"To eat good is to be closer to God" was a phrase mentioned in the film Big Night, used by Primo, one of the main characters, to describe his passion about food, meaning that eating a good dish makes people feel in paradise. In this movie, cooking was described in a religious and passionate way, it is presented as art, not only by the way it looks, but by how carefully it is prepared and how meaningful it is to the chef so that it becomes a way of expression, every cooking scene makes us feel part of that romance that exists between Primo and his cooking.

As we may remember, the plot of the movie involved the competition between the two restaurants, Paradise and Pascal's Italian Grotto, where Pascal’s restaurant had more success because he was not trying to defend the traditional Italian cuisine, but instead tried to indulge the clients. Pascal did not mind going against the Italian culinary ethics as long as his American clients attended to his restaurant and he generated income. As Rose DeAngelis and Donald R. Anderson's mention in their article  Gastronomic Miscuglio: Foodways in Italian-American Narrative, “Food for Pascal has nothing to do with family, tradition, and community, and everything to do with "good business."” (61) He gave the clients what they asked for, even if that meant to represent an erroneous Italian stereotype, as long as he didn’t lose his consumers.  

Why was it so important for Primo to conserve his values in the Italian cuisine? It would have been easier to simply give the clients what they were asking for, but Primo was a passionate cook and a proud Italian. Values are the essence of who we are as human beings and are a very telling of our culture and heritage. If he had chosen to ignore his values, his food would lack that special something that could only be obtained from a true Italian chef. And, in Italy, food is not just something you eat, there is a great respect for the culinary arts. Each pasta has certain sauces that you can put on top, the dishes have to be served at specific times (antipasti, primi, secondi, contorni, ecc), and each of the culinary rules have to be respected, the clients must always follow the chef’s indications. As mentioned in Thomas Ferraro’s article Feeling Italian. The Art of Ethnicity in America “In Italy, the customer is not always right; the guest/host relation of hospitality is not exactly what transpires when a stranger comes to dine; and there are things too precious to be left to an advantageous exchange rate, international goodwill, or nouvelle caprice.” (Ferraro, 182) Which explain Primo’s reactions to people complaining because they did not get their Americanized Italian dishes.

What made Pascal successful? He succeeded because he had just what the clients were looking for. If they wanted meatballs in their spaghetti, he created the dish for them, if they wanted to listen to an Americanized version of classic Neapolitan songs, he found the right artists to perform them. He always knew how to keep the client satisfied either by giving them a free bottle of wine or by simply smiling at them, even if they represented Pascal’s concept of “criminals”.

Just as in the movie the restaurant owners learned what the key to success was, in real life, the Italian communities in the United States (US) realized that the Italian culinary rules did not work as in their hometown. The love for food in the US could not even compare to the passion and respect felt for it in Italy. The perfect tactic in order to be able to have a prosperous restaurant, was to adapt and assimilate their Italian culture into the American one.

-Mariana Barrios