Food-O-File

by Virginia B. Wood

After reading about the recently released independent film Big Night everywhere from Food Arts magazine to The New York Times, I was
very eager to attend the special “food press” screening at the Dobie Theatre
before the movie opened to the public. The advance press coverage had compared
Big Night to other films I’d loved — Babette’s Feast, Like Water for
Chocolate, and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman — and created high
expectations about both the quality of the movie and the part that food would
play in the overall story. I thoroughly enjoyed Big Night but it didn’t
remind me of the earlier films. However, the movie’s authentic restaurant
setting did evoke strong memories of two Austin restaurants. The first, Fonda
San Miguel, fought a difficult battle at the outset to educate the public about
the authentic cuisine of interior Mexico in the face of locally-loved Tex-Mex.
The second, Speranza’s, was a small, charming Italian trattoria lovingly
operated by the talented husband and wife team of Michael and Hallie Speranza
during the late Seventies and early Eighties.

At the beginning of the movie, a patron in the small Paradise restaurant
argues with Segundo Pilaggi (Stanley Tucci) about the seafood risotto
entr�e she’s received. She complains that it is not at all what she
expected and demands a side order of spaghetti and meatballs because in Italian
restaurants in 1950s America, main dishes came with side orders of spaghetti
and meatballs. Segundo relays this request to his brother Primo (Tony
Shalhoub), an uncompromising purist who is only willing to prepare the
traditional, authentic dishes of his homeland. This scene reminded me of
watching Tex-Mex-addicted Austinites open the menu at Fonda San Miguel in 1976
and say, “Where’s the number one enchilada dinner? What do you mean black
beans? What kind of a Mexican restaurant doesn’t serve chips and hot sauce
and nachos?” San Miguel eventually added nachos, chips and salsa to their menu
as a compromise to the Texas market, much to the consternation of Diana
Kennedy, the famous Mexican food authority who acted as menu consultant for the
restaurant. The longtime successful restaurant struggled for a full two years
before good word of mouth and extensive coverage from publications such as
Texas Monthly finally made it a hit. I left the theatre wishing that the
fictitious Paradise restaurant had that kind of time to succeed.

The majority of Big Night takes place in the kitchen and dining room of
the Paradise. Each time the camera panned around the restaurant, I was
transported back to my days of dining in Speranza’s, at one of the few tables
intimately set in what then was truly a warehouse district at the corner of
Fourth & Colorado. Hallie Speranza ran the front of the house while chef
Michael Speranza turned out exquisite authentic Italian dishes in the small
kitchen. Periodically, they would close up and journey to Italy to study with
the legendary Marcella Hazan and other cooking teachers. After Speranza’s
closed for the last time, I lost track of the proprietors and only recently
discovered they’d been working in Austin during the intervening years. Hallie
now trains early childhood teachers and Michael is involved in the construction
business. Michael’s most recent stint in the kitchen was spent at Las Manitas
where sisters Cynthia and Lydia Perez were pleased to have him turning out
lunch specials. “We still have the dream of having another restaurant,” Hallie
said during our phone conversation, “but the business has changed so much that
small, affordable locations are hard to find.” While lower cost real estate is
scarce, imported ingredients and specialty produce are much more readily
available. “Back then, we had a hard time just finding decent olive oil,”
recalls Hallie. These days, savvy Austin restaurant diners welcome authentic
ethnic cuisines and shop for international ingredients at local grocery chains.
A restaurant the caliber of the Paradise would be very popular here, I’d wager.
In lieu of the Paradise, local favorite Basil’s will be preparing some of the
dishes from the movie during its month-long run at the Dobie. Owner Marshall
Slacter reports that they’ll definitely be serving the risotto and they may
prepare a rendition of the show-stopping Timpano, a Calabrian specialty
that serves as the film’s banquet centerpiece. Check with Basil’s (477-5576)
about the availability of the Big Night dishes during October.

This article appears in October 18 • 1996 and October 18 • 1996 (Cover).