Gravy runs in my veins. Tomato gravy. The kind that starts out at 8 a.m. on a stovetop and is still gently bubbling away come 5 p.m., slippery with fat from meatballs and sausages braised to unparalleled levels of tenderness. I am only half Italian, but it is certainly the louder half, descended from uncles who pounded a dinner table to punctuate a sentence, a grandfather who made wine in his basement, and a grandmother who wielded a wooden spoon like a scalpel in the kitchen and a cudgel everywhere else.
Red sauce was the constant. Not just tomato sauce, but red sauce: the dishes, decor, drinks, shouted conversations, and emphatic personalities that make up the ineffable experience of Italian American culture. It began around 1900 with waves of immigrants from across Southern Italy, whose traditions melded and continued to evolve in American towns and cities.
