Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with spaghetti

Welcome to L'Estaminet. You'd like a Duvel.. and spaghetti? But what's your name?!

theiconoclast31 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:26:37 -0800

Which Belgian character orders spaghetti and a Duvel at L'Estaminet in Bruges? I was at L'Estaminet on my trip to Europe and met some locals. I'd just finished eating spaghetti and we started chatting. They mentioned a Belgian character (possibly a detective) who visits L'Estaminet to have spaghetti and a Duvel. And then they bought me a Duvel to complete the experience!

But I can't remember the name of the character for the life of me.

When the chimes finish, begin.

Dreamcast — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:16:43 -0800

Looking for songs by bands that are in the style of Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western soundtracks. I'm quite the fan of songs that have an Ennio Morricone/Spaghetti Western vibe to them (here's an example of an Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western song, if you've never heard one), but I only know of a few. Anyone have any suggestions? They can be songs by bands/artists that don't usually play that style, or songs by bands that do usually play that style. It doesn't matter to me, as long as it has a Spaghetti Western sound.

I'm a fan of songs like Cast a Long Shadow by the Monochrome Set, Call of the West by Wall of Voodoo, and Los Rancheros by Adam and the Ants, so any recommended songs don't have to be extremely "thick" with a Spaghetti Western sound, it just has to be there.

It's like The Old Spaghetti Factory with a goatee.

designbot — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:10:17 -0800

What is the deal with Spaghetti Warehouse & The Old Spaghetti Factory? I went to my first Spaghetti Warehouse yesterday. The similarities to Old Spaghetti Factory were overwhelming. It looks like someone (maybe Robert Hawk or Charles Tandy?) visited an Old Spaghetti Factory on the West Coast, said "hey, what a great idea," went back to Dallas, and built an exact cargo-cult duplicate from memory. Old Spaghetti Factory was founded in 1969, and Spaghetti Warehouse in 1972, so it must have happened not long after Old Spaghetti Factory opened.

The two companies don't appear to be related at all, but the resemblances are too numerous and too exact to be coincidental. For instance:

The name: Where does spaghetti goes after it leaves the Old Spaghetti Factory? The Spaghetti Warehouse, of course. (In Canada, it's apparently called The Old Spaghetti Warehouse.)

The business strategy: The Old Spaghetti Factory:
Dussin pioneered the concept of developing restaurant properties in places others considered unworkable. These diamond-in-the-rough locations often are unique and distinctive—even historic—buildings in older warehouse districts where rents are low. As the restaurant's popularity grows, the area begins to improve. Other stores and businesses move in, bringing more people to the area. The Old Spaghetti Factory's traffic goes up, but the rents stay low.
Spaghetti Warehouse:
Based in Garland, Texas, the company typically establishes outlets in abandoned factories and warehouses in the downtowns of large metropolitan areas, using any tax assistance for developing an urban downtown property to pay for the facility's conversion to a restaurant.

The decor: Both restaurants feature a pseudo-Victorian mismatched aesthetic, with dark wood paneling, and elaborate glass lighting fixtures. Spaghetti Warehouse is done a bit more on-the-cheap, and features more random bric-a-brac. Most tellingly, both restaurants commonly feature seating inside a converted San Francisco trolley car in the middle of the dining area. Considering that one restaurant is from Portland and one from Dallas, it would be remarkable indeed if they both happened to come up with this bizarre idea independently.

The food: At both restaurants, entrees cost around $8, and include salad and unlimited bread. A small loaf of sourdough bread is brought out before the meal on a small cutting tray, with a serrated knife and a cup of garlic butter. The available entrees are very similar. After your meal at the Factory, you get a cup of vanilla, chocolate, or spumoni ice cream. When kids are done eating at the Warehouse, they can choose from a cup of chocolate or vanilla.

The locations: The states where Spaghetti Warehouse is located form almost an inverse map of the states where the Old Spaghetti Factory is located. It looks like they've expanded up to each other's borders, and there are now a few cities (like Atlanta) which have both chains.

This can't just be a coincidence. Does anybody have the inside scoop on how these bizzaro restaurant chains have co-existed for so long, or who ripped off who? Are they both copying some prototypical Old Spaghetti Dough Processing Facility in San Francisco?

Bonus question: Does anyone remember an 80's/early 90's comedy in which a guy was planning to start a restaurant chain called McRonald's (or McBonald's) which was basically an exact rip-off of McDonald's?

Trade you for your peanut butter

darksasami — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:23:28 -0800

How can I make elementary school spaghetti sauce? Remember school cafeteria spaghetti? The noodles were skinny and underdone in places, and the sauce was thick and full of some sort of cheap meat ground very fine. Anything it touched was left coated with strange orange grease that stained worse than Cheetos. Tomatoes were probably involved, but no identifiable parts ever appeared, and they seemed to be less a base than a seasoning.

I have all kinds of recipes for spaghetti sauce, but they all have the same problem: they're designed to be good. How can I recreate the horrible old school lunches I remember so well?

Nothing like the taste of fresh grown spaghetti.

timeistight — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:20:52 -0800

Where can I found a good quality download of the infamous April 1, 1957 Swiss Spaghetti Harvest story from the BBC program Panorama? All I can find is the crappy Real video stream in my link or conversions of it.

spaghetti western music in entertainment lately

gerg — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 10:00:36 -0800

What are some some examples of how Spaghetti Western music is being used today? Two examples I can think of off the top of my head are how Tarantino has appropriated the works of Luis Bacalov and Ennio Morricone to create the soundtrack for Kill Bill 1/2 and Gianfranco Reverberi's 'Nel Cimitero Di Tucson' as sampled in Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy'. Others?

Good Italian Sunday Sauce Recipe?

Lord_Pall — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 07:48:18 -0800

I'm looking for a great Italian Tomato "sunday sauce" recipe with bones in it. We have a family our family has been friends with for years. They're a typical Italian American family, and the mother makes the most unbelievable sauce known to mankind.

If I remember it correctly, it has some sort of "meat shreds" in it, Sausage, meatballs, onions, tomatos, and proably a zillion other things.

It's VERY rich and meaty tasting. I remember sucking the marrow out of the bones that simmered in the sauce for 10+ hours.. Truly a wonderful food experience.

Additional info: So meaty that it had a sheen to it..

So after a horrifically failed tomato sauce experiment yesterday (storebought tomato sauce gussied up, then burnt to hell in a pressure cooker), I'm biting the bullet.

I need a recipe that has bones in it, meatballs and the like. I assume the shreds of meat came from the bones included..

Any suggestions? books? etc.

I've got a few starter links i've found, but i still haven't gotten clarity on what I'm doing. I like this as a base due to the tomato content and commentary on sugar, but I don't think it has enough garlic and the like. I also like this one because it includes a glass of wine, but I'm confused about the pork vs. veal vs. beef bones.

So any suggestions? I crave sauce!

How do you make spaghetti sauce?

zardoz — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:30:55 -0800

SauceFilter: starting with just a can of diced tomatoes, how do you make spaghetti sauce? I'm looking for simple recipes. Here's what I usually do: cook for a fairly long time over lowish heat, and gently mash the chunks to get a consistent texture. Problem is I can never seem to reduce it enough--the sauce is sometimes a bit thick but there's also water that doesn't boil off. I add salt and pepper, garlic (sautee that first, in butter or olive oil), whatever spice I can find--basil, parsley, thyme--some sugar, and at the end some butter. It's not bad but I want to try something different.