Fettuccine Alfredo: A recipe for La Dolce Vita

Alfredo alla Scrofa isn’t just a restaurant; it’s a time machine. The walls of this Rome establishment are covered with pictures of stars like John Wayne, Tony Curtis, Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.

“This was La Dolce Vita,” said owner Mario Mozzetti.

And when the movie stars weren’t on set, they were eating Fettuccine Alfredo, born right here more than a century ago.

Mozzetti is a third-generation mantecatore, or “creamer,” the one who whips up the noodles inside the dish. It all started, he says, when the wife of the original owner, Alfredo Di Lellio, had a baby, then got sick and lost her appetite. Alfredo found the cure in this kitchen: fresh egg pasta so thin, it takes longer to cut it than to cook it.

The secret, said Mozzetti, is cooking time: “More or less, 30 seconds, instead of three, four, five minutes, which is the normal cooking time of egg pasta.”

It’s then placed in a dish, along with some pasta water, just a touch of butter, and grated parmesan, aged 24 months. Mozzetti then dramatically mixes the ingredients, almost like weaving. “This is a dance!” he said. “This is the waltz that Alfredo dedicated to his wife. It’s simple, but very, extremely simple and complicated at the same time.” 

That complicated simplicity eventually caught the taste buds of Hollywood’s original power couple. The year was 1920, and Mary Pickford had just married Douglas Fairbanks – a global sensation covered breathlessly by the press. After falling in love with each other, they fell in love with Fettuccine Alfredo on their honeymoon in Rome. 

And Mozzetti showed us a message Pickford wrote in 1951: “‘Alfredo the great, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and for always, Alfredo.’ She was in love with this place,” he said.

In a sign of gratitude, Fairbanks and Pickford gave Alfredo a golden fork and spoon. But the originals, Mozzetti said, are long gone: “In the ’40s and during the second war, unfortunately, the Nazis took the original ones.”

For more than a century, anyone who was anyone in show business just had to make the pilgrimage, including playwright Arthur Miller: “Arthur Miller was a shock for me,” said Mozzetti. “I said, ‘Let me touch you. Let me touch.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you were the husband of Marilyn Monroe. Come on. I can’t resist!'”

With that kind of folklore, it’s no wonder how this pasta made its way into cookbooks and restaurants across America. And like a Hollywood script, this tale has more twists and turns than a pasta dish.

Just a short walk away from Alfredo alla Scrofa, there’s another restaurant with a rival claim. It’s called Il Vero Alfredo. [Translation: The REAL Alfredo.] It’s run by Chiara Cuomo (great-granddaughter of the Alfredo De Lelio), and her mother, Ines de Lelio. And it serves what Cuomo calls “the real Fettuccine Alfredo.”

And there are even more celebrities on their wall – names like Ava Gardner, Walt Disney, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sylvester Stallone and Ronald Reagan.

And even its own golden fork and spoon!

Asked about the story that the Nazis stole them, Cuomo replied, “It’s not true. Fake!”

Here’s where things get complicated: During World War II, the dish’s creator, Alfredo de Lelio, sold the first restaurant to one of his waiters – Mario Mozzetti’s uncle. Then, after the war, Alfredo de Lelio decided to open another restaurant.

Ever since, the two have coexisted, begrudgingly – each a mecca for royalty, from Hollywood to Washington. Ines de Lelio said the Kennedys enjoyed Fettuccine Alfredo there. “My grandfather said to Kennedy that they will bring luck and health,” Ines de Lelio said.

Despite their differences, both restaurants can agree on at least one thing: In America, we’re often doing Fettuccine Alfredo wrong. “With the shrimps, with cream, I don’t like it,” said Cuomo.

By Mozzetti’s count, there are more than 50 brands of Alfredo Sauce for sale on the U.S. market. How does he feel about other people getting rich off of Fettuccine Alfredo? “It’s very painful. And nobody knows, at least, they don’t know about this place, this location,” he said. 

Or, rather, both locations. Two pillars, either in spite of, or thanks to a rivalry that created and maintained an Italian-American classic.

     
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Story produced by Anna Matranga. Editor: Emanuele Secci.

     
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