That's Amore

Hi Friends!

I’m taking a little breather so this will be my last post until the early new year. Enjoy a safe, joyful, restful season! EAT ALL THE PIE!

Gratitude!

X!-She

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I’m standing on a sidewalk midway up Hanover Street, the janky little vein of restaurants and cafes that runs through Boston’s North End neighborhood. The North End is a pocket of Boston real estate—measuring only about .36 square miles—settled in the 1630s. By the nineteenth century waves of Italian and Irish and Easter European Jewish immigrants reshaped the North End into the distinctive cultural enclave it remains to present day.

The North End is our version of New York’s “Little Italy” with its narrow streets and old, burnished brick brownstones and churches and old men squatting precipitously on wee folding chairs drinking espresso and smoking cigars outside of Caffe Vittoria. And practically every other weekend in the summer there is a feast: St. Agrippina di Mineo Feast; Fisherman’s Feast' of the Madonna Del Soccorso di Sciacca; Saint Anthony’s Feast, casually referred to as the “Feast of all Feasts,” which should definitely give you pause because I’m guessing that designation was really, really earned. There are celebratory masses to these feasts followed by beautiful, elaborate processions or parades coupled with all sorts of entertainment (singers, games) and, of course, foodfoodfood.

You had me at “homemade pasta.” ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

North End eateries are sprinkled liberally throughout the area, but you could stand on Hanover Street alone and make a kind of sing-song game out of the names of restaurants that follow one after another up and down the blocks: Saraceno, Carmelina’s, Flor-en-tine Café! There is no such thing as a bad meal in the North End, we like to brag. And this is mostly true. What can’t be forgiven or forgotten by a fresh cannoli from Mike’s Pastry or a thick slab of Tiramisu from Modern Pastry or even a hot loaf of bread to gnaw on from the legendary Bova’s Bakery, open 24-hours? Sugar is a worthy penance for the sins of too much garlic.

I wander the crooked streets and take photos and inhale the delicious scents that fill the neighborhood like snow and I think about my Nona. Her real name was Regina, but it wasn’t until my mother saw me working on a family tree homework assignment, filling in the names of my maternal grandparents—Nona and Nono—that she gently corrected me. Regina? Ambrose? I’m sorry, ma’am, it is you who are mistaken. It’s definitely Nona and Nono, please and thank you forever.

The awning alone looks good enough to lick! (Please don’t) ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography

My grandparents came to live with us when I was in grade school. Nona smelled forever of flour and warm water and earthy notes of tomato. Even when she was no longer cooking for herself she somehow managed to keep this bouquet of fragrances. A second skin of countless plates piled with buttery, oily pasta and of thick, airy slabs of bread hot from the oven, the crust sweet and light and of roasting meats and of simmering sauces and soups and of hulking wheels of parmigiana stored in soft brown paper bags. All of it transformed into platters of love and joy and, probably, sorrow and regret and longing served to her husband of more than 50 years and four children. Served again and again later on to grandchildren and in-laws and cousins who had gone errant at some point, but then reappeared at an Easter or Thanksgiving table like the return of a disappeared sock.

In the kitchen Nona could definitely boss, but she didn’t complain. Cooking was her serious responsibility. I have a photo of her somewhere standing on a small footstool by the stove. She was short by design and aging did her no favors. Nona is on the stool so that she can properly stir what appears to be a soup pot the size of a semi-truck wheel and the depth of a black hole. In the photo she wields a thick wooden spoon like a warrior about to bludgeon the enemy. My mom stands with her back to the sink, washing dishes. My two aunts stand near Nona, peering over the stove at whatever culinary sorcery she’s conjuring. Both women wear the same sort of expression as the people standing next to the trainers who slip the crocodiles lunch at the aquarium. Nona looks completely unaware of anything other than the task at hand.

In all the years that Nona lived with us we never brought her to the North End. I wonder if she would have enjoyed it or if she would have found it catered too much to tourists searching for some kind of “authentic” cultural experience. Nona hated movies like The Godfather because she thought they stereotyped Italians as violent and lazy. But I think she might have softened to walk around this lovely, simple jumble of streets and recognize the way people here are connecting through food. I like to think she would have approved.

I think after the death of her husband, the second biggest sorrow in her life was losing her tastebuds. My mother would make a favorite pasta or chicken dish of hers, every ingredient exact, every step precisely replicated. Nona would sigh and shake her head, “I can’t taste nothing no more,” she’d say her voice sheer and raspy like the rustling of used tissue paper. She’d shrug a little, her blue eyes watering chasing after a bowl of memories.

 

Every block adds 10 calories, like, just, like STANDING there! Totally worth it! ©SheilaMoeschenPhotography