Liz Rogers, Observer Reporter- May, 2013

Cheryl Martin is mad for gelato, or “Italian ice cream.”

So much so, in fact, that the pastry chef traveled to Italy earlier this year with the gelato guru himself, Malcolm Stogo, founder of Ice Cream University and renowned expert on all things frozen.

There, she visited the world’s largest gelato trade show in Rimini, and brought back new ways to wow fellow gelato junkies at Angelo’s Restaurant, where owner Michael Passalacqua considers her to be a gelato genius.

“Cheryl is almost a mad scientist,” he said over a couple of scoops of their two top sellers, Death by Chocolate – chocolate gelato with brownies, miniature chocolate chips and chocolate fudge – and Dangerous Stuff – vanilla gelato with walnuts, almonds, white-milk-dark chocolate and locally produced Toffee House toffee.

She enjoys dabbling with different flavors and add-ins, and at the time of our interview, was working on a new five-inch gelato cake that since has become quite popular with customers. She also was experimenting with heart-shaped gelato pops created from molds she picked up in Italy.

Cheryl had the privilege of making gelato from scratch at a workshop at one of Italy’s finest gelaterias – or gelato cafés – La Sorbetteria in Bologna.

But by far the best thing she brought back was the knowledge that the gelato being dished up at Angelo’s is every bit as authentic as the gelato she sampled in Italy’s ubiquitous gelaterias.

“It was confirmation for me that the gelato I’m making here is truly gelato,” she said.

Gelato often is mistakenly referred to as ice cream, but its flavor profiles are distinctly different as a result of three factors: fat, air and serving temperature.

American-style ice cream, as it is sometimes called, is made with heavy cream and whole milk, and contains a minimum of 10 percent butterfat, while gelato typically contains 3 to 10 percent butterfat because it is made with whole milk.

Air, or overrun, is whipped into ice cream, and is aided by the high proportion of cream in its base. High-quality ice creams have about 25 percent air, while cheaper commercial versions contain between 50 and 90 percent air. Gelato, on the other hand, is churned at a much slower speed, resulting in little air and, consequently, a denser, softer texture.

For optimal flavor and texture, gelato is served at 10 degrees. Any lower, and it loses that desirable soft-mouth feel and intense flavor. Ice cream, in contrast, is stored at between 5 degrees below zero and zero.

Nutrition-wise, gelato contains less fat than ice cream, resulting in fewer calories. However, diet-conscious beware: Additional ingredients, such as chocolate chips, toffee, caramel or fudge, will drive up those fat and calorie numbers.

A few bites into the interview, it’s revealed that while commerically made gelato is readily available locally, Angelo’s is the only restaurant in the Washington area making its own, marketed as Mia Zia’s, or “my aunt’s,” Italian ice cream. Cheryl creates every batch at Angelo’s using fresh ingredients (with the exception of the flavor paste) and a gelato freezer that sits behind the dipping cabinet at the restaurant.

“In our region, it is just still an untapped market,” Passalacqua said. “People just don’t know about it.”

Despite being advised against it, Passalacqua decided to incorporate a gelato café into his building plans when he moved the restaurant to its current location near Consol Energy Park in North Franklin Township in 2008.

He’s glad he didn’t listen to his detractors.

“My basic idea was that it’s Italian, it’s different, and nobody else has it,” Passalacqua said. “I knew it would be very popular with children. It really has helped embrace the young family business as well as grow another generation of young Angelo’s guests.

“I think we’re now about to hit stride.”

David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post Gazette – November, 2004

News reports that Michael Passalacqua watched in 1993 showed shelters, churches and community centers serving Thanksgiving dinners to the indigent.

And while these dinners reflected noble efforts to feed multitudes of homeless folks, it left him feeling twinges of despair to see volunteers ladling turkey glop onto paper plates for the homeless to eat with plastic utensils.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It made him wonder: Why shouldn’t these people have one day a year when waiters and waitresses serve them high cuisine with all amenities and ambiance of fine dining?

Those news reports were an inspiration to Passalacqua.

As owner of Angelo’s Restaurant, 955 W. Chestnut St., Washington, he called Washington City Mission and other social service agencies and worked out plans to serve a Thanksgiving feast inside his restaurant to the homeless, needy and downtrodden.

It was a novel idea a decade ago, as it is today, to treat the needy as one would upper-crust patrons. But the idea caught on.

Passalacqua, City Mission and other service agencies will serve their 10th annual banquet to as many as 400 people in Angelo’s Restaurant from 1 to 5 p.m. Thanksgiving Day.

City Mission provides and cooks the food. The Spring House restaurant in North Strabane and Krency’s Bakery in Washington donate baked goods. Other people and businesses donate turkeys, and Passalacqua’s customers have chipped in $400.

Once the food is prepared at the City Mission, it’s taken to Angelo’s where his cooks give it that restaurant flair. It’s served buffet-style, inside the restaurant while a wait staff of volunteers serves drinks and desserts.

This year, Kathleen Belack, of Peters, and her family are preparing 24 table centerpieces.

The only thing lacking is a check at meal’s end.

The result is arguably the finest dinner served to the homeless, downtrodden and working poor in the region, if not the nation. It’s one of a kind, organizers say.

David Dunn, Washington City Mission director of development, said none of the 290 members of the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, which will serve a half million Thanksgiving meals, rivals the local plan, which unites local social service agencies to serve a veritable feast to the needy at a premiere restaurant.

“To see the smiles on people’s faces who sit down and relax in an environment that’s nonthreatening is a wonderful thing for the community,” he said.

So many people volunteer to help that City Mission officials recruit them for other mission projects. The dinner does require 50 volunteers to transport people to the restaurant on shuttle buses and serve as waiters, cooks and coordinators.

But after 10 years, volunteers have reduced it to culinary science. It takes about 10 hours of preparation before the feast is served. Then for a heart-warming, belly-bulging four hours, people dine on sumptuous food and experience some holiday high life.

“They eat a lot of food,” Passalacqua said. “They pile it up and put it away.” Some diners get a bit carried away and ask for a beer, he said. “That’s been tried once or twice.” No alcoholic drinks are served. But that’s the only restriction.

Passalacqua said volunteers enjoy the experience and usually return each year.

“There’s always someone here whose life situation is so adverse I can’t help but think about them,” he said, noting the time they had to put one disabled guest’s dinner into a blender so he could eat it.

“It’s the old adage, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ Most of us on a daily basis don’t come into contact with people with emotional or physical problems or people who sleep in the streets.” When Thanksgiving dinner is served at a fancy restaurant, confusion can occur.

One year, Passalacqua noticed people lined up for the buffet wearing tweeds, khakis and designer shirts, but he was too busy to investigate. After the people had eaten dinner and had dessert, Passalacqua greeted them. That’s when they asked for the check.

As it turned out, they had stopped at Angelo’s, thinking it was open for business, got in line, ate their meals and had a grand time. Told it was a dinner for the needy, the embarrassed diners donated $75 to the cause before heading home with full bellies, good spirits and a grand tale to tell friends and relatives.

It’s Passalacqua’s favorite Thanksgiving story.

“Anyone who shows up, we’ll feed,” he said, noting most people sign up through social service agencies.

Another favorite story occurred when a teenage volunteer took time to dine with an elderly lady who lived alone and was eating alone in Angelo’s. The two ate together and had a long talk about their lives. It proved to be a surreal moment for both, displaying how the dinner can have a profound impact on volunteers and diners alike. The number of people served at Angelo’s fluctuates, but about 3,000 have eaten there since the feast began in 1994. The annual count ranges from 300 to 600, with plans this year to serve about 400.

That will require 200 pounds of turkey, 75 pounds of mashed potatoes and 400 pieces of pie.

After guests fill their plates in the buffet line and take a seat at a table, waitresses and waiters serve them non-alcoholic drinks of their choosing. Waiters come by afterward with trays of desserts from which each can choose. Some choose two.

Hey, it’s Thanksgiving.

“The dessert just flies,” Passalacqua said. But how can a classy Italian restaurant offer a turkey dinner without Italian fare? With that in mind, he’ll serve Angelo’s style penne pasta with sauce this year.

His grandparents, Angelo and Giacomina, opened a tavern at the location in 1939, and it was a favorite hangout for glass and steel plant workers. In time, the Passalacquas began serving spaghetti and Italian bread, and named their restaurant The West Chestnut Spaghetti Inn.

After Angelo died in 1953, and Giacomina retired in 1958, Passalacqua’s father and aunt took charge, changing the name to Angelo’s in their father’s honor and expanding the menu.

When Passalacqua began working with his parents, he served even more inventive Italian cuisine. Today, Angelo’s offers lunch and dinner, and, he says, the restaurant business is strong after surviving a bad economy.

But the feast has nothing to do with business and everything to do with making people — volunteers and diners alike — feel physically, psychologically and emotionally fulfilled.

“It’s wonderful food and a great day,” Passalacqua said. “It does the trick of making you thankful for your blessings, and convinces you not to whine and moan over silly stuff.

“It’s a humbling day.”

Liz Rogers, The Observer-Reporter – October, 2002

Michael Passalacqua makes no bones about his culinary training.

“I’m not a chef,” he declares while assembling the ingredients for his marinara. “I’ve never baked bread from scratch. But I do know how to make a sauce or two.”

His opening line draws smiles and chuckles from the 40 or so folks attending Septembers Healthy Weigh cooking class at the Cameron Wellness Center. They are here to learn the secret to making great pasta, the kind dished up daily at Angelo’s Restaurant in Washington.

Passalacqua may not be the product of a prestigious cooking school, but as the owner of Angelo’s he knows a thing or two about Italian food.

And he can cook it, too.

Passalacqua elaborated later in a telephone interview, attributing his culinary know-how to the years he spent growing up in the West Chestnut Street restaurant, started in 1939 by his grandparents, Angelo and Giacomina Passalacqua.

“You watch, observe, and if your around it enough, you feed off it,” he said. He picked up a bit from the cooks who worked there, and eventually became a pinch-hitter in “emergency situations.”

“I always like to say, if you come in here and see me with a white coat on, it’s a really bad day,” he said with a good-natured laugh. “That means about three people didn’t show up for work.”

On a couple of butane-powered hot plates in the conference room’s makeshift kitchen, Passalacqua whipped up with amazing ease several of the trademark dishes that have made his West Chestnut Street landmark so popular: Pasta Lacqua, Pasta Patricia, Pasta Colonna, and Pasta Primavera.

Best of all, he shared his recipes.

“This marinara is very, very simple to make,” Passalacqua said as he demonstrated the first of five dishes of the evening. “Anyone can make it at home in less than an hour.”

The affable restaurateur shared cooking tips and his picks on everything from cookware to brand of tomatoes. All the while, he bantered with resident nutrition counselor Nicolle Bazant, who chimed in every now and then with nutrition reminders. This was, after all, a class on creating healthy food.

Bazant suggested substituting margarine for the butter called for in some of the recipes.

Passalacqua conceded.

“Is pasta going to make you heavy? She poses a little later. “Is it going to make you plump?”

Moderation is important. Bazant said a normal serving of pasta is one cup, which amounts to only about 60 calories.

“Typically, we’re getting a half-pound serving when we eat out. The portions are just too big,” she said outside the class.

Pasta is low in fat, cholesterol, and high in complex carbohydrates, protein, B vitamins, and iron. Rich in Vitamin A, lycopene, and lutein, most tomato-based sauces are low in calories. But beware of commercially prepared sauces, which are high in sodium. Bazant suggested creating sauce from tomatoes containing little or no salt. Instead of adding salt, use a spice such as celery seed or the herb lemon grass, both of which offer the flavor without sodium.

Passalacqua and Bazant were divided when it came to the subject of rinsing pasta.

From a culinary standpoint, Passalacqua advocates the practice, as it stops the pasta from cooking and prevents clumping.

Nutrition-wise, skipping the rinse retains complex carbohydrates, Bazant said. Some cooks who opt to rinse save the pasta water to reuse for stock: The starch proves useful as a thickening agent. Some use the water to steam vegetables.

As for the marinara recipe’s 6 ounces of oil, Passalacqua said health conscious cooks certainly could use less without affecting the result. Simply add more tomatoes or water and cook longer.

As he sautéed garlic in the oil for the marinara, Passalacqua shared a few tips.

“Cook the garlic till golden and it becomes very pungent,” he said. If the garlic is overcooked, the sauce will lose that layer of flavor.

“Marinara should be meaty, meaning thick from tomatoes,” he continued. “Good brands of canned tomatoes are Contadina, Hunt’s, and Furmano. Don’t buy reconstituted tomatoes. You want whole tomatoes with texture, not ground or pureed. At the restaurant, we run plum tomatoes through a processor. At home, I smash them with my hands.”

As the marinara simmered, Passalacqua turned to the sauté dishes, starting with Pasta Lacqua, developed by his sister, Tonne, while she was the executive chef at Angelo’s.

“I consider myself a lazy cook,” he said. “I like to make more than one thing in a skillet. Sauté is a simple way to cook a very nice dinner for your family. Once you understand the basics of sautéing, you can substitute the ingredients and make your own dishes.”

The procedure for all four of the sauté dishes he prepared is the same; only the ingredients change.

Sautéing green beans in butter, he lifted the nonstick skillet from the heat, deftly flipping the vegetables for even heating. At home, Passalacqua said he prefers to use nonstick cookware. “At the restaurant, we have dishwashers,” he joked.

“Don’t be afraid to lift the pan up off the heat to reduce the heat,” he said.

While the beans were hot but not soft, he added white wine to “shock” or slow cooking. The heat removes the alcohol while leaving behind the flavor of wine.

Next came the chicken stock – Passalacqua likes homemade or College Inn – and tomatoes, which were cooked down to sauce. To speed thickening, add cheese.

“It’s strictly up to you what you want to use in the sauté dishes,” he said. “Use whatever you have around.”

Cooked pasta was the final ingredient to be incorporated into the dish.

“When you cook pasta, try to cook al denté before you add to the mixture,” he said. “If it’s yellow, it’s still raw. When it whitens, it’s cooked.”

Passalacqua explained his readiness test for adding pasta to a sauté dish. “As soon as you can bend it without breaking, it’s ready. If you cook until it’s done and add it to the mixture, the pasta will be overdone.”

Pasta can be cooked ahead and refrigerated, he said. Cook to al dente and shock in cold water. Place in a plastic container with a little oil and chill immediately. It should be kept for several days.

Another pasta hint: When serving pasta with a marinara, place the pasta in a sauce pan with a little sauce to remove any traces of water.

“I haven’t been in a kitchen in a long time,” he admitted when the class ended. “I learned this side (of the business) because I had to. If I can do this, anybody can.”