Pasta From Il Nord to the North End

I distinctly remember the meal in Colico last summer—at the agriturismo just north of Lake Como—when I had the pumpkin ravioli I’d been searching for my whole trip. It was my second to last night in Italy and I knew I had finally found that perfect meal. I had to close my eyes between bites of the pasta. I was intoxicated by more than just the food, but the sentiment was genuine. I slapped my hand down on my seat and announced to the table, “This is where I’m going to be working next summer.”

Fast forward eight months and 20 Italian A quizzes later. I know enough of the language to complete my biweekly “graphic novel” assignments that concern a rabbit named Bunny who goes to Italy to learn how to cook and to write about it (as rigorous as it is original), and I’m poised to return to Italy in August as an apprentice chef to a hotel in Umbria.

But do I need to jump all the way across the Atlantic to get this authentic experience? Wouldn’t crossing the Charles suffice? After failing to persuade my Italian class of the academic merits of a field trip to the North End, my teacher, Nives Dal-Bo’ Wheeler, suggested I contact her friend Maurizio Tognetti, who lives in the North End: “If you would like me to put you in touch him…maybe he could give you some useful advice and some further inspiration.”

I met Mr. and Mrs. Tognetti in their apartment on Tileston Street, a small offshoot of Hanover. The first thing I learned about Mr. Tognetti was that he was “very critical of the North End. I live here and I hate it.” The second thing I learned was that home for the retired Mr. Tognetti was and forever will be Mantova, a city in Northern Italy. The third thing I learned was that his English was less than fluent. He was almost more authentic than I could handle.

“The people who live here and visit think that it’s Italy,” Tognetti said. “But it’s not like it is in Italy. There’s no such thing as ‘Italian’ cuisine. There’s Nord, Centro, and Sud. But here, there’s no Northern…And everything’s changed. Everything’s American.”

“These cooks that come here and work in the kitchen…they learn by reading,” he added. “You have to absorb the atmosphere, the culture of the place. They miss what is behind the recipe—the culture, the tradition. Maybe they make the thing from the recipe, but they don’t understand it.”

Giovanna, his wife and translator, stepped in. “It’s not a bad neighborhood. We have good friends here. We say hi, like we do in Italy, when we pass on the street. He just hates when people exchange Italy for the North End.”

Tognetti, traditionalist though he may be, was right. The North End is not an authentic Italian town. It is as much home to Old North Church–a symbol of Boston—and Paul Revere—who rung the bells of the church for five pennies every Sunday long before his midnight ride—as it is a transplanted European city. So to consider it an Italian community would not only be misrepresenting the Italians across the pond; it would be selling short Boston’s Italian Americans.

As we waved goodbye and I followed his wife for a brief tour of the neighborhood, he said in perfect English: “Hey, send me your article when you’re done. Worse comes to worst, I won’t like it. And then I’ll just kill you.” I laughed. “I have friends,” he added. I stopped laughing.

Stepping off his porch, I reentered America.

A week later, I returned to the neighborhood to go on Michele Topor’s culinary tour of the North End. Topor, a trained chef and resident of the North End for almost four decades, has been leading trips through the area for the past 14 years. The first stop on the three-hour walking and tasting tour was Maria’s Pastry Shop, five minutes from the Haymarket station on the T’s green line. The skepticism I had for the tour and the North End lasted all of 15 minutes. It faded when Topor herself intoned “there’s no such thing as ‘Italian cuisine’” and completely disappeared with the first bite of the cassata siciliana. This sponge cake soaked in Strega and dotted with chocolate chips was perfectly moist and not-too-sweet. I was sold: the North End, authentic or not, was delicious.

The tour continued through a wine store and a green grocer before returning to the shops I visited with Giovanna Tognetti the week before—La Salumeria Italiana, Sulmona Meat Market, and Polcari’s Coffee, where plastic barrels of dried legumes lined the floor, glass jars full of licorice root stick teetered precariously, and the whole store smelled like the deepest corner of a spice cabinet. Topor pointed out the same things that Ms. Tognetti had: the “real” Nutella in the glass jar, the impact of the Euro on the Salumeria, the less than desirable bresaola (air-cured beef) from Uruguay.

The resonances between their favorite parts of the North End were almost as reassuring as the things I heard and saw while walking through the neighborhood. It was like stepping back into the 1930s, into a family-run community. Maria, the owner of the eponymous pastry shop, was in the back cooking while her daughter hung out in the front after school. Everyone was on a first name basis. The old men muttered as they shuffled along the street, heads down. The town buzzed with chiacchiere—the rumor and gossip that flits between extended family. There were no Starbucks stores, but there were lawn chairs on every street corner, where residents sat and watched the day go by.

So does that mean close enough is close enough? Would buying authentic ingredients in the North End be a good enough substitution for the real thing? Well, no. The North End is not Italy, and even the neighborhood’s best meal can’t even approximate the atmosphere of the olive trees, the free-roaming cows, and the butchers who recite Dante.

But it shouldn’t have to. If we take the North End for what it is—a delicious enclave in north Boston—it is unparalleled. When it comes down to it, anything that’s powerful enough to remind us of the world outside of Harvard’s appetite-suppressing gates is worth its T fare 20 times over.

So now that summer is practically here, keep traveling and keep eating. I wish you many of those moments when you have to close your eyes between bites, wherever they may happen.

––Columnist Rebecca A. Cooper can be reached at cooper3@fas.harvard.edu.