Feature article
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At Italian Village, flavors marry nicely
By Fred Sauceman
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| Food writer Fred Sauceman, the author of “Home and Away: A University Brings Food to the Table,” is the executive assistant to the president for university relations at East Tennessee State University |
Long after the mall walkers have put away their Reeboks, when the lights of the arcade no longer blink and carts selling “lucky bamboo” are covered over, the pizza ovens at Italian Village continue to glow. They stay on all night, to maintain constant and correct temperatures for thick-crusted, square Sicilian pizza and thin-crusted, round Neapolitan.
I discovered Italian Village just days after it opened in the Fort Henry Mall almost 25 years ago, when I took a job as reporter for WKPT television. This was the summer of 1978, in the days when the Kingsport station often outstripped Tri-Cities competitors for news. With no locally originated television news broadcasts today, newcomers to Kingsport may not realize there was a time when WKPT set a standard for technical advancement. It was the first station in the market to convert from film to videotape, which allowed us to cover stories that broke late in the day and have them on by 6 p.m. when WJHL and WCYB could not.
In its heyday, WKPT-TV not only gave me rich broadcasting experience, but it also opened up a host of new dining possibilities, since television personnel weren’t quite as obsessed with their weight back in 1978 as they are today. There were some good eaters at Holston Valley Broadcasting then. The late Wiley Cox, whose mandolin still rings in my mind, introduced me to the pleasures of a hamburger over at J.I. Reed’s, where entire walls were dedicated to photographs of Reed’s family, friends, and church buddies. The late Ralph Grant, who ran J.C. Penney’s years ago and sold advertising for the station in his retirement years, took me along for veal cutlets at the Center Street Restaurant.
IF YOU GO THERE...
ITALIAN VILLAGE
Location: Upper level, Fort Henry Mall, Kingsport
Hours: Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.
Sample prices: Steak Special, $5.50; 16-inch Neapolitan pizza with 4 toppings, $15.25; Spaghetti with Meatballs, $6.50 (includes salad and bread); Eggplant Parmigiana, $7.75 (includes salad, bread, and pasta)
Phone: (423) 247-7391 for carry-out within a 7-mile radius
Miscellany: Cash or checks; no credit cards
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In between trips to Blountville for stories on annexation fights and Brooks Exxon to check gasoline prices, my reportorial colleagues and I consumed countless brown bags of popcorn and frozen Pepsi-Colas over at Wallace’s News on Broad.
And it was John Williams, news director at WKPT at the time, who first introduced me to the Steak Special at Italian Village. Diminutive versions of this sandwich now appear on restaurant menus all over the Tri-Cities, but the original is still the best and biggest. Five ounces of sliced sirloin are chopped and tossed on a grill with pepperoni, Italian sausage, green peppers, mushrooms, onions, provolone cheese, and a tomato sauce that has simmered for five hours.
Part of the enjoyment of the Steak Special experience is the metal-on-metal din created as cooks wield turners in rhythmic fashion, swipe them across the grill, and shovel the smoking blend onto a bun. Owner Raffaele Misciagna calls it a “good combination, one of my favorites.” In his native language, Italian, he would exclaim, “Si sposa” — it marries.
Raffaele says the Steak Special sandwich he now serves had its origin on Long Island, where he worked at a restaurant called Umberto’s, after emigrating to the United States from his home near the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy at age 13.
Raffaele and his brothers Ricardo and Michael came to Kingsport with almost nothing. Now they operate three restaurants, Italian Village, Raffaele’s and Giuseppe’s.
“We struggled and worked without paying ourselves,” he recalls. “Now, after almost 25 years, we can allow ourselves an extra day off or even a vacation.”
Stone, wood and iron are the elemental requirements for the baking of pizza at Italian Village. Cooks form Neapolitan pizzas on wooden paddles and slide them onto stones in the restaurant’s three ovens. For the Sicilian, or thicker crust pizzas, dough is placed in black iron pans and allowed to rise. In both cases, the dough is aged at least 24 hours.
“In America we eat pizza morning until night,” says Raffaele. “In Italy, we entertain with pizza in the evenings.”
Pizza is available by the slice at Italian Village, which works well with mall traffic, since some customers come in for only one slice between meals. Since he can’t sell pizza on the sidewalk like he could in New York, a mall location is the next best thing.
If you’re a fan of fennel-flavored Italian sausage like I am and you’ve had trouble with the pellet form rolling off your pizza at other restaurants, try Italian Village, where they buy the sausage in links and slice it thinly so it stays in place.
When I asked Raffaele what makes a good tomato sauce, he fired back an instant answer: simplicity. The pizza sauce is an uncooked combination of southern Italian staples the Misciagna family kept around their home: deep red tomatoes, good olive oil and fragrant fresh basil. In the early days of the business, fresh basil was so rare in East Tennessee that the Misciagnas had to grow their own.
Sauces are made every other day — the traditional Italian tomato sauce; a ragú with carrots and onions; a Bolognese style meat sauce with Parmesan cheese; and the uncooked pizza sauce. Order the eggplant parmigiana, for example, and you can select any of the sauces.
“We come from a country of farmers and fishermen, and we stick with the old traditions,” says Raffaele. “My customers say, Ralph, don’t change anything. When I see third generation customers come in, it’s very satisfying.”
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, the author of “Home and Away: A University Brings Food to the Table,” is the executive assistant to the president for university relations at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@xtn.net.
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