Cucina Chatter

In trying to determine the linguistics behind this for some time, I came to the following conclusion: Gravy is largely a South Philadelphia term but there are pockets of little Italy in North Jersey, Chicago, and virtually all of the Bronx–but not other parts of NY–where Italian-Americans call it gravy. The gravy peep say it [...]

“SUNDAY GRAVY, ALLA JOHNNY D” This post comes courtesy of Johnny “Meatballs” DeCarlo. Growing up in my North Jersey family, the big thing was rich, red homemade “Gravy,” which was much more than just a meat-based sauce—hence the name—and as the full name for it, “Sunday Gravy” implies, it was cooked and enjoyed on, as [...]

Italian Joe from Nevada e-mailed me a few months ago to say that he and his buddies (20 of them) were having the classic gravy vs. sauce argument via e-mail. Then while hanging out one night, they took their argument to that beacon of truth, the Internet. They typed keywords into TIVO and BAM (Oops! [...]