I am a proud product of my Italian-American heritage. As I have noted umpteen times, there is almost nothing that brings me as much joy as the food of my family and one of my all-time favorite pastimes is going out to eat at a traditional Italian-American restaurant — or "red sauce joint," as they're called in my neck of the woods. 

To be clear, I'm not talking about a pizzeria or an Olive Garden or a Carrabba's; I'm talking about a local, often family-owned, classic Italian-American spot that probably had red and white tablecloths and fiascos (those straw bottles) of the house red on each table decades ago. Maybe they even had some of those wonderful, hand-painted murals on the walls, too.