. It was Alto. It was Alto. And they were shooting to be the first three star Italian restaurant in New York City. And I think we've matured to the point now where we understand that, you know, you can have great, the high food of any culture is, it's about the cost of, of how you're doing it. And there's no reason we should look down on Italian food as not being as refined, as well. Those, those restaurants

Mark:

though, aren't, aren't really, those aren't Italian American. Restaurants. No, they're, those are Italian, Italian restaurants. Trying, you know, featuring either regional cuisine or, or several different regions

Francis:

of, well, let's go back, let's go back, uh, a couple, a generation or so and go into the, you know, you talk about the, the, the idea of Italian cuisine being slightly exotic but not too exotic. Um mm-hmm. And we also write in your book about frozen pizzas and jarred sauces. And there is a lot of foods that are. Italian that lent themselves in America. Anyway, we'll

Mark:

call them Italianesque. Mm-hmm. Italianesque

Francis:

to being, um. Processed or canned or popular. I mean, we jar our own tomatoes for our own sauce. that's a, a processed food. I mean, we do our own tomatoes locally, but you know, you had a rise of, very large gen revenue generating, I mean, home tomato sauce, right? Go tomato sauce. Generated a lot of money to a lot of people. Um, and you talk about how Chef Boy Ardi actually, uh, wound up, changed the spelling of his name.

John:

Yeah, it was actually, it was originally spelled B-O-I-A-R-D Bo. But, um, for Americans to pronounce B-O-I-A-R-D with that kind of oli over the INEA was tough. So he changes to BOY, which every American boy and then RD became Chef Boyard D um. And he's a remarkable figure because he started out and he made a fortune selling canned spaghetti. Italians had always been very, very, very instrumental in, uh, the canning industry, going back, toda tomato paste coming outta California and so forth. Um. What Chef Bodi or Chef Bodi did was he was selling, um, scam spaghetti, uh, to the military during World War II and made a great deal of money. And these guys preferred to spam, I assume.'cause when they came home from the war. They made him a multimillionaire by keep buying this, this spaghetti in a can, um, which was very, very cheap and, uh, very, very, uh, delicious to them and, uh, really caught the spirit. Americans have also been responsible Italian Americans for, uh, created this pizza oven, which is created by an Italian American in, who made ovens in, um, new Rochelle. And he came back from the war. He told his family about these pizzas. And they said, well, coal burning, wood burning, that's not gonna work. So they invented the. The, um, pizza oven, frozen pizzas came along very quickly after frozen bird's, eye peas and, and, uh, all the frozen foods of the early 1950s. A pizza was a, a natural thing to, uh, try and a good snack food. So, um, then, you know, Stofer came along and put, uh, fettuccine Alfredo into the supermarket. it was. Um, much more popular than, uh, any other ethnic food. Um, even though the supermarket shelves now are aligned with as many Mexican products, uh, as they are with Italian, I would think. But that says a lot about the demographic shift of the Latinos in this country.

Francis:

Well, and I also think it's funny because if, if you're gonna preserve some sort of food, like you can actually preserve a tomato sauce better than you can preserve other foods. It's not, you know, it's not the same as if, if you're making it fresh from the best ingredients. we're gonna have to, leave it right here, but. It is interesting how now in fine restaurants and even in okay restaurants, you are seeing the return of the wood-fired clay.

Mark:

Mm-hmm. Pizza oven. People are going back to the traditional pizza ovens. Yeah. Uh, well I think that that whole period, it was trendy to. To take those shortcuts, to have those shortcuts. Don't spend so much time in the kitchen, don't spend so much time on food, and now all of a sudden you see people reemerging from that malaise and saying, you know, I can, I can spend more time making something better than, than the, Can of of SpaghettiOs that actually not SpaghettiOs, sorry. Different brand. I'm, I gonna mix them out. There's, I'm sure there's some kind of

Francis:

spaghetti. Yeah. Uhoh Mark, you made a mistake with that one. But forget

John:

Rice Sironi and

Francis:

the San Francisco treat, we shine. That's right. Anyway, John, thanks so much for coming on the show.

John:

Great pleasure you guys. Best of luck.

Francis:

Thank you

Mark:

very much.

Francis:

John John's book is How Italian Food Conquered the World. You can find out more about it on restaurant guys radio.com and we'll be back in just a moment. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Mark France, the restaurant guys. Um, chef, boy rdi, you know, and we didn't really get all the way into that. Okay. Chef Bodi, I get it now. I knew he was a real guy, and it started out as army rations. Well, and it still tastes like army rations.

Mark:

Here's, here's the, here's the beauty here, and, and John mentioned this during the interview, your choice was spam. Yeah. Or Chef Boyard D Exactly. It's a tough one. And so Chef Boyard D became very popular. Yeah. I, I would choose Chef Boyd if you, outside of Hawaii, you know, if the Hawaiian still and the Philippines, the big

Francis:

spam in the Philippines, big in, big in the Philippines. I don't get that. We're big in Japan. My, my band is big. Um, I don't, I don't get that. So, but here's the deal. First of all, I, when, anytime I open. Canned stuff like that. I really am not crazy about it, but especially to me because I don't see it very often. Uh, you mentioned SpaghettiOs. It, I, you know, I just, that I'm not crazy about that opening the can of it. Just, I don't enjoy the smell at all. And the worst is when there's canned meat. If there's like canned spaghetti and meatballs. I don't know. Last year I was in someone's kitchen and they were cooking a can of some kind of spaghetti meatballs. It's those,

Mark:

it's those for me. God, it's those little ravioli, the little meat stuff, and it's stuffed with meat. Yeah, the canned meat, little meat, stuffed ravioli. There's nothing that smells as bad as that to me. And I, and I'm, and I'm sorry if I'm sounding foodist, but, I just, the meat, I can't take it like people put it in the microwave. It smell, there's a similar

Francis:

smell to dog food. I'm sorry. There's a

Mark:

similar smell to dog food

Francis:

and, and maybe that means the dog food's really good. I don't know. But whatever it is, I don't wanna eat it. You know, I'm not a dog. Um, no, it's, and if, I guess, I think if you have canned food all the time, you have canned meat all the time. Maybe you don't smell that anymore. Mm-hmm. But I don't, and that's, but what I love about Chef Boyer D is he took the name BOI. A RDI, Boi was, that was

Mark:

awful.

Francis:

B-O-I-A-R-D-I. It was exactly right. Boi Chef Boi, right? Yeah. Not any, I don't know.

Mark:

I believe you. Just for the sake of arguing. No,

Francis:

not only did they change his name to Chef Bodi, B-O-Y-A-R-D-E, but just to make sure you got it right, it's B-O-Y-A-R-D-E-E. Right. I've always wondering what is this from? Well, you don't wanna say Boyard, right? Or Boyard Boyard. Uh, it's funny when you think about a time. When America was so parochial that that was, like a boy Bo would be a crazy name. That was an

Mark:

important marketing decision. That was a really, really big marketing decision. Wouldn't have made it, it, it may not have made it otherwise. They just, those types of foods. In how we live now, and I understand why they became popular. Like I said, you, you had women starting to go back to work. You had families that were trying to conserve time and you had, and you had the advent of modern marketing convincing you that to be modern and good, right? You had to have the TV dinner. What I don't understand is how those products still remain on the shelves when you can. Frankly, go and buy a, a, a box of pasta for a dollar and buy a jar of tomato sauce for$2. Why anybody would ever buy a can of chef OERD? I cooked a pasta already sitting in that. See that? I don't understand at all. That's. These are as, as simple as it is to heat up the shaft. Boy Rd. That's how, that's how easy it is to boil water and put and put macaroni in'em.

Francis:

Yeah, I'm with you. I don't get that either, but So

Mark:

stop buying those.

Francis:

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I don't. I don't understand how we went from an, an arena where Chef Boyi had to change his name to Chef Boyi. Um, and then we got into an era, I think the dawn of the new era was where a guy made up a name called Haaz, which doesn't mean anything because it looks foreign and you know, has the over the thing.

Mark:

Come on. I remember being seven years old and being like, um, mom. Don't buy these anymore. What? The shelfware D Oh yeah. SpaghettiOs, same thing. It was SpaghettiOs, your

Francis:

mom.

Mark:

It was the seventies. You, you, like I said, everybody bought them. Wow. Your mom is a great cook too. Once, but it wasn't once your mom actually had that in the cabinet, did she? No. I'm telling, I'm saying she, we, I mean she bought once was one of those things that you bought and you said, okay, that's gross. Don't buy that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. You were smart. Yeah. Anyway. Well, I, I was, luckily I had great food. Surrounding me all the

Francis:

time and I was Irish. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this hour as much as we have. I'm Francis Sch. And I'm Mark Pascal. We are the restaurant guys on Restaurant guys radio.com.

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Francis Schott

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Mark Pascal

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