The Obsession

 

Food is an American phenomenon. It has replaced sex as the nation’s chief form of intimacy. We take it in our mouths, masticate it with our teeth, maul it with our tongues and swallow it into our bodies. It’s second only to the weather as a topic of conversation between strangers and casual acquaintances.

A fine meal is a mandatory accompaniment to any romantic encounter. An aptitude for cooking and food preparation is the most essential talent a spouse can bring to marriage. It’s often used to spice up our sex lives. Frank Sinatra famously ate a ham- and-egg breakfast off the chest of a Las Vegas call girl. Less famous lovers dip and smear genitalia with flavored oils, lotions and syrups. I once gnawed a pair of edible panties off my wife’s pelvis.

Friends wouldn’t think of sharing significant moments without breaking bread. Food is so abundant in post-industrial societies that eating isn’t strictly about subsistence anymore, it has become recreation. Most of us cannot fathom missing a meal. Doing so creates the illusion that we have entered a state of starvation. Being deprived of food is a popular form of torture. Trying to lose weight by restricting calories is a page straight out of the Masochist’s Handbook.

Nothing provides more abiding enjoyment than eating. We can dine repeatedly without diminished pleasure. We indulge several times a day without having to think about it. Food is something even the most disciplined among us simply cannot resist. Our favorite meals are more addicting than tobacco, alcohol and firearms, as well as controlled and illegal drugs.

Food gives us comfort. Light, chilled dishes cool our bodies in the summer. Hot, dense entrees warm us during winter.

The variety of ethnic cuisines and their styles of preparation stagger the palate. We bake, barbecue, broil, fry, grill, roast, sauté, sear, steam, microwave, fondue and flambé them. Certain foods are even given magical qualities, such a chocolate, garlic, truffles and red hot chili peppers. Just thinking about food makes mouths water and stomachs growl in the language of visceral desire. No aroma is more heavenly than a meal in preparation.

There’s no stopping America’s all-you-can eat gluttony. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts and in-between-meal snacks are so prevalent that 30 percent of us have eaten and waddled our way into obesity. Another 30 percent of us are clinically overweight and well on our way to joining the rotund ranks of the obese.

Food is a matter of life and death.

I should know. My name is Mickey Marciano, and food is my life. I cook and tend bar at my brother Vinny’s restaurant. It’s called Marciano’s Mangia House and it is, without a doubt, the most successful Italian restaurant in all of upstate New York. The restaurant’s sterling reputation spans the state and brings diners from Buffalo and Niagra Falls, Syracuse and Rochester, Albany and Poughkeepsie — and even from the Big Apple itself, the world’s supreme restaurant market. Our menu and monumental success is built upon two dozen secret family recipes brought from Italy to the New World by our immigrant grandparents. We pack the joint nightly and rake in a cash flow that would make an old-fashioned Latin American drug cartel proud. This is a family- run operation in the truest sense of the term. Marciano’s belongs to Vinny lock, stock and barrel, and every key position is filled by a family member. Our parents and siblings all work here. We all draw fat salaries that keep us in living in big homes and driving late-model automobiles.

While I uncork bottles of wine, draw beers and polish down the bar, my sister Ginger plays hostess, escorting famished diners a group at a time into the enormous dining room, made to feel even more spacious by its 25-foot high ceiling and crown molding. Sister Maria runs the dining room as head waitress, and sister Angie keeps the books and manages inventory. Brother Ringo stretches and dresses the dough for our legendary pizzas. Mother Margherita and father Albie are on the cooking line, slaving over hot stoves, boiling kettles and sizzling sauté pans. Vinny is the floater. He jumps in whenever and wherever needed. Mostly, though, he has a good time playing master of ceremonies with our many regular customers, and telling everyone to Mangia! Mangia! — butchered Italian for Eat! Eat!

He visits me at the bar often so I can blend his favorite drinks and light his cigars.

Then there is the most important Marciano of them all, Uncle Nunzio, the founder of Marciano’s Mangia House and the final word on all matters pertaining to food, beverage and Italian pride and culture. He is the family’s undisputed leader and vanguard of the secret recipes, upon which the business has flourished for more than half a century. They are the family’s secret covenant, and he is Grand Master of their clandestine preparation.

 

@copyright 2016/Mike Consol