On the top floor of the Palazzo Naiadi, the hotel whose curved colonnades close off Piazza della Repubblica in Rome, there used to be a restaurant called Tazio; here, according to La Cucina Italiana, which told the story in November 2021, Sophia Loren would sit down there and order thestrascinati Don Mario with a helping of sauce that went well past generous.
The magazine called it her favorite sauce in the headline – which is, of course, the magazine’s word rather than hers – and the internet has been repeating the headline ever since, most recently this August. What gets lost along the way is that the dish had a history before our iconic Sophia ever ordered it, and a pretty interesting one, too.
