When we filmed our episode about Sicily, we had the good fortune to interview a self-taught chef named Tony Lo Coco. Tony, who has the solid build of a rugby player and a handsome bald head that deserves to be sculpted one day, lives with his family on the outskirts of Palermo in the town of Bagheria. It is there, in his tiny, elegant Michelin-starred restaurant, I Pupi, that he has been transforming classic Sicilian dishes into modern marvels for quite some time now, and one of his specialties is spaghetti alla bottarga.
Tony and his wife are warm, openhearted people with whom I felt instantly at home. Although he spoke no English and had to suffer through my Italian, we hit it off instantly. On the day of filming we started rolling our cameras in the kitchen, where Tony showed me how he makes his version of my favorite saline bowl of carbs. （Afterward I also ate a number of his other dishes, including a flight of Sicilian sashimi. Seven varieties of fish, each paired with a different homemade flavored oil and salt. My fingers can’t find the words to describe it.）
To begin, this creative and physical powerhouse of a man makes his own pasta dough. He then puts it through a machine with a perforated bronze plate at the end, and the dough emerges in strands of thick spaghetti. The bronze gives the pasta a rough surface, allowing the sauce to cling to it more easily. （I’m buying one tomorrow.） A little olive oil and a little garum are drizzled into a hot pan. Garum is a fermented fish sauce that has been made for millennia in varying forms by many cultures to impart umami flavor to a variety of dishes. The version Tony uses is made with anchovies and is known as colatura di alici. The cooked spaghetti is then placed into the pan and tossed with the oil, the garum, and a little of the pasta water and plated. Lemon zest is grated on top, followed by a shower of grated bottarga. Pre-fried dehydrated capers （amazing） are then added, along with mollica, a mixture of breadcrumbs and dried ground anchovies.
When it was done, Tony and I shared the bowl of it right there at the stove.
Good God.
Simple. So simple.
Yet, sensorially stunning.
And for me, very comforting.
Were I ever to end up making a film for an extended period of time in Bagheria （fingers crossed）， Tony Lo Coco would find me at his door every night of the week seeking comfort through his nourishment.
I?Actually I do have a tale to tell regarding Julie & Julia. See page 181.
II?While revising this chapter, I discovered that Madeo has closed. I don’t know the reason why, but like so many customers, I am heartbroken.
9
Doing a cooking show, or making a documentary about food for television, requires very particular talents, energies, and skill sets, which I have been learning slowly over many years. Making a fictional narrative film in which food is the center is another kettle of fish completely, and it was doing so （at times clumsily） that altered my life significantly.
I began writing what would eventually become the film Big Night over thirty years ago. I had always wanted to write a script that would be more in keeping with the tone and structure of a “foreign film.” By this I mean a film that was primarily character driven, eschewed stereotypes, and ended somewhat ambiguously. When I lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan during the 1980s, I was often unemployed for lengthy periods of time. In order to maintain sanity, instead of sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring, I would exercise, visit museums, attend the theater （affordable standing-room tickets only）， or go to the cinema. Unlike today, there were many independently owned cinemas that showed foreign and independent films. One afternoon, in a little cinema on Sixty-Eighth Street and Broadway, which sadly is no longer there, after completing my daily workout, I ate an inexpensive, very unhealthy meal of something or other at the adjacent coffee shop （also no longer there）， grabbed a cup of joe to go, paid my few dollars, and sat in a half-empty theater to watch the glorious Babette’s Feast.
If you haven’t seen the film, I can only suggest that you do, especially if you’re a “foodie.” Not to spoil it, but to this day I vividly remember hearing the audience moan with never-to-be-realized pleasure as each dish was served in the climactic dinner scene. There is no doubt that the sounds that emanated from the cinema during Babette’s Feast were echoed only in cinemas in the Times Square area that showed films of a very different ilk. （Or so I have been told.） At any rate, the subtle brilliance of the film and the communal experience of enjoying it stayed with me for many years afterward and eventually became something of an inspiration for Big Night.
Any number of experiences can inspire or influence what anyone creates, but perhaps the primary inspiration for Big Night was an Italian restaurant in Miami that I had been to while filming early in my career that was owned by two immigrant brothers, one of whom would often sing as he served you. Although I cannot remember the brothers’ names, or the name of the restaurant, I remember them as very charming raconteurs and the food they made was delicious. During the same trip I also happened to meet a Corsican by the name of Pascal, who affected the air of a wannabe mafioso and owned another very successful Italian restaurant. This handsome, blue-eyed, foul-mouthed restaurateur became the template for the character of Pascal, played so perfectly in Big Night by Ian Holm. The brothers of the aforementioned eatery were the genesis of the characters Primo and Secondo, played by Tony Shalhoub and myself.