My Obsession with Spaghetti

October 9, 2014

People ask me all the time what my favorite dish is. They must have some expectation that I will say something fancy, like lobster thermidor or truffle-stuffed quail. Or something more homegrown like a grandmother’s roasted chicken.

 

I’m met with the same incredulous look every time I tell them it’s spaghetti.

 

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But you went to culinary school…”

“So?”

“Isn’t spaghetti… pedestrian?”

“If I was on death row, I would want it for my last meal.”

 

See, what’s great about food is its ability to engage all five senses. It’s art that you can smell. A necessity you can taste. An idea you can hear. It can make a bad day better, a breakup bearable, a joyous occasion even more wonderful. In the case of spaghetti, it does all that. And then some. It takes me to a happy place.

 

I was a little girl in Manila when I fell in love with spaghetti: the one sold at Shakey’s, which was our go-to place when my parents wanted to take us out on a Friday night.

 

When a kid had a birthday party that wasn’t held at their home, the venue was Shakey’s. Like Chuck E Cheese’s minus the skeeball. Though there were always balloons and puzzles and other goodies. I especially looked forward to those parties because I would get to watch the chefs toss the pizza behind huge glass windows from a banistered dais with steps at both ends.

 

I could watch those spinning doughs for hours.

 

One day, Shakey’s introduced the Skilletti: spaghetti, with a tomato sauce laden with garlic, served in a skillet. It emerged from the kitchen sizzling and smelling of heaven.

 

All I need to do is close my eyes and I can taste it. My senses go into overdrive and I’m transported to my childhood.

 

I can feel the viewing window’s cold glass pressed against my nose as I watched the chefs throw those magical discs in the air in a kind of glorious ballet before my mother would call me back to the table to patiently await our food. I would squirm in my seat while dozens of other families enjoy their pizzas and pastas. There are a couple of children, younger and far more unruly than me or my siblings (and I have an autistic brother) running around the packed restaurant. There’s a balloon or two at nearby tables, and I jealously eye them and wish they were mine. The colorful stained glass windows of Shakey’s signature decor forever etched in the stone that is my mind.

 

Then the waiter comes out and I stare at the skillet and take in the enchanting sound of that sizzle before I dig in.

 

A few years ago, on my first visit to the Philippines since my family moved to America, I begged to have Shakey’s for my first meal back. I would be disappointed to find the Skilletti had long since been retired and the simple spaghetti recipe had been changed. The newer stores had abandoned Shakey’s charming old-school decor and had replaced instead with boring plaster walls and no personality. It just wasn’t the same; it wasn’t the food, or experience, I remembered.

 

But you never forget your first. And then came “the one.”

 

After college, my best friend Stacey and I embarked on the requisite whirlwind tour abroad. We joined a tour that took us all over Western Europe, and on the ferry from Brindisi, Italy to Corfu, Greece, I ordered a plate of bolognese from the ship’s cafeteria not realizing it would become the singularly best spaghetti I would ever taste in my life.

 

What it lacked in Shakey’s garlicky goodness and sensational presentation, it made up for in taste. I wasn’t culinarily savvy back then, but like my beloved skilletti, I remember the distinct hearty taste of the ragout. Drawing on sensory recall, now armed with a culinary degree and loads more gastronomical experience, I can only surmise that there must have been marsala or port that added to the dish’s particular taste.

 

I raved on and on about it to our fellow travelers, who were slightly skeptical about eating ferry food. Stacey dubiously wondered if I wasn’t just famished that I would enjoy anything at that point, even poop on a stick. After all, it had been a few hours since our last meal, a forgettable pizza we opted for in lieu of a walking tour of Pompeii. A mistake, in hindsight, not just because we missed out on seeing spectacularly preserved ruins (we were told) but that Stacey fell ill during the ferry ride. Though her seasickness may have exacerbated the reaction.

 

Like my first skilletti, I remember the details all too well… unsteadily shoving noodles into my mouth with the oscillating movement of the ship, learning how to say “efharisto” (Greek for “Thank you”) from the paper lining the tray, and subsequently saving it for my scrapbook. (There was a large, jolly, smiling seal on it. How could I throw it away?)

 

And this was all before smart phones and photographing your food became a thing. Which is probably why I remember those spaghettis especially well; I can see, smell, taste them as if I was eating them right now.

 

 

I have consumed plenty of stellar meals through the years. I’ve devoured hundreds of plates of spaghetti (from all over the world even) in search of better, mostly to prove that a ferry cafeteria could not possibly serve the best spaghetti I’ve ever had. Certainly, there have been numerous challengers over the years. I’ve tried to make one myself, but even with formal culinary training, I have been unable to replicate the same bewitching flavor. That spaghetti on the ferry ride from Italy to Greece remains, to this day, unrivaled.

 

For as long as my body can take gluten, I will keep trying to find a more delicious take. There has to be one out there, right? But “ferry spaghetti” is a tough act to follow. That it happened to be a highlight from the trip of a lifetime elevates it to LEGENDARY.

 

As we celebrate National Pasta Month, I would hope that you, dear reader, stumble upon a plate of spaghetti so incredible that you will remember it for the rest of a happy, well-fed life. I’m grateful – and lucky – that, for me, lightning struck twice.

 

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