In Memory of Cecil Wellborn (1926-2021)
I just finished reading Stanley Tucci’s new memoir Taste and I have been salivating ever since I laid it down. On top of that, I have been watching “In Search of Italy, his six-episode CNN series now streaming on HBOMax. Tucci grew up in an Italian family (second generation) and was raised on the many family dishes brought to America from their native Calabria. After a long and rewarding acting career he has come to realize at age 60 that he is now more defined by the food he cooks and consumes than the roles he plays. How wonderful!
Growing up in a average white, Anglo-Saxon meat and potatoes Midwestern family, my exposure to Italian cuisine was pizza and spaghetti with meatballs and tomato sauce. That was it. My first real job was working as a busboy at the Blue Note Restaurant, in Richmond, Indiana, from the fall of 1966 until the summer of 1967. Quin Tarquinio, its owner, hired me because he knew my dad who frequently entertained business contacts there. The restaurant was once a mainstay of downtown Richmond, but in the early 1960s it moved to the Holiday Inn on the east side back when the popular motel chain featured restaurants and lounges. The place served steaks and a few Italian dishes based on Tarquinio family recipes and I had an opportunity to sample some of these during my meal break. Still, for the most part, I tended to stick with dishes I knew well which certainly limited my range of exploration.
This all changed in the summer of 1968 when I visited Italy for the first time (Venice, Florence, Rome, Pisa, Tuscany, Milan, Lake Como and in between) and I was introduced to an authentic palette of Italian cuisine. I learned for the first time the myriad possibilities in crafting a pizza and the ingredients used. And I quickly discovered that spaghetti was not the only pasta out there. And what a wide variety of tasty cheeses that far eclipsed the pedestrian flavor of Kraft’s Parmesan. Those who know me or have read this blog regularly know that I am a cheesehead from way back in my early Wisconsin days. My eyes were opened wide, and my taste buds primed.
My tastes for Italian food changed appreciably after I moved to Tucson to begin my graduate studies at the University of Arizona. During the week I stuck close to campus, attending classes and burning the midnight oil in the library. I took most of my meals at the student union or at one of the campus dining halls. That said, I was always happy to see Friday roll around with the promise of some free time to myself.
More often than not I would join my colleagues in an outing to Gentle Ben’s, beer garden just off campus that had open three years earlier, in 1971. The original location was built in 1908 as a private residence, and over the years it has served as the university president’s house, a boarding house, and as home to several different fraternities. It would eventually morph into the first brew pub in Tucson. If we desired something more than liquid sustenance, we would often find ourselves wandering over to Caruso’s, an Italian restaurant and local institution on North Fourth Avenue, one of Tucson’s first historic commercial districts north of downtown since World War, I and it has been thriving ever since. Known to locals as "Fourth," it features a street fair every spring and autumn and when I first arrived in early 1974 it was already known as the city’s bohemian or counter-culture quarter with shops and galleries, bars, tattoo parlors, bookstores, and some great and inexpensive places to eat.
Caruso’s was opened by Nicasio “Caruso” Zagona in 1938 and it has remained in the Zagona family ever since. He eventually passed it on to his son Salvatore Vincent Zagona who just passed away earlier this year at age 100. I was immediately drawn to the place because it reminded me of what I always thought an Italian restaurant should look like. A small dining room with rural Italian scenes on the walls and tables covered with red and white checked table clothes and a large bowl of pepperoncini peppers to snack on while waiting for one’s meal. We would order a couple carafes of the house red wine and something to eat as we rehashed the events of the past week and what we could anticipate in the future. I began to spread my wings and try new dishes . . . the house specialty Lasagna al Formo [baked lasagna] and the conchiglie ripiene di pollo parmagiana [stuffed shells with chicken parmesan]. And there was the pollo Afredo and the delicious homemade polpette [meatballs] that would almost melt in your mouth. Almost everything came slathered in the house tomato sauce cooked in the large copper pot in the kitchen that had been there since the placed opened. It was the late great Anthony Bourdain who once said, “an ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.” I seriously doubt Caruso’s had anything to hide, but the sauce was wonderful, nonetheless. I would return to Caruso’s almost forty years later and the place looked the same from the street. And there was the familiar dining room up front, but there were more dining areas in the rear along with a large, covered patio. But the food was just as good as I remembered. That is all that mattered.
SallyAnn and I married in December 1974, and she joined me in Tucson for the next year and a half until I completed my Master’s program at UA. We were living on two very modest salaries and so we did not eat out frequently. But we did venture out occasionally and often found ourselves at Luigi’s, a small Italian café halfway between the campus and our small apartment. SallyAnn worked at the campus library and at the end of the day I would walk there from the German department and together we would from time-to-time amble over to Luigi’s for dinner before heading home. This was usually on a Friday, and I did not have to worry about hitting the books later. It was a hole-in-the-wall place with probably no more than ten tables and a small counter with a couple of stools in the back. And like Caruso’s it had red and white checked table clothes and in the center of each table an old Chianti bottle as a candle holder. SallyAnn liked the veal parmagiana and I often ordered the linguini with white clam sauce prepared with finely chopped clams, garlic, anchovies (always a favorite on pizza), red pepper, and capers. This was a reach for me at the time as I had never eaten clams before and I found it all terribly irresistible and it remains one of my favorite Italian dishes to this day, especially when topped with some freshly grated pecorino romano. Unfortunately, Luigi’s and its building disappeared many years ago, but the memories are still clear, and I can still taste that clam sauce.
Mr. Wellborn was a regular diner at Scordato’s and so we were given the VIP treatment. I recall on our first visit we were given a table by a window with a fine view of the city in the distance while watching a squadron of javelinas (collared pecary) feeding on greens the kitchen staff had scattered among the saguaro cacti. One of the treats of the evening was our tuxedoed server preparing a lush and creamy fettuccini Alfredo at our table. I seem to recall that SallyAnn went for the veal parmagiana and I had the veal á la Scordato, a generous serving of veal Saltimbocca which was milk-fed veal scalloppine cutlets sauteed in olive oil with not too thin slices of prosciutto. Like its name it was an eruption of flavors; it tasted as if it wanted to jump out of my mouth. The owner came to our table to greet us along with a very nice bottle of Pinot Noir which was an ideal complement to a most memorable meal. After the meal Mr. Scordato invited us into the kitchen where his two sons worked (a daughter played piano in the dining room) and the flavorful scents hung heavy and afterwards we received a guided tour through The Tack Room, Scordato’s high end wine cellar. Who could not be sold on Italian cuisine after such a magical evening?
I ate at Scordato’s on my own during a business trip to Tucson a few years later and it was just as good as I remembered it. Sadly, on my last visit I found it closed and the building sitting vacant and rather forlorn as more and more development was encroaching on its once outlier location. Evangelos Vassious, another Tucson restauranteur bought the Scordato's in 1999 and remodeled and updated the once venerable restaurant. Evangelos served dishes from Spain, Italy and Greece. Vassious claimed he also bought the rights to the Scordato name and sued James’ two sons Joe and Daniel from using the family name in association with the popular Vivace and Trattoria Guiseppe, restaurants they owned and operated in Tucson. Vassious was awarded limited damages in 2004 and eventually went out of business suffering mediocre reviews. It’s not the name. It’s the food that counts. Trattoria Guiseppe has since changed ownership and Joe opened the upscale Scordato’s Pizzeria in 2010. Daniel Scordato has owned and operated Vivace since 1993 and I enjoyed a meal there on my last visit to Tucson.Daniel credits his father with teaching him the value of hard work and what it takes to make the customer happy. The success of Vivace is testament to that. On my visit I was sad to see that the fettucuine Alfredo was not on the menu as I suspected it would have been just as good as I remembered it from those many years ago. The menu did include osso buco which was a specialty dish at Scordato’s, and so I order it. I started out with grilled asparagus with Parma prosciutto mixed greens with shavings of parmigiano reggiano. The large veal shank was served in a vegetable-tomato sauce over polenta. It all took me back to that first memorable evening at Scordato’s. The father taught his son well.
There is a saying that the trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again. It seems like that at times. There is a common misconception that Italian food is tasty because there so many ingredients. In fact, the reason why it's so mouth-watering is because there are less ingredients than in most other cuisines. It is pretty basic when you get right down to it. Too many people have tried to over-complicate it. Italian food is extremely simple. What makes it unique is there are so many different variations to consider . . . Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on. “Italian food really reflects the people. It reflects like a prism that fragments into regions.” Each of Italy’s 20 regions has something unique to offer. The bottom line is simple. It’s tasty and national. It’s colorful and makes you happy. What more can you really ask for?
No comments:
Post a Comment