Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

These days Irene and Marie make the mozzarella in a back room, under a tiny photograph of their father lovingly placed in an ornate frame decorated with a tiny rose. It stands on a shelf over the vats.

Carmela and her husband, Oronzo Lamorgese, are the owners of Leo’s Ravioli, the pasta store next door to Leo’s Latticini. With every member 2 8 2

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of the family involved in the business, Nancy says with regret that she feels her daughters are wasting their education. Irene has her master’s degree, Carmela her bachelor’s, and Marie is only a few credits short of graduating college. Says Nancy, “I feel very guilty. Irene had a good teaching job and made good money, and now she’s here in the store.” That’s something of an understatement. The family is not only in the store during the day, they live above it at night—the Lamorgese family over the pasta store and the DeBenedittis family over the cheese store.

Leo’s Latticini has become celebrated in recent years, at least locally.

The shop supplies the food for both the home- and visiting-team club-houses at nearby Shea Stadium, and this has brought about a change in decor. Although still cowcentric, Leo’s also pays homage to the home team: during baseball season, the sisters often wear New York Mets jerseys while they work. Last season they opened a small sandwich shop in the stadium and named it Mama’s of Corona. During games they sell Mama’s Specials, turkey subs, and Marie’s new vegetarian sub—

fresh mozzarella and three kinds of roasted vegetables on a warm roll.

All manner of governmental agencies, not just the police and fire departments, are drawn to Leo’s. Over the years it has evolved into an unofficial cafeteria for civil servants. Occasional customers include the United States Secret Service Countersniper Unit—proof, I’d say, that Marie’s food rests easy on the stomach—as well as space-shuttle tech-nicians from NASA, who have been known to carry subs back to Florida with them.

Al Roker, the famed TV weatherman, sent a limousine to collect a sub, and the driver firmly instructed Marie to pile on more garlic than belonged on a single sandwich. When she didn’t hear a word from Roker, she stopped sleeping well. She was about to telephone him and apologize for overdoing the garlic when an autographed picture arrived.

The sisters even had a brush with glamour when Kenar, a clothing company, heard about the shop and brought in model Linda Evangelista for a fashion shoot. The whole family posed with Evangelista for an advertisement that ran in the New York Times and now hangs on the wall of the shop. They were delighted when a customer came into the F O R K I T O V E R

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shop, saw the advertisement, pointed to Evangelista, and asked, “How can I meet that sister?”

They have expanded the store, adding a modest outdoor dining area called Mama’s Backyard. It features tables with umbrellas, white-painted wrought-iron chairs, a cascading fountain, a few potted plants, and a statue of Saint Francis. In the past year the family took over yet another shop on the block, which they use for their burgeoning catering business. (They sheepishly recall the time they decorated a six-foot sub intended for a bachelor party with pink flamingos.) They’re so busy working that none of them ever seems to want to go anywhere. Irene’s twelve-year-old Mercury Sable has less than eight thousand miles on it.

Marie says she is always getting calls from people who hear about the store and want to visit but don’t know how to find it. (New Yorkers living in Manhattan can’t find anyplace in Queens except LaGuardia and Kennedy airports.) The sisters, who will usually do anything for their customers, claim to be incapable of providing directions. “We tell them we don’t know how to get here because we’re already here,” Marie says.

Food & Wine, november 2002

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Ten Reasons Why White Wine

Is Better than Red Wine

1. White wine does not stain clothing, which is important to those of us who dine with enthusiasm.

2. White wine does not cause debilitating headaches, whereas red wine contains chemicals identical to those hidden from United Nations inspectors.

3. White wine includes Champagne.

4. No decanting required. Watching sommeliers light candles and stare at red wine sediment is like attending a bad seance.

5. White wine goes with cheese the way red wine only wishes it did.

6. Making white wine keeps the Germans distracted.

7. Ever notice that the winos hanging around vacant lots strewn with broken bottles and dead cats are always drinking red wine?

8. Sure, red wine lowers cholesterol, but is that any way to decide on a beverage?

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9. Bad red wine is always worse than bad white wine.

10. Red wine drinkers talk constantly about terroir and barnyard aromas. They’re best brought to their senses by throwing a glass of cold white wine in their faces.

W I N E

N O S E J O B

My feet hurt, my shoulders ached, and my neck was as stiff as my wing-tip collar. Even worse, my pockets were empty.

A few hours into the first of my two evenings working as a sommelier at Maurice, the acclaimed restaurant at the Hotel Parker-Meridien in Manhattan, I had learned quite a bit about the duties of the professional wine steward, including how physically tiring it is to be unerringly polite. I had also learned why there are so few sommeliers left in America—only about sixty at last count. The rest probably starved to death, penniless and gnawing on corks.

The real wine steward at Maurice is Roger Dagorn, thirty-nine, a native of France, a past president