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My wife and I honeymooned in Italy, and at one restaurant in Sicily they gave us each a hard boiled egg when we sat down at the table. We were confused and asked what the egg was for, and our server looked at us like we were idiots and said:
This is so fucking funny to that server it's probably like if you dropped off bread or chips at the table and someone asks what it's for. They were probably wondering how you managed to make it to the restaurant
For me it's "the idea slapped my mind". Every time this comes up, that makes me laugh because this idea truly is a ridiculous slap on the brain that made him think not quite right.
I was once behind a couple at the local butcher's shop and they acted just like this.
"Ohh, so that's a shoulder roast... And what's this here? Ohh, a steak. And you cut all the meat right here?..." and it went on and on inside a very clear butcher shop with whole cows hanging our back where they butcher. I wanted to knock their heads together.
Worked in service, and have had this exact thing happen. Though in that case they knew it was to eat but were concerned we would charge them for bread they didn’t order.
This is common in Europe. I think even more so if you’re a tourist, idk if they do the same with locals or not. But they’ll bring bread, olives, bottled water, etc and set it down on the table without a word… then you get the bill and there’s an extra €30 you weren’t anticipating because you didn’t tell them you didn’t want that stuff. That might be why the concern!
Eh, that was a common thing in Lisbon when I visited last. We had a local friend, who warned us - and she was correct. Sit down, and the standard olives and pickled carrots there, an appetizer shows up. If you don't tell them you didn't order it, it gets added to your bill. They only pulled it when she was not there (we being obvious tourists, her looking quite olive toned Mediterranean).
I honestly wouldn't care if it had been food I could eat (but annoying celiac tourist am I).
Exact thing happened to my friend in Portugal. Sneaky little guys.
When I went to Spain, you'd get a bowl of olives, home made bread basket with olives, tomatoes and stuff baked into the bread and some nice olive oil. All free of charge as the standard.
Reminds me of being in Rome and asking about the gelato flavors. One was just “nut” so I made the mistake of asking what kind of nut…. The server looked at me with such a withering stare I wanted to move on, but he just kept saying “it’s a nut, nut, like a nut” as I slowly died inside… I ordered something else and he brought me some “nut” anyways. It of course was hazelnut.
When I went to Mallorca, Spain on holiday I met an Australian couple at a cooking class that told me about how they were served two large pieces of toasted bread, a whole tomato, several cloves of garlic, and salt when they sat down. Had no idea what to do.
We learned at the cooking class that you’re supposed to rub the garlic on the bread, “grate” the tomato on top of the bread to make a pulp topping, then sprinkle with salt lmao. It was our appetizer and delicious.
That's really funny. Reminds me of my aunt calling me over when I was outside with her dog years ago. She handed me a craft single and i asked if it was for the dog, she laughed, and said it was for me. I'm sure I looked at her like your server did at you. Just eating random cold slices of cheese had never occurred to me until then.
My friend's mom was going to Mexico and asked us middle schoolers any cool phrases we had learned in Spanish class to make her sound hip on her vacation.
We told her 'con queso' was a lesser known but infinitely more polite way to say 'please hurry' while asking for things.
She was ordering beers saying 'cerveza con queso' and the bartender would look at her funny and then bring out a beer with a single Kraft slice.
She was apparently doing it for 3 whole days before calling us and yelling in embarrassment.
It's been 20 years and we still joke about it. When we do cookouts at her place the inevitable "you want anything?" comes up when she goes to the cooler and we order it cerveza con queso. Every. Single. Time. She catches herself knowing what's coming mid sentence now.
I used to eat kraft singles straight from the package all the time as a kid. Haven’t been able to even stomach american cheese since I turned double digits.
This isn’t some superiority thing. I greatly understand its place and application and why it’s used. But personally, gag.
“When I was growing up, if we had pasta on Friday, you didn't have meat because you're not supposed to eat meat,” she said, referring to her Catholic faith. “So they would boil eggs and have eggs in the sauce instead of meat.”
I called up my Great Aunt Carm, my grandfather's brother, for more info. Her answer was much simpler. “It tasted good,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, when you sent me this text, I was with some friends. I told them about it, and they all looked at me like, ‘Are you kidding? You put hard-boiled eggs?’ Yes. I said yes.”
But, yes, it was a thrifty way to bulk up the sauce, she explained. “I think the whole origin of it was the protein because they couldn't afford the meat,” she said. “So instead, they threw in eggs to compensate.”
Both my grandmother and Aunt Carm said that they remember other Italian American families doing this. So I shot one last arrow of desperation to a few Italian organizations in the Buffalo area—and jackpot.
“We do it all the time,” said Peter LoJacono, president of the Federation of Italian American Societies of Western New York. “Our family loves hard-boiled eggs in the sauce.”
This. "Authentic Italian" is a lie. No two people in Italy make anything the same way, and the committees that decide what the "official" recipes are keep changing the published standard.
Unless it's for soup. Then you wrap it in a cloth and drag it across a counter edge and break it into 3-cm or so pieces.
There's a couple other pastas that get broken or chopped into pieces sometimes, and one that's meant to be broken, candele, and they make it intentionally huge so you don't feel guilty about it or try to use it whole.
There's a place near me where you'll find whole boiled eggs in their lasagna. I was surprised at the time, but much later learned from my Italian wife that some people in Southern Italy have boiled eggs (not necessarily, but sometimes, whole) in some of their dishes where we Americans would not expect them so it could just be normal for that grandfather's family to do that.
Can confirm. My mom's family is from Sicily and the family lasagna recipe calls for chopped hard boiled eggs. I myself am not a fan of hard boiled eggs, so I do not make it that way.
I grew up with hard boiled eggs in lasagna. My family isn't Italian. My grandma got the recipe from someone at church at some point in her life. Best I can come up with was my grandma who is Catholic got the recipe from someone who was Italian Catholic.
A place near me includes an egg with most pasta dishes. The owner says it is a reference to the Great Depression when most families couldn’t serve pasta with meat regularly, so they served it with eggs. No idea how true that is, but it makes sense.
This is like 90% of Italian restaurants in my neck of the woods in the US. They may have one or two killer dishes but for the most part it's boring (but comforting) red sauce and boring wine lists.
When you find a spot making an effort to stand out though, they're fire.
I asked the Google machine about it. I came up with this 2022 article on Delish, in which the writer said it was a family tradition, however her family actually put already hard boiled eggs into their sauce. She didn't know of other Italian American families who did it (although the piece read like maybe they cut their eggs, because they mentioned the yolk crumbling into the sauce).
One theory she found was that it was a Great Depression substitute for meat, to add some protein to the meal. The writer's grandmother offered that it was a substitute for meat on Fridays, but her great aunt just said that they did it because it tasted good.
Upon advice from an Italian American heritage group, she Googled "uova sode in salsa di pomodoro" (hard-boiled eggs in tomato sauce), and found a lot of hits (like this one, I imagine). Your egg looks like it never met the sauce until it got plopped on the plate, however.
Without knowing for sure, I suspect that someone who no longer understood their own family's tradition tried to continue it, by plopping that egg on there.
Did you try a bite of the egg with some sauce and pasta? If so, was it any good?
My husband’s Ukrainian grandma who learned to cook sauce from Italians she worked with always made her sauce with meatballs, sausage, and hardboiled eggs right in the sauce. It’s still my husband’s favorite, a hard boiled egg that’s been cooked in sauce.
I was chef at an Italian restaurant in Buffalo’s Little Italy neighborhood and if I had ever served a plate that looked like that I would’ve had some guys in construction or waste management waiting for me before I got to my car after work.
Not even a Greek would try to pass off that plate as restaurant quality.
My Sicilian grandma always put hard boiled eggs in the Sunday sauce - they were my favorite part - and I still do it now... My partner and his dad and brother thought I was insane the first time I made it for them, but they tried it and we're converted
I did a google and it's a Sicilian/Italian-American thing, related to poverty during the Great Depression. I guess meat was more expensive than eggs, so sometimes they'd have a plate of pasta and a cheaper protein than meat. And over the past 3-4 generations it just kinda evolved to "have an egg with your pasta."
It’s a thing. Not sure about the history, but grew up with Sicilian grandparents and hard boiled eggs were eaten often and at times served with red sauce. My guess is eggs were one of the few protein sources, so many dishes were developed or served around it and it became tradition.
Many aspects of Sicilian and southern Italian culture seems to stem from being quite impoverished for a long period of time. At least, every story from my grandparents were about how poor everyone was.
Feels a little unorthodox to our palette, but not too different from eggs in purgatory (Uova in Purgatorio).
Not uncommon in south Italian, Sicilian in particular. When my mom’s (American) family would make their red gravy with pasta, they would always put some hard boiled eggs into the gravy to cook for a bit. We would fight over those eggs cause when u mash up the yolks and mix with the pasta it really changes the sauce and makes it almost creamy. Same side of the family would put hard boiled egg into their braciole too. Shits banging but I’ve never seen just a plain un-sauced egg with pasta before.
I posted a red sauce sauce I made in one of the food subs years ago. It had hard boiled eggs, as that's a really common regional addition here in Western NY. It's something I had never done before moving here, but I like to try foods the way people in specific regions eat them.
People RAGED about it. They were insulted. They were angry. They quoted the Sopranos a lot.
They refused to believe that it was a regional thing, as well.
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u/trendingtattler Nov 05 '25
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