09 Jan Sauce vs. Gravy
I was chatting with Chef Rick Tramonto (of TRU in Chicago) this morning for an upcoming “Behind the Toque” piece, and was reminded of our first meeting. We were at a Relais & Chateaux conference in Puerto Rico, and we had planned to get together to discuss his participation in the Ecole des Chefs program I was running at the time.
As the group gathered for an outdoor dinner in the tropical evening air, he approached the table where I was sitting. “Before we can be friends,” he said, “I have three questions for you.” One of those — and the most important — was “Does your family call it ‘sauce’ or ‘gravy?'” Knowing that such a question is the source of feuding among Italian-Americans nationwide, I vehemently stood my ground and said, “Sauce.”
He smiled and said, “OK. Now we can eat.”
I was greatly amused by this exchange, because the sauce/gravy controversy, sadly, has been prevalent in my life as a child of an Italian immigrant. Never in my family’s history has the tomato-based pasta accoutrement been called anything but sauce, and I’m not sure where these “gravy” boat people come from, but they tend to argue the point quite fervently, and I have been in more than one verbal skirmish regarding the subject.
That this was a litmus test for Rick immediately established a common ground between us — he was one of “us” — as well as reinforced the proverbial fence separating the “Gravies” from the “Sauces.” In my family’s house, gravy is brown, and is crafted from a mixture of roux and pan drippings. The end.
If you are of Italian heritage, I encourage you to weigh in on this issue. I have yet to determine whether the difference in definition is regional, inspired by dialect, or the result of changes occurring over several generations. I have yet to meet a native of Italy, however, who calls it “gravy.”
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