September 18, 2025 • 37 mins
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.
Info
John’s website where you can read his current newsletters
John’s Book
How Italian Food Conquered the World
John Mariani
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark (00:41):
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, youknow, Francis and I always have
a, few little things in our bagof tricks, things that we want
to talk to, uh, you guys abouton a, on a given day when we're,
doing these, these shows.
And today we both had a BurgerKing, uh, Presentation for you
(01:02):
today, and this
Francis (01:03):
is not an advertisement for Burger King.
Mark (01:06):
Well, a, a few weeks back, and, and Francis knows this
because I told him about it theday 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 andCheddar BK Steakhouse Burger.
'cause I was gonna bring it tohim.
I heard about that thing and Iheard
Francis (01:27):
about that and I left the state today.
Mark (01:30):
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 outand they had been everywhere
earlier in the year they hadbeen out and they'd been
everywhere.
It was one of those things inthe back of my brain that every
time I saw this commercial, Ithought, that is the worst
looking food I've ever seen inmy life.
You
Francis (01:50):
know, I, I know that we're really far outta the
mainstream because more and moreI watch commercials and they're
like, look at the fu and likethe pictures of the food.
And I think that's to tell,disgusting
Mark (01:59):
to tell.
I see a lot of the chainrestaurants and fast food
restaurants showing you food,and I'm like.
Oh, I'd be so embarrassed.
I would be so embarrassed to, totake a picture of that.
Right.
And, and I understand that thefood, 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 (02:20):
But no, this is a particularly abominable and you
have brought me mark a lovelypicture, though.
I never did get to try theburger.
Well,
Mark (02:27):
I, I did bring you a picture and Francis, you can
describe the picture if you'dlike.
Oh, I don't think I can becauseBurger King will sue me.
I would think that most of youhave seen the advertisements and
it, and it just looks like, youknow, they put, they put pieces
of, looks like your dog had abad day.
They, that's what looks like put
Francis (02:43):
pieces of cheese inside the burger.
So when the cheese andjalapenos, but the cheese is
disturbing mark because youcan't put cheese inside a burger
unless you do really unnaturalthings.
Mark (02:55):
It's really,
Francis (02:55):
it's gotta be a certain thing, a cheese that will hold
together inside a burger whenyou're cooking it and it doesn't
melt into the burger.
How frightening is that?
Whatever your burger is made of.
Mark (03:03):
Okay, so the part I didn't tell you about the story is,
yeah, I went into a Burger Kingto 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 wouldlike one of these jalapeno.
And they looked at me like I wasfrom another planet.
(03:23):
I guess they're
Francis (03:24):
not, they're not going over that well.
Is that in the particularly kingyou were in?
Mark (03:27):
Basically, they looked at me and, and with, with, with
their eyes.
They said, really?
You don't really want one ofthose, 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 theBurger King I went to.
Oh, that's great.
They got kiboshed'cause theywere hideous.
(03:48):
It's really scary.
Okay.
Okay.
That, I mean, I, I literally, Iprinted this out in color so
Francis could see how awful theywere.
Yeah.
It's
Francis (03:54):
scary looking.
That's color Copies cost us 5cents more so.
And Mark's pretty cheap, so, youknow, that Totally worth it.
Mark (04:00):
Totally worth it.
Francis (04:01):
Alright, well I have, I have my own Burger King thing
that I brought to you.
Yes.
Which, and this is totally byaccident.
It is in a, um.
Nation's restaurant newsreports, uh, favorably by the
way.
So don't take my tone as thetone of nation's, restaurants,
news about, uh, a brilliant, andI put that in air quotes'cause
you can't see it'cause I'm onthe radio.
A brilliant marketing campaign.
Mark (04:20):
Um, Francis, here's what I'm gonna say to you.
It is a brilliant marketingcampaign.
Maybe the, the, the.
A bad day Burger for picture.
That was not a brilliantmarketing campaign, but this is
a brilliant marketing campaign.
Francis (04:36):
Okay, I see.
I don't watch a lot of tv, so Ihaven't seen a lot of what's
going on with, uh, with, uh,various marketing things.
Um, but this is in the tradepublication, nation's Restaurant
News.
Miami based Burger King isoffering a coupon for free
Whopper to any person whowatches Direct tv.
Channel one 11 where footage ofthe chain's signature sandwiches
playing.
On an endless loop throughFriday.
(04:56):
Well, this is a couple weeks.
This is a way a while back.
It's hard to argue, um, thatsomeone's staring, staring the
television for five minutes isworking very hard toward a
tangible goal.
But in the case of Burger King'sWhopper Lust Promotion, what a
great name.
Uh, it lasts.
Uh, this is the Crisper, CrispinPorter Agency is their agency.
What, what they, what they'redoing is the last little
advertising campaign they'redoing with them.
(05:17):
So I think this was ChristianPorter's bid to hang on.
You have to stare at the screenand to prove that you're giving
the rotating whopper yourundivided attention.
Viewers must press a series ofbuttons when prompted by the
screen and staring at thesandwich for five minutes.
Earns a free whopper coupon.
But people can keep going.
(05:37):
And when two whoppers, if youstare uninterrupted at the
screen, or three sandwiches, ifyou stare at your television for
30 minutes, no,
Mark (05:47):
no.
Stare at the whopper on thescreen of your television for 30
minutes, and you know, lookingaway, no looking away.
Or you'll miss your littleinstructions.
Does
Francis (05:56):
this scare the hell out of anybody but me?
Well.
I don't know it.
It depends.
And if you chant, I love theWhopper.
I love the Whopper.
And you,
Mark (06:06):
it's brainwashing.
It's much better than that.
You're the little rat pressingthe bar for a fruit loop.
The little rat.
Okay.
That's what you are.
I remember I did thesepsychology studies when I was in
college.
You're the rat who presses thebar.
And if you press enough times.
A little fruit loop will comeout for you.
And if
Francis (06:23):
you go to their offices and let yourself be hypnotized,
they'll give you four whoppers.
I mean, this is, I don't knowhow anyone doesn't find this
disturbing, but check this out.
The, uh, the video has beenviewed of a total of 406,000
times as of the Wednesday in thepromotion it was offered.
Alright.
Mark (06:38):
There's a lot of unemployment out there, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So look here, you're not lookingat this the right way.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I can win three whoppercoupons in 30 minutes.
Mm-hmm.
Whopper costs what?
Three, four bucks.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't
Francis (06:53):
think so.
I think it's less than that.
Okay.
So let's call it three bucks.
Okay.
Mark (06:56):
All right.
So I can get three Whoppers in30 minutes.
Yeah.
That's nine bucks.
That's basically an 18 hour,$18an hour job you got working
right there.
You gotta sell'em though.
You gotta sell
Francis (07:06):
your coupons.
Mark (07:07):
I, I just, I I, do you find this as disturbing as I do?
Oh, it's awful.
I told, listen, I, I, I comparedit to the rat.
In the cage, pressing the barfor a fruit loop.
Francis (07:16):
This is really above and beyond.
I mean, we've talked aboutdifferent 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 thisother crazy stuff was happening
here.
Um, Benjamin, uh, who is this?
The guy, guy Benjamin fromBurger King.
Um, he says, the ChristianPorter and Burger King structure
the offer to make it a brandingopportunity, not just a
giveaway, mind controlopportunity, a giveaway.
(07:39):
There was, there were some otherpromotions where they did,
whether you could just likesomething on Facebook and get a
free product, but this was abetter value exchange.
You said we'd rather have ourconsumers spending five minutes
staring at the Whopper than justclicking, like, or sending their
name and address.
Yeah, I bet you would.
Mark (07:53):
I know, I, I actually just figured out what Crispin
Porter's alias is.
He's the ridler.
Francis (08:02):
They had run, they had run a program ready for this
mark.
They had run a program, um, inthe past called the Whopper
Sacrifice, where fans could geta free whopper coupon if you
ended your Facebook friendshipwith 10 people.
What?
And if you smacked your mom,what'd you get?
Mark (08:21):
You kick the dog.
Two ops.
Oh, what the hell?
Double
Francis (08:24):
quarter pounder
Mark (08:24):
with cheese.
Are you serious?
If you beat the neighbor, boy,
Francis (08:27):
oh my.
If you stole money from yourmother, well, all you got was
the money you stole from yourmother, but there it is.
Okay.
Other campaigns for thesignature sandwich have included
the Whopper freakout.
I saw this one on TV in whichthe chain pretended to no longer
sell the whoppers and recordedthe customer's tirades when they
told them.
And they're like, no, we don'tsell that anymore.
And then they watch theircustomers freak out, oh, is this
like a hidden camera thing orwas it a fake thing?
(08:49):
Yeah.
And they'd be like, no, I'msorry.
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 reallytwisted.
What the hell's wrong with you?
It's really, really twistedmarketing.
We
Mark (09:03):
are going the wrong way.
Francis (09:04):
Yeah, we're we're.
Well, maybe they shouldn't, so Idon't know.
That's just, it's, it's, this isthe most bizarre thing I've
read.
We're
Mark (09:11):
going the wrong way.
This is
Francis (09:12):
the most bizarre thing I've read.
Alright.
Hey listen, we got a great guestcoming up in a couple of
minutes.
Stick with us.
You're listening to theRestaurant 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 isHow Italian Food Conquered the
World.
Mark (09:31):
John, welcome to the show.
John (09:33):
Thanks so much for having me.
Francis (09:34):
Didn't Italian food always, wasn't it?
Always in control of the world.
No, maybe America about 10 yearsago, but, uh, it's taken a
little longer to, uh, conquerthe rest of the world.
Mark (09:46):
John, this book really goes into the history of, you
know, the Italian, Italian foodand the Italian American food.
I don't know if you know, but,but obviously I'm Italian
American and, and we own arestaurant 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 aslong as I can remember, to
(10:06):
probably 30 years before that.
So from the, from the thirtiesand forties to, or even before
that, till she passed away.
And we call our restaurant anItalian-American restaurant
because we always felt it was a,and really what we call it is a
Brooklyn Italian restaurantbecause we always felt it was a
misnomer to call it, having beento Italy, to, and.
To call it an Italianrestaurant.
(10:27):
'cause there really any, aren'tany restaurants like that in
Italy are there?
John (10:31):
No.
And I think you're being very,uh, both candid and honest about
an authentic.
Italian American cuisine, whichis in fact, uh, largely
different from what you're gonnafind in most regions of Italy.
The, um, the difference betweenthe two is, as I said, the, the
region so that the food ofLombardia and the food of Laia
(10:53):
don't resemble each other verymuch at all.
And then as you move south, thecooking that they do in Florence
and Tuscany has very little todo with the food in Naples and
uh, and Sardinia and Sicily andCampania.
So as you alluded to your, yourgrandmother, as did my
grandmother, I am sure that sheprobably gained from southern
(11:16):
Italy, and I'm sure she was nota wealthy restaurateur or a chef
Mark (11:20):
over
John (11:20):
there.
And that the basis of theItalian American experience was
one of women just like her, whoback in the old country, their
sole reason for being was tohave children.
And to feed those children atjust the subsistence level
because there was nothing towaste.
(11:41):
And when they got here, uh, whatthose same women found with
their husbands and families isthat they had been spending 75%
of their meager income back inthe old country.
Here they were only spending 25%of their, their income
Mark (11:56):
on food.
John (11:56):
So the Italian woman, uh, the Italian immigrant woman in
American, quite literally becameempowered.
To become the best cook on herblock, the one whose meatballs
were renowned in theneighborhood whose Sunday red
sauce, tomato sauce was betterthan anybody else's.
(12:16):
And to take pride in being ableto fatten up your kids and your
husband and to show theabundance of the American way of
life.
That's what Italian Americanfood is all about
Mark (12:27):
and grandchildren.
Mark being the grandchild.
Yeah.
Francis (12:31):
Well, now it's funny, you, you talk in your book.
I mean, it, it's, it'sillustrative and it's really
great where you begin your booktalking about how you can't
really talk of an Italian fooduntil you before there was, even
in Italy, which is a relativelyrecent development, and yet we
talk about these food traditionsin the various regions of Italy
that weren't even a, it wasn't,it wasn't even a country yet
(12:52):
that are cited in in Romantimes, but.
When people talk, what peopleneed to realize is that in old
historical books, when peopleare referring to Italy, they're
return referring to the ItalianPeninsula.
In the same way you might referto Asia, you know that it's,
it's not a single country with asingle culture and certainly not
a single food culture.
John (13:11):
Not at all.
It was, as I alluded to before,uh, laurian food was different
from Sian food and so forth, butyou also had these myriad
influences because everybodyconquered or tried to conquer
Italy at one time or anotherfrom the Venetians to the
Visigoths, from the oss to theMoors, from the Moors to the
Spanish and the, the, um,Austrian and the French.
(13:33):
So everybody added a little bitto it, but.
There was no such thing asItalian food until the
unification of Italy took placein 1861.
And when you talk about ancient,uh, cookbooks and ancient Roman
texts, those were writtenexclusively for slave cooks for
the noble houses.
So they bore their recipes, Boalmost nothing, uh, no
(13:55):
resemblance to what the poor,what the most people were
eating.
Uh, most of whom did not havemuch to eat.
And those who did and maybelived in the cities and were
merchants, um, ate.
Further higher on the hog, but,um, to identify anything as
Italian food, uh, until 150years ago was just almost bogus.
Francis (14:13):
So what, what are today some things, uh, that have for
the, the, in recent historybound Italian food together, are
there characteristics that that,that you can say legitimately
our Italian food.
John (14:26):
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 wasforemost, um, which would range
from macaroni to polenta torisotto, not all of which was
served in every region.
Of, uh, Italy by a long shot.
(14:47):
Um, you could say that in thesouth, the tomato and tomato
sauces, uh, really did, uh,predominate as they did in
Italian American food and thatas.
After World War ii, as Italiansbecame, uh, more of a, had more
wealth, and there was a strongmiddle class, that's when you
start to see more meat of, ofwhat was literally growing on
(15:09):
the hillside.
So that you have this famousAbaki Ham of Rome, which is a
tender baby lamb.
They serve at Easter, which hasbeen feeding on the mint leaves,
in the, uh, Roman Hills.
Um, so these have kind ofcoalesced into an Italian food,
um, but it's still very, verydistinctly regional over there.
I was there just, uh, a monthago and I was in touring and
(15:31):
Venice and the two regions arethree hours apart by train, but
they couldn't be more different.
Mm-hmm.
Mark (15:39):
And, and that's exactly true.
I mean, every place that we'vebeen to in Italy, Francis and I,
together and separately, youdon't have to go very far to
have a completely different foodculture in Italy.
Yeah.
It's quite the adventure.
It's, it's kind of like sayingNew York versus Pittsburgh and
food culture, you know, They'renot that far apart, but
culturally, the, the, the foodsthat they're eating are pretty
different.
John (15:59):
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 theFood of New England and the Food
of the Southwest.
except for the fact that at thispoint you can walk into any
supermarket in Phoenix, Arizonaand find.
Mark (16:15):
Lamb chops,
John (16:15):
so wanna cook the lamb chops, whatever.
And um, the big shift, as I sayin my book was that back in the
late uh, 1970s and early 1980s,uh, Italian cooks in the United
States who were kind of badgeredas to why their food didn't
taste as good as it did in theold country.
It was a simple.
(16:36):
Ingredient, it was theingredients and they couldn't
obtain them at any price.
So when they started to bring inextra virgin olive oil, true
prosciutto, which had not beenallowed into the United States
by the FDA, um, before that toprotect the.
Domestic ham industry basically.
And you started to get, um, uh,you started to get the great
(16:59):
Italian wines that hadn'texisted even 10 years before
that, and true parmigianocheese, which was not imported
before that.
All of these things made itpossible for, uh, the Italian
chefs of this country or anybodywho wanted to cook Italian food
as at your place, um, toapproximate the flavors and the
genuine goodness andwholesomeness of true Italian
(17:21):
cooking.
Francis (17:22):
So what has changed in the last, um, 15 years?
I mean, you've written the booknow, and how has Italian food
conquered the world?
And, and how do you mean that?
How, how, how do you viewItalian food as having conquered
the world?
John (17:36):
Have you seen Mario Batali's?
Birth certificate.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Sylvia Berlusconi, this is MarioBatali is a plant, and Sylvia
Barla has been planning this for20 years.
Uhhuh and Mario Batali in the1990s was a signal figure.
Um, uh, joking of course, but,uh, he was a signal figure in
(17:56):
the 1990s who built uponbasically three things that came
before him.
I alluded to the, uh,improvement in ingredients.
Um.
And the wish among Americanfoodies, um, to be as authentic
as possible, to be as rigorouslyauthentic as possible in cooking
anything.
Chinese food, German food, uh,Mexican food, um, they tried to
(18:19):
get the best.
So that was in place by theeighties.
What also happened was thatItalian food became very stylish
as, as the fashion worldshifted.
Monumentally and very quicklyfrom Paris and French fashion to
the.
Of the Italians, the Fes, theDolce Gaana Armani.
(18:42):
These were the darlings of the1980s and continue to be so.
Um, and this was all played outin fashion shows in Milan where
the, uh, fashion directors ofthe big houses and the designers
would have lunch at a littleTuscan Bistro in Milan.
Uh, Tuscany is.
(19:03):
Mullan is not in Tuscany, butthey seem to play out in Tuscan
bistros for some reason.
And that the uh, buyer fromBloomingdale's would be sitting
with Johnny Versace on Wednesdayat this tro of year, and all the
models would go to a placecalled Paper Moon for these thin
pizzas.
This became reported on.
In all the media, this was, uh,you started to see the cover of
(19:25):
Vogue with Italian models or, orbeing, um, on a Vespa on the Via
veto in, in, uh, in Rome.
Um, it was all created to giveItalian food a very chic do
image.
And these restaurants of thatstripe I just featured started
opening in the late eightiesplaces like dj, places like
(19:45):
Harry Ani, places like La Madre,many others, which really were.
Insisting that they were gonnabe serving the authentic
regional food.
And then, uh, very importantalso in the 1990s, uh, when the
Mediterranean Diet idea came in
Mark (20:02):
uhhuh, that
John (20:02):
concept allowed people who previously had dismissed Italian
food as being
Mark (20:09):
too heavy,
John (20:10):
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 singleday.
Italians aren't fat and they useolive oil and they don't have
heart disease.
Well, this just clinched thedeal.
Francis (20:27):
Well, you know, I, I, I think that's a pretty
interesting recap of how we gotto where we are today.
But one of the things that Ifound most interesting about
your book was how Italian foodcame into being in America in
from Italian immigrants to beingin restaurants and pizzas and,
and to processed food as well.
But we're gonna, I we're gonnatake a quick break.
We'll come back on the otherside and we'll talk about the
history of Italian food inAmerica.
(20:47):
Our guest is John Mariani.
His book is How Italian FoodConquer the World.
Mark (20:52):
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 ItalianAmerican person, would never
have considered eating out in,in an Italian restaurant, just
because that was kind of thefood that you had every, every
day or certainly every Sunday.
How did those restaurants gaintraction without the Italian
(21:13):
Americans in them?
John (21:15):
Well, it's, uh, I, I think what you say is largely true of
a lot of Italian Americans.
In my particular family, myparents used to like to go out
to eat and they would go to asteakhouse.
They would go to a continentalrestaurant.
Mm-hmm.
And they would also go to Mae'sif they wanted to.
So it was really just a nightout.
And we, we used to go to aterrific, terrific Italian
(21:35):
restaurant in the Bronx calledErrigo's, which is no longer
there, which sorted out as apizza city back in the 1930s.
And as these, it's interestingthat as these, these guys who
own these pizzerias, um, startedto serve more food and they got
a better clientele, they shutdown the pizza oven as being low
class.
Mm-hmm.
Um, funny thing is that today noItalian restaurant would dare
(21:58):
open without a pizza oven, evena fancy place.
But to get back to yourquestion, was that the Italian
food.
Of, let's say, for lack of abetter word, the little Italy's
around America.
And they're everywhere.
They're in Cincinnati, they'rein Cleveland, they're in St.
Louis.
Um, this was very lovable food,uh, that people went to, uh, non
(22:20):
Italians went to, um, because itwas very lovable and it was very
cheap and it was very abundantand.
They love the flavors.
What's not to like abouttomatoes and cheese and a little
bit of garlic, uh, great pizzaon a Friday night.
So the consequently, the, um,connection between Italian
Americans and just plainAmericans, uh, was very tight.
(22:43):
Even before World War ii.
After World War ii, whathappened was that.
As a detail of the book, um, theItalian movies, LA Dolce Vita
most specifically, and movieslike that, that showed a new
breed of postwar Italian beingvery glamorous, and also
American movies made in, uh,Italy, which was very, very
(23:04):
cheap to do.
So you had.
Audrey Hepburn on eating gelatoon the Spanish steps with
Gregory Peck.
You had Rosano Zi in about 10movies seducing everybody from,
uh, Catherine Hepburn, um, to,just about everybody in the
Hollywood Pantheon.
Uh, Olivia de Avi and Rosano wasalways after them.
(23:25):
And these were, this was a NewItaly that people had never seen
before because they had always,they had always thought of Italy
as the wonderful, that wonderfulscene in, Wal Disney's animated
feature.
A lady in the t trium of the bigrolly Polly, Tony and his, uh,
cook playing the violin, uh,with the red checker table, claw
(23:46):
pe bottle with, uh, straw andeating spaghetti and meatballs.
Um, this was a lovely image.
But it was also a corollaryimage to the, which I know you
probably share the ItalianAmerican Fine, despicable, was
the linking of all Italianrestaurants with mobsters and
mafia.
Mark (24:05):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And
John (24:06):
this has been persistent.
Uh, the Sopranos was the, theworst example of that, which, I
mean, I remember there was one Ididn't watch very many of.
There was one episode, whichlike.
15, 20 of'em have a big meal inItalian restaurant and they go
outside into the alley and thewaiter says, well, you know, you
didn't tip very much.
(24:26):
And they shoot the guy.
Mark (24:27):
Mm-hmm.
Oh
Francis (24:28):
yeah,
Mark (24:29):
yeah,
Francis (24:29):
yeah.
That's right.
John (24:30):
This is, this is horrible.
I thought,
Francis (24:31):
I've thought about doing that sometimes when people
don't tip enough, but I'venever, I've never had the guts
to follow service.
John (24:36):
Yeah.
So those were the two strains.
You had the, uh, the Rollie PlyLady in the Tramp Train, the
Strain and the Chef Boyardee,um, type of, image.
And then you had this otherimage was, am I gonna get shot
if I go to, uh, you know,Umberto's Clam Bar or Spark
Steakhouse because somebody gotshot there 40 years.
Francis (24:56):
And you talk about in your book that you feel that
was, that was really, thatinhibited some of the general
population from going to Italianrestaurants.
'cause even though they wereserving really good food, it
wasn't accorded the same respectas say a French restaurant will
be accorded.
you know, it was a cheaprestaurant.
Kind of a kind of an idea.
John (25:12):
Well, so was other, every other ethnic food, the Italian
was no different.
Um, you just were not supposedto charge anywhere close to what
you could charge a Frenchrestaurant for, I mean, if you
take a piece of veal in a Frenchrestaurant, you treat it to just
lemon butter.
They can charge anything theywant.
They can charge$30 for it.
You take a Vitello, Alimo, um, aScallopini, and you try to serve
(25:37):
the same exact dish in anItalian restaurant, and you had
to cut, you had to cut the priceby half.
Francis (25:41):
I know that it was Del Posto and then there was
somebody before that who wasreally going for the first to be
the first three star Alto Alto.
It was Alto.
It was Alto.
And they were shooting to be thefirst three star Italian
restaurant in New York City.
And I think we've matured to thepoint now where we understand
that, you know, you can havegreat, the high food of any
culture is, it's about the costof, of how you're doing it.
And there's no reason we shouldlook down on Italian food as not
(26:03):
being as refined, as well.
Those, those restaurants
Mark (26:05):
though, aren't, aren't really, those aren't Italian
American.
Restaurants.
No, they're, those are Italian,Italian restaurants.
Trying, you know, featuringeither regional cuisine or, or
several different regions
Francis (26:14):
of, well, let's go back, let's go back, uh, a
couple, a generation or so andgo into the, you know, you talk
about the, the, the idea ofItalian cuisine being slightly
exotic but not too exotic.
Um mm-hmm.
And we also write in your bookabout frozen pizzas and jarred
sauces.
And there is a lot of foods thatare.
Italian that lent themselves inAmerica.
(26:36):
Anyway, we'll
Mark (26:37):
call them Italianesque.
Mm-hmm.
Italianesque
Francis (26:40):
to being, um.
Processed or canned or popular.
I mean, we jar our own tomatoesfor our own sauce.
that's a, a processed food.
I mean, we do our own tomatoeslocally, but you know, you had a
rise of, very large gen revenuegenerating, I mean, home tomato
sauce, right?
Go tomato sauce.
Generated a lot of money to alot of people.
Um, and you talk about how ChefBoy Ardi actually, uh, wound up,
(27:02):
changed the spelling of hisname.
John (27:05):
Yeah, it was actually, it was originally spelled
B-O-I-A-R-D Bo.
But, um, for Americans topronounce B-O-I-A-R-D with that
kind of oli over the INEA wastough.
So he changes to BOY, whichevery American boy and then RD
became Chef Boyard D um.
And he's a remarkable figurebecause he started out and he
(27:28):
made a fortune selling cannedspaghetti.
Italians had always been very,very, very instrumental in, uh,
the canning industry, goingback, toda tomato paste coming
outta California and so forth.
Um.
What Chef Bodi or Chef Bodi didwas he was selling, um, scam
spaghetti, uh, to the militaryduring World War II and made a
(27:50):
great deal of money.
And these guys preferred tospam, I assume.
'cause when they came home fromthe war.
They made him a multimillionaireby keep buying this, this
spaghetti in a can, um, whichwas very, very cheap and, uh,
very, very, uh, delicious tothem and, uh, really caught the
spirit.
Americans have also beenresponsible Italian Americans
(28:11):
for, uh, created this pizzaoven, which is created by an
Italian American in, who madeovens in, um, new Rochelle.
And he came back from the war.
He told his family about thesepizzas.
And they said, well, coalburning, wood burning, that's
not gonna work.
So they invented the.
The, um, pizza oven, frozenpizzas came along very quickly
(28:32):
after frozen bird's, eye peasand, and, uh, all the frozen
foods of the early 1950s.
A pizza was a, a natural thingto, uh, try and a good snack
food.
So, um, then, you know, Stofercame along and put, uh,
fettuccine Alfredo into thesupermarket.
it was.
Um, much more popular than, uh,any other ethnic food.
(28:53):
Um, even though the supermarketshelves now are aligned with as
many Mexican products, uh, asthey are with Italian, I would
think.
But that says a lot about thedemographic shift of the Latinos
in this country.
Francis (29:04):
Well, and I also think it's funny because if, if you're
gonna preserve some sort offood, like you can actually
preserve a tomato sauce betterthan you can preserve other
foods.
It's not, you know, it's not thesame as if, if you're making it
fresh from the best ingredients.
we're gonna have to, leave itright here, but.
It is interesting how now infine restaurants and even in
okay restaurants, you are seeingthe return of the wood-fired
(29:24):
clay.
Mark (29:25):
Mm-hmm.
Pizza oven.
People are going back to thetraditional pizza ovens.
Yeah.
Uh, well I think that that wholeperiod, it was trendy to.
To take those shortcuts, to havethose shortcuts.
Don't spend so much time in thekitchen, don't spend so much
time on food, and now all of asudden you see people reemerging
from that malaise and saying,you know, I can, I can spend
(29:45):
more time making somethingbetter than, than the, Can of of
SpaghettiOs that actually notSpaghettiOs, sorry.
Different brand.
I'm, I gonna mix them out.
There's, I'm sure there's somekind of
Francis (29:56):
spaghetti.
Yeah.
Uhoh Mark, you made a mistakewith that one.
But forget
John (29:59):
Rice Sironi and
Francis (30:01):
the San Francisco treat, we shine.
That's right.
Anyway, John, thanks so much forcoming on the show.
John (30:06):
Great pleasure you guys.
Best of luck.
Francis (30:08):
Thank you
Mark (30:08):
very much.
Francis (30:08):
John John's book is How Italian Food Conquered the
World.
You can find out more about iton restaurant guys radio.com and
we'll be back in just a moment.
(30:40):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to Mark France, therestaurant guys.
Um, chef, boy rdi, you know, andwe didn't really get all the way
into that.
Okay.
Chef Bodi, I get it now.
I knew he was a real guy, and itstarted out as army rations.
Well, and it still tastes likearmy rations.
Mark (30:56):
Here's, here's the, here's the beauty here, and, and John
mentioned this during theinterview, your choice was spam.
Yeah.
Or Chef Boyard D Exactly.
It's a tough one.
And so Chef Boyard D became verypopular.
Yeah.
I, I would choose Chef Boyd ifyou, outside of Hawaii, you
know, if the Hawaiian still andthe Philippines, the big
Francis (31:12):
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 Iopen.
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.
(31:32):
It, I, you know, I just, thatI'm not crazy about that opening
the can of it.
Just, I don't enjoy the smell atall.
And the worst is when there'scanned meat.
If there's like canned spaghettiand meatballs.
I don't know.
Last year I was in someone'skitchen and they were cooking a
can of some kind of spaghettimeatballs.
It's those,
Mark (31:48):
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, littlemeat, stuffed ravioli.
There's nothing that smells asbad as that to me.
And I, and I'm, and I'm sorry ifI'm sounding foodist, but, I
just, the meat, I can't take itlike people put it in the
microwave.
It smell, there's a similar
Francis (32:06):
smell to dog food.
I'm sorry.
There's a
Mark (32:07):
similar smell to dog food
Francis (32:09):
and, and maybe that means the dog food's really
good.
I don't know.
But whatever it is, I don'twanna eat it.
You know, I'm not a dog.
Um, no, it's, and if, I guess, Ithink if you have canned food
all the time, you have cannedmeat all the time.
Maybe you don't smell thatanymore.
Mm-hmm.
But I don't, and that's, butwhat I love about Chef Boyer D
is he took the name BOI.
A RDI, Boi was, that was
Mark (32:29):
awful.
Francis (32:29):
B-O-I-A-R-D-I.
It was exactly right.
Boi Chef Boi, right?
Yeah.
Not any, I don't know.
Mark (32:35):
I believe you.
Just for the sake of arguing.
No,
Francis (32:37):
not only did they change his name to Chef Bodi,
B-O-Y-A-R-D-E, but just to makesure you got it right, it's
B-O-Y-A-R-D-E-E.
Right.
I've always wondering what isthis from?
Well, you don't wanna sayBoyard, right?
Or Boyard Boyard.
Uh, it's funny when you thinkabout a time.
When America was so parochialthat that was, like a boy Bo
(32:57):
would be a crazy name.
That was an
Mark (32:58):
important marketing decision.
That was a really, really bigmarketing decision.
Wouldn't have made it, it, itmay not have made it otherwise.
They just, those types of foods.
In how we live now, and Iunderstand why they became
popular.
Like I said, you, you had womenstarting to go back to work.
You had families that weretrying to conserve time and you
had, and you had the advent ofmodern marketing convincing you
(33:21):
that to be modern and good,right?
You had to have the TV dinner.
What I don't understand is howthose products still remain on
the shelves when you can.
Frankly, go and buy a, a, a boxof pasta for a dollar and buy a
jar of tomato sauce for$2.
Why anybody would ever buy a canof chef OERD?
(33:43):
I cooked a pasta already sittingin that.
See that?
I don't understand at all.
That's.
These are as, as simple as it isto heat up the shaft.
Boy Rd.
That's how, that's how easy itis to boil water and put and put
macaroni in'em.
Francis (33:56):
Yeah, I'm with you.
I don't get that either, but So
Mark (33:58):
stop buying those.
Francis (33:59):
Yeah, I'm with you on that.
I don't.
I don't understand how we wentfrom an, an arena where Chef
Boyi had to change his name toChef Boyi.
Um, and then we got into an era,I think the dawn of the new era
was where a guy made up a namecalled Haaz, which doesn't mean
anything because it looksforeign and you know, has the
(34:22):
over the thing.
Mark (34:23):
Come on.
I remember being seven years oldand being like, um, mom.
Don't buy these anymore.
What?
The shelfware D Oh yeah.
SpaghettiOs, same thing.
It was SpaghettiOs, your
Francis (34:32):
mom.
Mark (34:33):
It was the seventies.
You, you, like I said, everybodybought them.
Wow.
Your mom is a great cook too.
Once, but it wasn't once yourmom 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 boughtand you said, okay, that's
gross.
Don't buy that anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were smart.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Well, I, I was, luckily I hadgreat food.
Surrounding me all the
Francis (34:54):
time and I was Irish.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed thishour as much as we have.
I'm Francis Sch.
And I'm Mark Pascal.
We are the restaurant guys onRestaurant guys radio.com.
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, youknow, Francis and I always have
a, few little things in our bagof tricks, things that we want
to talk to, uh, you guys abouton a, on a given day when we're,
doing these, these shows.
And today we both had a BurgerKing, uh, Presentation for you
(01:02):
today, and this
Francis (01:03):
is not an advertisement for Burger King.
Mark (01:06):
Well, a, a few weeks back, and, and Francis knows this
because I told him about it theday 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 andCheddar BK Steakhouse Burger.
'cause I was gonna bring it tohim.
I heard about that thing and Iheard
Francis (01:27):
about that and I left the state today.
Mark (01:30):
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 outand they had been everywhere
earlier in the year they hadbeen out and they'd been
everywhere.
It was one of those things inthe back of my brain that every
time I saw this commercial, Ithought, that is the worst
looking food I've ever seen inmy life.
You
Francis (01:50):
know, I, I know that we're really far outta the
mainstream because more and moreI watch commercials and they're
like, look at the fu and likethe pictures of the food.
And I think that's to tell,disgusting
Mark (01:59):
to tell.
I see a lot of the chainrestaurants and fast food
restaurants showing you food,and I'm like.
Oh, I'd be so embarrassed.
I would be so embarrassed to, totake a picture of that.
Right.
And, and I understand that thefood, 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 (02:20):
But no, this is a particularly abominable and you
have brought me mark a lovelypicture, though.
I never did get to try theburger.
Well,
Mark (02:27):
I, I did bring you a picture and Francis, you can
describe the picture if you'dlike.
Oh, I don't think I can becauseBurger King will sue me.
I would think that most of youhave seen the advertisements and
it, and it just looks like, youknow, they put, they put pieces
of, looks like your dog had abad day.
They, that's what looks like put
Francis (02:43):
pieces of cheese inside the burger.
So when the cheese andjalapenos, but the cheese is
disturbing mark because youcan't put cheese inside a burger
unless you do really unnaturalthings.
Mark (02:55):
It's really,
Francis (02:55):
it's gotta be a certain thing, a cheese that will hold
together inside a burger whenyou're cooking it and it doesn't
melt into the burger.
How frightening is that?
Whatever your burger is made of.
Mark (03:03):
Okay, so the part I didn't tell you about the story is,
yeah, I went into a Burger Kingto 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 wouldlike one of these jalapeno.
And they looked at me like I wasfrom another planet.
(03:23):
I guess they're
Francis (03:24):
not, they're not going over that well.
Is that in the particularly kingyou were in?
Mark (03:27):
Basically, they looked at me and, and with, with, with
their eyes.
They said, really?
You don't really want one ofthose, 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 theBurger King I went to.
Oh, that's great.
They got kiboshed'cause theywere hideous.
(03:48):
It's really scary.
Okay.
Okay.
That, I mean, I, I literally, Iprinted this out in color so
Francis could see how awful theywere.
Yeah.
It's
Francis (03:54):
scary looking.
That's color Copies cost us 5cents more so.
And Mark's pretty cheap, so, youknow, that Totally worth it.
Mark (04:00):
Totally worth it.
Francis (04:01):
Alright, well I have, I have my own Burger King thing
that I brought to you.
Yes.
Which, and this is totally byaccident.
It is in a, um.
Nation's restaurant newsreports, uh, favorably by the
way.
So don't take my tone as thetone of nation's, restaurants,
news about, uh, a brilliant, andI put that in air quotes'cause
you can't see it'cause I'm onthe radio.
A brilliant marketing campaign.
Mark (04:20):
Um, Francis, here's what I'm gonna say to you.
It is a brilliant marketingcampaign.
Maybe the, the, the.
A bad day Burger for picture.
That was not a brilliantmarketing campaign, but this is
a brilliant marketing campaign.
Francis (04:36):
Okay, I see.
I don't watch a lot of tv, so Ihaven't seen a lot of what's
going on with, uh, with, uh,various marketing things.
Um, but this is in the tradepublication, nation's Restaurant
News.
Miami based Burger King isoffering a coupon for free
Whopper to any person whowatches Direct tv.
Channel one 11 where footage ofthe chain's signature sandwiches
playing.
On an endless loop throughFriday.
(04:56):
Well, this is a couple weeks.
This is a way a while back.
It's hard to argue, um, thatsomeone's staring, staring the
television for five minutes isworking very hard toward a
tangible goal.
But in the case of Burger King'sWhopper Lust Promotion, what a
great name.
Uh, it lasts.
Uh, this is the Crisper, CrispinPorter Agency is their agency.
What, what they, what they'redoing is the last little
advertising campaign they'redoing with them.
(05:17):
So I think this was ChristianPorter's bid to hang on.
You have to stare at the screenand to prove that you're giving
the rotating whopper yourundivided attention.
Viewers must press a series ofbuttons when prompted by the
screen and staring at thesandwich for five minutes.
Earns a free whopper coupon.
But people can keep going.
(05:37):
And when two whoppers, if youstare uninterrupted at the
screen, or three sandwiches, ifyou stare at your television for
30 minutes, no,
Mark (05:47):
no.
Stare at the whopper on thescreen of your television for 30
minutes, and you know, lookingaway, no looking away.
Or you'll miss your littleinstructions.
Does
Francis (05:56):
this scare the hell out of anybody but me?
Well.
I don't know it.
It depends.
And if you chant, I love theWhopper.
I love the Whopper.
And you,
Mark (06:06):
it's brainwashing.
It's much better than that.
You're the little rat pressingthe bar for a fruit loop.
The little rat.
Okay.
That's what you are.
I remember I did thesepsychology studies when I was in
college.
You're the rat who presses thebar.
And if you press enough times.
A little fruit loop will comeout for you.
And if
Francis (06:23):
you go to their offices and let yourself be hypnotized,
they'll give you four whoppers.
I mean, this is, I don't knowhow anyone doesn't find this
disturbing, but check this out.
The, uh, the video has beenviewed of a total of 406,000
times as of the Wednesday in thepromotion it was offered.
Alright.
Mark (06:38):
There's a lot of unemployment out there, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So look here, you're not lookingat this the right way.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I can win three whoppercoupons in 30 minutes.
Mm-hmm.
Whopper costs what?
Three, four bucks.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't
Francis (06:53):
think so.
I think it's less than that.
Okay.
So let's call it three bucks.
Okay.
Mark (06:56):
All right.
So I can get three Whoppers in30 minutes.
Yeah.
That's nine bucks.
That's basically an 18 hour,$18an hour job you got working
right there.
You gotta sell'em though.
You gotta sell
Francis (07:06):
your coupons.
Mark (07:07):
I, I just, I I, do you find this as disturbing as I do?
Oh, it's awful.
I told, listen, I, I, I comparedit to the rat.
In the cage, pressing the barfor a fruit loop.
Francis (07:16):
This is really above and beyond.
I mean, we've talked aboutdifferent 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 thisother crazy stuff was happening
here.
Um, Benjamin, uh, who is this?
The guy, guy Benjamin fromBurger King.
Um, he says, the ChristianPorter and Burger King structure
the offer to make it a brandingopportunity, not just a
giveaway, mind controlopportunity, a giveaway.
(07:39):
There was, there were some otherpromotions where they did,
whether you could just likesomething on Facebook and get a
free product, but this was abetter value exchange.
You said we'd rather have ourconsumers spending five minutes
staring at the Whopper than justclicking, like, or sending their
name and address.
Yeah, I bet you would.
Mark (07:53):
I know, I, I actually just figured out what Crispin
Porter's alias is.
He's the ridler.
Francis (08:02):
They had run, they had run a program ready for this
mark.
They had run a program, um, inthe past called the Whopper
Sacrifice, where fans could geta free whopper coupon if you
ended your Facebook friendshipwith 10 people.
What?
And if you smacked your mom,what'd you get?
Mark (08:21):
You kick the dog.
Two ops.
Oh, what the hell?
Double
Francis (08:24):
quarter pounder
Mark (08:24):
with cheese.
Are you serious?
If you beat the neighbor, boy,
Francis (08:27):
oh my.
If you stole money from yourmother, well, all you got was
the money you stole from yourmother, but there it is.
Okay.
Other campaigns for thesignature sandwich have included
the Whopper freakout.
I saw this one on TV in whichthe chain pretended to no longer
sell the whoppers and recordedthe customer's tirades when they
told them.
And they're like, no, we don'tsell that anymore.
And then they watch theircustomers freak out, oh, is this
like a hidden camera thing orwas it a fake thing?
(08:49):
Yeah.
And they'd be like, no, I'msorry.
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 reallytwisted.
What the hell's wrong with you?
It's really, really twistedmarketing.
We
Mark (09:03):
are going the wrong way.
Francis (09:04):
Yeah, we're we're.
Well, maybe they shouldn't, so Idon't know.
That's just, it's, it's, this isthe most bizarre thing I've
read.
We're
Mark (09:11):
going the wrong way.
This is
Francis (09:12):
the most bizarre thing I've read.
Alright.
Hey listen, we got a great guestcoming up in a couple of
minutes.
Stick with us.
You're listening to theRestaurant 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 isHow Italian Food Conquered the
World.
Mark (09:31):
John, welcome to the show.
John (09:33):
Thanks so much for having me.
Francis (09:34):
Didn't Italian food always, wasn't it?
Always in control of the world.
No, maybe America about 10 yearsago, but, uh, it's taken a
little longer to, uh, conquerthe rest of the world.
Mark (09:46):
John, this book really goes into the history of, you
know, the Italian, Italian foodand the Italian American food.
I don't know if you know, but,but obviously I'm Italian
American and, and we own arestaurant 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 aslong as I can remember, to
(10:06):
probably 30 years before that.
So from the, from the thirtiesand forties to, or even before
that, till she passed away.
And we call our restaurant anItalian-American restaurant
because we always felt it was a,and really what we call it is a
Brooklyn Italian restaurantbecause we always felt it was a
misnomer to call it, having beento Italy, to, and.
To call it an Italianrestaurant.
(10:27):
'cause there really any, aren'tany restaurants like that in
Italy are there?
John (10:31):
No.
And I think you're being very,uh, both candid and honest about
an authentic.
Italian American cuisine, whichis in fact, uh, largely
different from what you're gonnafind in most regions of Italy.
The, um, the difference betweenthe two is, as I said, the, the
region so that the food ofLombardia and the food of Laia
(10:53):
don't resemble each other verymuch at all.
And then as you move south, thecooking that they do in Florence
and Tuscany has very little todo with the food in Naples and
uh, and Sardinia and Sicily andCampania.
So as you alluded to your, yourgrandmother, as did my
grandmother, I am sure that sheprobably gained from southern
(11:16):
Italy, and I'm sure she was nota wealthy restaurateur or a chef
Mark (11:20):
over
John (11:20):
there.
And that the basis of theItalian American experience was
one of women just like her, whoback in the old country, their
sole reason for being was tohave children.
And to feed those children atjust the subsistence level
because there was nothing towaste.
(11:41):
And when they got here, uh, whatthose same women found with
their husbands and families isthat they had been spending 75%
of their meager income back inthe old country.
Here they were only spending 25%of their, their income
Mark (11:56):
on food.
John (11:56):
So the Italian woman, uh, the Italian immigrant woman in
American, quite literally becameempowered.
To become the best cook on herblock, the one whose meatballs
were renowned in theneighborhood whose Sunday red
sauce, tomato sauce was betterthan anybody else's.
(12:16):
And to take pride in being ableto fatten up your kids and your
husband and to show theabundance of the American way of
life.
That's what Italian Americanfood is all about
Mark (12:27):
and grandchildren.
Mark being the grandchild.
Yeah.
Francis (12:31):
Well, now it's funny, you, you talk in your book.
I mean, it, it's, it'sillustrative and it's really
great where you begin your booktalking about how you can't
really talk of an Italian fooduntil you before there was, even
in Italy, which is a relativelyrecent development, and yet we
talk about these food traditionsin the various regions of Italy
that weren't even a, it wasn't,it wasn't even a country yet
(12:52):
that are cited in in Romantimes, but.
When people talk, what peopleneed to realize is that in old
historical books, when peopleare referring to Italy, they're
return referring to the ItalianPeninsula.
In the same way you might referto Asia, you know that it's,
it's not a single country with asingle culture and certainly not
a single food culture.
John (13:11):
Not at all.
It was, as I alluded to before,uh, laurian food was different
from Sian food and so forth, butyou also had these myriad
influences because everybodyconquered or tried to conquer
Italy at one time or anotherfrom the Venetians to the
Visigoths, from the oss to theMoors, from the Moors to the
Spanish and the, the, um,Austrian and the French.
(13:33):
So everybody added a little bitto it, but.
There was no such thing asItalian food until the
unification of Italy took placein 1861.
And when you talk about ancient,uh, cookbooks and ancient Roman
texts, those were writtenexclusively for slave cooks for
the noble houses.
So they bore their recipes, Boalmost nothing, uh, no
(13:55):
resemblance to what the poor,what the most people were
eating.
Uh, most of whom did not havemuch to eat.
And those who did and maybelived in the cities and were
merchants, um, ate.
Further higher on the hog, but,um, to identify anything as
Italian food, uh, until 150years ago was just almost bogus.
Francis (14:13):
So what, what are today some things, uh, that have for
the, the, in recent historybound Italian food together, are
there characteristics that that,that you can say legitimately
our Italian food.
John (14:26):
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 wasforemost, um, which would range
from macaroni to polenta torisotto, not all of which was
served in every region.
Of, uh, Italy by a long shot.
(14:47):
Um, you could say that in thesouth, the tomato and tomato
sauces, uh, really did, uh,predominate as they did in
Italian American food and thatas.
After World War ii, as Italiansbecame, uh, more of a, had more
wealth, and there was a strongmiddle class, that's when you
start to see more meat of, ofwhat was literally growing on
(15:09):
the hillside.
So that you have this famousAbaki Ham of Rome, which is a
tender baby lamb.
They serve at Easter, which hasbeen feeding on the mint leaves,
in the, uh, Roman Hills.
Um, so these have kind ofcoalesced into an Italian food,
um, but it's still very, verydistinctly regional over there.
I was there just, uh, a monthago and I was in touring and
(15:31):
Venice and the two regions arethree hours apart by train, but
they couldn't be more different.
Mm-hmm.
Mark (15:39):
And, and that's exactly true.
I mean, every place that we'vebeen to in Italy, Francis and I,
together and separately, youdon't have to go very far to
have a completely different foodculture in Italy.
Yeah.
It's quite the adventure.
It's, it's kind of like sayingNew York versus Pittsburgh and
food culture, you know, They'renot that far apart, but
culturally, the, the, the foodsthat they're eating are pretty
different.
John (15:59):
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 theFood of New England and the Food
of the Southwest.
except for the fact that at thispoint you can walk into any
supermarket in Phoenix, Arizonaand find.
Mark (16:15):
Lamb chops,
John (16:15):
so wanna cook the lamb chops, whatever.
And um, the big shift, as I sayin my book was that back in the
late uh, 1970s and early 1980s,uh, Italian cooks in the United
States who were kind of badgeredas to why their food didn't
taste as good as it did in theold country.
It was a simple.
(16:36):
Ingredient, it was theingredients and they couldn't
obtain them at any price.
So when they started to bring inextra virgin olive oil, true
prosciutto, which had not beenallowed into the United States
by the FDA, um, before that toprotect the.
Domestic ham industry basically.
And you started to get, um, uh,you started to get the great
(16:59):
Italian wines that hadn'texisted even 10 years before
that, and true parmigianocheese, which was not imported
before that.
All of these things made itpossible for, uh, the Italian
chefs of this country or anybodywho wanted to cook Italian food
as at your place, um, toapproximate the flavors and the
genuine goodness andwholesomeness of true Italian
(17:21):
cooking.
Francis (17:22):
So what has changed in the last, um, 15 years?
I mean, you've written the booknow, and how has Italian food
conquered the world?
And, and how do you mean that?
How, how, how do you viewItalian food as having conquered
the world?
John (17:36):
Have you seen Mario Batali's?
Birth certificate.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Sylvia Berlusconi, this is MarioBatali is a plant, and Sylvia
Barla has been planning this for20 years.
Uhhuh and Mario Batali in the1990s was a signal figure.
Um, uh, joking of course, but,uh, he was a signal figure in
(17:56):
the 1990s who built uponbasically three things that came
before him.
I alluded to the, uh,improvement in ingredients.
Um.
And the wish among Americanfoodies, um, to be as authentic
as possible, to be as rigorouslyauthentic as possible in cooking
anything.
Chinese food, German food, uh,Mexican food, um, they tried to
(18:19):
get the best.
So that was in place by theeighties.
What also happened was thatItalian food became very stylish
as, as the fashion worldshifted.
Monumentally and very quicklyfrom Paris and French fashion to
the.
Of the Italians, the Fes, theDolce Gaana Armani.
(18:42):
These were the darlings of the1980s and continue to be so.
Um, and this was all played outin fashion shows in Milan where
the, uh, fashion directors ofthe big houses and the designers
would have lunch at a littleTuscan Bistro in Milan.
Uh, Tuscany is.
(19:03):
Mullan is not in Tuscany, butthey seem to play out in Tuscan
bistros for some reason.
And that the uh, buyer fromBloomingdale's would be sitting
with Johnny Versace on Wednesdayat this tro of year, and all the
models would go to a placecalled Paper Moon for these thin
pizzas.
This became reported on.
In all the media, this was, uh,you started to see the cover of
(19:25):
Vogue with Italian models or, orbeing, um, on a Vespa on the Via
veto in, in, uh, in Rome.
Um, it was all created to giveItalian food a very chic do
image.
And these restaurants of thatstripe I just featured started
opening in the late eightiesplaces like dj, places like
(19:45):
Harry Ani, places like La Madre,many others, which really were.
Insisting that they were gonnabe serving the authentic
regional food.
And then, uh, very importantalso in the 1990s, uh, when the
Mediterranean Diet idea came in
Mark (20:02):
uhhuh, that
John (20:02):
concept allowed people who previously had dismissed Italian
food as being
Mark (20:09):
too heavy,
John (20:10):
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 singleday.
Italians aren't fat and they useolive oil and they don't have
heart disease.
Well, this just clinched thedeal.
Francis (20:27):
Well, you know, I, I, I think that's a pretty
interesting recap of how we gotto where we are today.
But one of the things that Ifound most interesting about
your book was how Italian foodcame into being in America in
from Italian immigrants to beingin restaurants and pizzas and,
and to processed food as well.
But we're gonna, I we're gonnatake a quick break.
We'll come back on the otherside and we'll talk about the
history of Italian food inAmerica.
(20:47):
Our guest is John Mariani.
His book is How Italian FoodConquer the World.
Mark (20:52):
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 ItalianAmerican person, would never
have considered eating out in,in an Italian restaurant, just
because that was kind of thefood that you had every, every
day or certainly every Sunday.
How did those restaurants gaintraction without the Italian
(21:13):
Americans in them?
John (21:15):
Well, it's, uh, I, I think what you say is largely true of
a lot of Italian Americans.
In my particular family, myparents used to like to go out
to eat and they would go to asteakhouse.
They would go to a continentalrestaurant.
Mm-hmm.
And they would also go to Mae'sif they wanted to.
So it was really just a nightout.
And we, we used to go to aterrific, terrific Italian
(21:35):
restaurant in the Bronx calledErrigo's, which is no longer
there, which sorted out as apizza city back in the 1930s.
And as these, it's interestingthat as these, these guys who
own these pizzerias, um, startedto serve more food and they got
a better clientele, they shutdown the pizza oven as being low
class.
Mm-hmm.
Um, funny thing is that today noItalian restaurant would dare
(21:58):
open without a pizza oven, evena fancy place.
But to get back to yourquestion, was that the Italian
food.
Of, let's say, for lack of abetter word, the little Italy's
around America.
And they're everywhere.
They're in Cincinnati, they'rein Cleveland, they're in St.
Louis.
Um, this was very lovable food,uh, that people went to, uh, non
(22:20):
Italians went to, um, because itwas very lovable and it was very
cheap and it was very abundantand.
They love the flavors.
What's not to like abouttomatoes and cheese and a little
bit of garlic, uh, great pizzaon a Friday night.
So the consequently, the, um,connection between Italian
Americans and just plainAmericans, uh, was very tight.
(22:43):
Even before World War ii.
After World War ii, whathappened was that.
As a detail of the book, um, theItalian movies, LA Dolce Vita
most specifically, and movieslike that, that showed a new
breed of postwar Italian beingvery glamorous, and also
American movies made in, uh,Italy, which was very, very
(23:04):
cheap to do.
So you had.
Audrey Hepburn on eating gelatoon the Spanish steps with
Gregory Peck.
You had Rosano Zi in about 10movies seducing everybody from,
uh, Catherine Hepburn, um, to,just about everybody in the
Hollywood Pantheon.
Uh, Olivia de Avi and Rosano wasalways after them.
(23:25):
And these were, this was a NewItaly that people had never seen
before because they had always,they had always thought of Italy
as the wonderful, that wonderfulscene in, Wal Disney's animated
feature.
A lady in the t trium of the bigrolly Polly, Tony and his, uh,
cook playing the violin, uh,with the red checker table, claw
(23:46):
pe bottle with, uh, straw andeating spaghetti and meatballs.
Um, this was a lovely image.
But it was also a corollaryimage to the, which I know you
probably share the ItalianAmerican Fine, despicable, was
the linking of all Italianrestaurants with mobsters and
mafia.
Mark (24:05):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And
John (24:06):
this has been persistent.
Uh, the Sopranos was the, theworst example of that, which, I
mean, I remember there was one Ididn't watch very many of.
There was one episode, whichlike.
15, 20 of'em have a big meal inItalian restaurant and they go
outside into the alley and thewaiter says, well, you know, you
didn't tip very much.
(24:26):
And they shoot the guy.
Mark (24:27):
Mm-hmm.
Oh
Francis (24:28):
yeah,
Mark (24:29):
yeah,
Francis (24:29):
yeah.
That's right.
John (24:30):
This is, this is horrible.
I thought,
Francis (24:31):
I've thought about doing that sometimes when people
don't tip enough, but I'venever, I've never had the guts
to follow service.
John (24:36):
Yeah.
So those were the two strains.
You had the, uh, the Rollie PlyLady in the Tramp Train, the
Strain and the Chef Boyardee,um, type of, image.
And then you had this otherimage was, am I gonna get shot
if I go to, uh, you know,Umberto's Clam Bar or Spark
Steakhouse because somebody gotshot there 40 years.
Francis (24:56):
And you talk about in your book that you feel that
was, that was really, thatinhibited some of the general
population from going to Italianrestaurants.
'cause even though they wereserving really good food, it
wasn't accorded the same respectas say a French restaurant will
be accorded.
you know, it was a cheaprestaurant.
Kind of a kind of an idea.
John (25:12):
Well, so was other, every other ethnic food, the Italian
was no different.
Um, you just were not supposedto charge anywhere close to what
you could charge a Frenchrestaurant for, I mean, if you
take a piece of veal in a Frenchrestaurant, you treat it to just
lemon butter.
They can charge anything theywant.
They can charge$30 for it.
You take a Vitello, Alimo, um, aScallopini, and you try to serve
(25:37):
the same exact dish in anItalian restaurant, and you had
to cut, you had to cut the priceby half.
Francis (25:41):
I know that it was Del Posto and then there was
somebody before that who wasreally going for the first to be
the first three star Alto Alto.
It was Alto.
It was Alto.
And they were shooting to be thefirst three star Italian
restaurant in New York City.
And I think we've matured to thepoint now where we understand
that, you know, you can havegreat, the high food of any
culture is, it's about the costof, of how you're doing it.
And there's no reason we shouldlook down on Italian food as not
(26:03):
being as refined, as well.
Those, those restaurants
Mark (26:05):
though, aren't, aren't really, those aren't Italian
American.
Restaurants.
No, they're, those are Italian,Italian restaurants.
Trying, you know, featuringeither regional cuisine or, or
several different regions
Francis (26:14):
of, well, let's go back, let's go back, uh, a
couple, a generation or so andgo into the, you know, you talk
about the, the, the idea ofItalian cuisine being slightly
exotic but not too exotic.
Um mm-hmm.
And we also write in your bookabout frozen pizzas and jarred
sauces.
And there is a lot of foods thatare.
Italian that lent themselves inAmerica.
(26:36):
Anyway, we'll
Mark (26:37):
call them Italianesque.
Mm-hmm.
Italianesque
Francis (26:40):
to being, um.
Processed or canned or popular.
I mean, we jar our own tomatoesfor our own sauce.
that's a, a processed food.
I mean, we do our own tomatoeslocally, but you know, you had a
rise of, very large gen revenuegenerating, I mean, home tomato
sauce, right?
Go tomato sauce.
Generated a lot of money to alot of people.
Um, and you talk about how ChefBoy Ardi actually, uh, wound up,
(27:02):
changed the spelling of hisname.
John (27:05):
Yeah, it was actually, it was originally spelled
B-O-I-A-R-D Bo.
But, um, for Americans topronounce B-O-I-A-R-D with that
kind of oli over the INEA wastough.
So he changes to BOY, whichevery American boy and then RD
became Chef Boyard D um.
And he's a remarkable figurebecause he started out and he
(27:28):
made a fortune selling cannedspaghetti.
Italians had always been very,very, very instrumental in, uh,
the canning industry, goingback, toda tomato paste coming
outta California and so forth.
Um.
What Chef Bodi or Chef Bodi didwas he was selling, um, scam
spaghetti, uh, to the militaryduring World War II and made a
(27:50):
great deal of money.
And these guys preferred tospam, I assume.
'cause when they came home fromthe war.
They made him a multimillionaireby keep buying this, this
spaghetti in a can, um, whichwas very, very cheap and, uh,
very, very, uh, delicious tothem and, uh, really caught the
spirit.
Americans have also beenresponsible Italian Americans
(28:11):
for, uh, created this pizzaoven, which is created by an
Italian American in, who madeovens in, um, new Rochelle.
And he came back from the war.
He told his family about thesepizzas.
And they said, well, coalburning, wood burning, that's
not gonna work.
So they invented the.
The, um, pizza oven, frozenpizzas came along very quickly
(28:32):
after frozen bird's, eye peasand, and, uh, all the frozen
foods of the early 1950s.
A pizza was a, a natural thingto, uh, try and a good snack
food.
So, um, then, you know, Stofercame along and put, uh,
fettuccine Alfredo into thesupermarket.
it was.
Um, much more popular than, uh,any other ethnic food.
(28:53):
Um, even though the supermarketshelves now are aligned with as
many Mexican products, uh, asthey are with Italian, I would
think.
But that says a lot about thedemographic shift of the Latinos
in this country.
Francis (29:04):
Well, and I also think it's funny because if, if you're
gonna preserve some sort offood, like you can actually
preserve a tomato sauce betterthan you can preserve other
foods.
It's not, you know, it's not thesame as if, if you're making it
fresh from the best ingredients.
we're gonna have to, leave itright here, but.
It is interesting how now infine restaurants and even in
okay restaurants, you are seeingthe return of the wood-fired
(29:24):
clay.
Mark (29:25):
Mm-hmm.
Pizza oven.
People are going back to thetraditional pizza ovens.
Yeah.
Uh, well I think that that wholeperiod, it was trendy to.
To take those shortcuts, to havethose shortcuts.
Don't spend so much time in thekitchen, don't spend so much
time on food, and now all of asudden you see people reemerging
from that malaise and saying,you know, I can, I can spend
(29:45):
more time making somethingbetter than, than the, Can of of
SpaghettiOs that actually notSpaghettiOs, sorry.
Different brand.
I'm, I gonna mix them out.
There's, I'm sure there's somekind of
Francis (29:56):
spaghetti.
Yeah.
Uhoh Mark, you made a mistakewith that one.
But forget
John (29:59):
Rice Sironi and
Francis (30:01):
the San Francisco treat, we shine.
That's right.
Anyway, John, thanks so much forcoming on the show.
John (30:06):
Great pleasure you guys.
Best of luck.
Francis (30:08):
Thank you
Mark (30:08):
very much.
Francis (30:08):
John John's book is How Italian Food Conquered the
World.
You can find out more about iton restaurant guys radio.com and
we'll be back in just a moment.
(30:40):
Hey everybody.
Welcome back to Mark France, therestaurant guys.
Um, chef, boy rdi, you know, andwe didn't really get all the way
into that.
Okay.
Chef Bodi, I get it now.
I knew he was a real guy, and itstarted out as army rations.
Well, and it still tastes likearmy rations.
Mark (30:56):
Here's, here's the, here's the beauty here, and, and John
mentioned this during theinterview, your choice was spam.
Yeah.
Or Chef Boyard D Exactly.
It's a tough one.
And so Chef Boyard D became verypopular.
Yeah.
I, I would choose Chef Boyd ifyou, outside of Hawaii, you
know, if the Hawaiian still andthe Philippines, the big
Francis (31:12):
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 Iopen.
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.
(31:32):
It, I, you know, I just, thatI'm not crazy about that opening
the can of it.
Just, I don't enjoy the smell atall.
And the worst is when there'scanned meat.
If there's like canned spaghettiand meatballs.
I don't know.
Last year I was in someone'skitchen and they were cooking a
can of some kind of spaghettimeatballs.
It's those,
Mark (31:48):
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, littlemeat, stuffed ravioli.
There's nothing that smells asbad as that to me.
And I, and I'm, and I'm sorry ifI'm sounding foodist, but, I
just, the meat, I can't take itlike people put it in the
microwave.
It smell, there's a similar
Francis (32:06):
smell to dog food.
I'm sorry.
There's a
Mark (32:07):
similar smell to dog food
Francis (32:09):
and, and maybe that means the dog food's really
good.
I don't know.
But whatever it is, I don'twanna eat it.
You know, I'm not a dog.
Um, no, it's, and if, I guess, Ithink if you have canned food
all the time, you have cannedmeat all the time.
Maybe you don't smell thatanymore.
Mm-hmm.
But I don't, and that's, butwhat I love about Chef Boyer D
is he took the name BOI.
A RDI, Boi was, that was
Mark (32:29):
awful.
Francis (32:29):
B-O-I-A-R-D-I.
It was exactly right.
Boi Chef Boi, right?
Yeah.
Not any, I don't know.
Mark (32:35):
I believe you.
Just for the sake of arguing.
No,
Francis (32:37):
not only did they change his name to Chef Bodi,
B-O-Y-A-R-D-E, but just to makesure you got it right, it's
B-O-Y-A-R-D-E-E.
Right.
I've always wondering what isthis from?
Well, you don't wanna sayBoyard, right?
Or Boyard Boyard.
Uh, it's funny when you thinkabout a time.
When America was so parochialthat that was, like a boy Bo
(32:57):
would be a crazy name.
That was an
Mark (32:58):
important marketing decision.
That was a really, really bigmarketing decision.
Wouldn't have made it, it, itmay not have made it otherwise.
They just, those types of foods.
In how we live now, and Iunderstand why they became
popular.
Like I said, you, you had womenstarting to go back to work.
You had families that weretrying to conserve time and you
had, and you had the advent ofmodern marketing convincing you
(33:21):
that to be modern and good,right?
You had to have the TV dinner.
What I don't understand is howthose products still remain on
the shelves when you can.
Frankly, go and buy a, a, a boxof pasta for a dollar and buy a
jar of tomato sauce for$2.
Why anybody would ever buy a canof chef OERD?
(33:43):
I cooked a pasta already sittingin that.
See that?
I don't understand at all.
That's.
These are as, as simple as it isto heat up the shaft.
Boy Rd.
That's how, that's how easy itis to boil water and put and put
macaroni in'em.
Francis (33:56):
Yeah, I'm with you.
I don't get that either, but So
Mark (33:58):
stop buying those.
Francis (33:59):
Yeah, I'm with you on that.
I don't.
I don't understand how we wentfrom an, an arena where Chef
Boyi had to change his name toChef Boyi.
Um, and then we got into an era,I think the dawn of the new era
was where a guy made up a namecalled Haaz, which doesn't mean
anything because it looksforeign and you know, has the
(34:22):
over the thing.
Mark (34:23):
Come on.
I remember being seven years oldand being like, um, mom.
Don't buy these anymore.
What?
The shelfware D Oh yeah.
SpaghettiOs, same thing.
It was SpaghettiOs, your
Francis (34:32):
mom.
Mark (34:33):
It was the seventies.
You, you, like I said, everybodybought them.
Wow.
Your mom is a great cook too.
Once, but it wasn't once yourmom 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 boughtand you said, okay, that's
gross.
Don't buy that anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were smart.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Well, I, I was, luckily I hadgreat food.
Surrounding me all the
Francis (34:54):
time and I was Irish.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed thishour as much as we have.
I'm Francis Sch.
And I'm Mark Pascal.
We are the restaurant guys onRestaurant guys radio.com.
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