The best sports feature I've read this year. Just amazing reporting, and was always curious what happened to Jerry Izenberg. Wrote about his Project Pride and the Pride Bowl in Newark as a Star-Ledger intern a long time ago.

The Halloween holy grail.

You can learn a lot about where a child without peanut allergies will end up in life by how they value Goldenberg's Peanut Chews.

So, in your view, demeaning the cuisine of an entire people as low or lesser-than somehow earns a pass because I imply that known criminal associates of the local basketball coach may not like hearing the term?

As the Portland Monthly story points out, Sunday Sauce was a Hoboken family's preference away from being named "Sunday Gravy" (a whole other discussion). Also, while the writer uses the term "red sauce" once, the place itself never uses that term. www.pdxmonthly.com/eat-and-drin...

As I mentioned a few days ago, the recent influx of Italian-American eateries pairing with this NBA market's ties to organized crime back east is little more than an interesting coincidence. Funny, but coincidental nonetheless: bsky.app/profile/nott...

The quote from the DA in that release is... something.

Also, ONE guy asks "what do you call this thing you put on meat and noodles" and someone answers "gravy"—because brown gravy went on beef and egg noodles at the time—and suddenly an entire region ends up calling it this.

Woe to the person who pays $12 for this when Costco sends a 3-pack of 32-ounce Classico out for $15, but I love that the New Jersey Italian Gravy folks are getting theirs: jerseyitaliangravy.com

While far from the salsas they're meant to emulate, the marinara, bolognese, ragu, pomodoro, arrabiata, amatricana and other sauces are distinct and have their own backstories. And while chain restaurants have done a number on alfredo, carbonara, and pesto sauces, they're decidedly non-red staples

If you believe Marcella Hazen invented the one tomato sauce you'll ever need and that Trader Joe's birthed cacio e pepe, I'm sure letting "red-sauce Italian" fly derisively from your lips comes naturally. But generations of families who tweaked recipes to work with what was on hand? Not so much.

Yes, the Italian-American restaurants in question make staple dishes not commonly found in Italy that often use tomato-based sauces. But descended from the recipes of 19th Century Italian immigrants they also contain recipes that are not only tied back, but use no tomato at all.

And I know: West of, oh, St. Louis, the term "red-sauce Italian" covers a very specific group of Italian-American restaurants with one big red-and-white gingham tablecloth. Nevermind that it's both inaccurate and wildly offensive.

I don't have to ask why the Portland Business Journal's social team used that term. This is a town that slapped "red sauce" on a pizza place and regularly uses the term to distinguish Italian-American restaurants from "authentic" (often Northern) Italian establishments.

Last, but not least, I published an essay on Substack, "The Absurdity," about living in Portland and grappling with our doppelganger — what I call "Internet Portland." leahsottile.substack.com/p/64-the-abs...

Gone since 2013, sadly. One of those things that I did not think would be almost immediately over when I moved here. Meanwhile, without Portland Underground Tour/Old Town Pizza I never would've found the far better versions in Astoria and Pendleton.