The Pittsburgh Dish
Do you really know the food scene of Pittsburgh?! The Pittsburgh Dish introduces you to the people, places, and recipes that make our regional cuisine so special. By sharing personal stories, weekly recommendations, and community recipes, we aim to inspire you to connect with local taste makers and experience the unique flavors that shape our city.
The Pittsburgh Dish
044: Legacy and Flavor with Joe and Maria
(00:42) What if a beloved restaurant from your past could be brought back to life, dish by dish? Join us as we explore the captivating legacy of The Primadonna, McKees Rocks' cherished Italian eatery, with insights from former owner Joseph Costanzo Jr. and his daughter, Maria C. Palmer. Maria's book, "On the Rocks," co-authored with Ruthie Robbins, chronicles her father's extraordinary journey in the restaurant world, highlighting The Primadonna's unique charm and warm hospitality that set it apart during its heyday in the 1980s.
(12:06) Feel the nostalgia as Joe and Maria share stories of made-to-order pastas and handmade meatballs, capturing the artistry that defined the restaurant. The journey is as much about storytelling as it is about food, with readers and listeners longing to relive the flavors and memories of their past.
(42:43) Then we pour a glass of Italian wine fit for royalty, with Catherine Montest @urfairywinemother and share a family meatball recipe from Heather Abraham of KDKA. This episode is a tribute to the vibrant world of local Italian cuisine that's sure to resonate with food lovers and nostalgic souls alike.
Maria's website: https://mariacpalmer.com
Hey everyone, welcome to The Pittsburgh Dish. We're back from winter break with our first episode of 2025. I'm your host, Doug Heilman. What's the real story behind a bygone landmark restaurant in McKees Rocks? This week, we talk to the family behind The Primadonna. Have you tried an Italian wine that's fit for a king? Catherine Montest introduces us to the king of wines that's backed by a nebby grape, and our friend Heather Abraham wraps up the episode with a family meatball recipe. What's the secret ingredient? Well, just turn on the tap. All that ahead. Stay tuned. Thank you both for coming over and being on the show. Would you introduce yourselves to our listeners?
Joe:Sure, I'm Joseph Costanzo Jr. I am the former owner of The Primad onna Restaurant in McKees Rocks from 1986 to 2005. And we're here because my daughter wrote a book about my experiences in the restaurant business and it's called On the Rocks, the Primad onna.
Doug:Story. Well, there you go. He gave you a nice lead in.
Maria:Yeah, he did so. Thank you so much again for having us, Doug. My name is Maria C Palmer. I am the co-author of the book On the Rocks, which is the rise and fall of my father, Joseph Costanzo Jr, in the, and I'll tell you one of the taglines I've used for this podcast is do you really know Pittsburgh's local food scene?
Doug:And I did not know this story. I felt like I got such an education. Maria, can you just tell our listeners, if they haven't read On the Rocks yet, how you and your co-author approached writing the book, Because I know it took a little? Be more of a family history.
Maria:I knew my dad had a very interesting life, but it wasn't until I started asking very pointed questions as a writer that I started to realize that this was more than just something that we would want to share for generations of our family. This was something that we would like to share really with the public.
Maria:I'm so glad you did yeah, something that we would like to share really with the public. I'm so glad you did yeah. And as far as working with Ruthie, ruthie was my former high school AP English teacher. She and I had actually met whenever I was in middle school and she followed me Her sons are similar age to my sister and I and she kind of followed her children as they aged out of schools and therefore she followed me as a default. And she grew up in McKee's Rocks, right across the street from what once was the restaurant. She was one of my dad's first customers and it just made sense. She's actually the same exact age as my dad too. So that opening scene that's called the Rocks, that is actually from her childhood that she paints that picture.
Doug:And this is Ruthie Robbins this is your co-author to the book.
Maria:Yes, yeah, and she and I really worked very diligently together. I always say, you know, I worked on this for about 10 years by myself and then, whenever Ruthie came in, it only took seven more years for trying to make sure that everything was as factual as factual can be. We tried our best to tell the story with integrity and truth and to really get the heart of the time, the heart of the restaurant, and the juxtaposition between what made this restaurant such an anomaly in a way, and I always say you know, what my dad did was somewhat impossible and really couldn't be replicated in the same way today, because today we have a lot of help right.
Maria:We have these wonderful podcasts, we have social media, we have YouTube, we have Yelp. We have all of these different ways in which average people can be found. Back during the 80s, that wasn't the way that it was, and most restaurants that were getting a lot of press and being seen were restaurants in much larger cities like New York or Chicago or San Francisco. So to have not only a top rated restaurant in the city, but to have a top-rated restaurant in the country, Nationally yes.
Maria:During that time was, I thought, a story that needed to be told.
Doug:So that's why we did it. I want to just add to anyone that hasn't read the book it's told in your dad's voice, joe, I feel like I was listening to you and your oral history of The Prima donna and I just loved it and there were so many things I think as a local person I'm like I know that place, oh yeah, the Sheraton. Oh, of course, like all of these little things that kind of bring you and hook you into the story. So I think if you're a person from the region and you haven't read the book, you really need to get your hands on it. I the book, you really need to get your hands on it.
Doug:I wanted to take a step over and, joe, if you could tell listeners because I'm one of them for folks that did not get to come to The Primad onna and experience it, can you describe for us a little bit more about the restaurant? I mean it was to what Maria said such a unique thing for McKee's Rocks and what you did even for the community there A lot of people say who were there.
Joe:You really can't explain the restaurant. You had to be there, Right, it was a different type of atmosphere. I was always there, you know, greeting people, talking to people and going around table to table, thanking people for coming in, good customers, giving them, you know, some desserts on the house or a ride of drinks.
Doug:The zucchini, the fried zucchini. Wondering if you'd show up with some fried zucchini today and most restaurateurs don't do that.
Joe:So it was unique in that way. And of course, the food was fabulous. You know, I had my cousin from Italy who cooked over there, two or three legal immigrants that came over cooking the food. So it was authentic, yes, it was authentic. And so the environment was really different, because we're in an area that was tough, an old steel town, so it was kind of chic. It became chic to come into the rocks and have this great food and you're there and you're seeing Jamie Lee Curtis or Tommy Lasorda, you know, next to you.
Joe:So it really was fabulous for the local people and the you know the Pittsburgh people, you know they would see, you know the Steelers or the Pirates, Ray Tannehill, from the, you know Channel 2. So you know they saw a lot of, you know, celebrities. But it was kind of like a homey type of situation. It wasn't stiffy, formal, it wasn't real pretentious. So it made it so nice that people come in and people used to say to me Joe, you treat everybody the same, those celebrities or the average people the same, and that really makes us all feel good.
Doug:I think that's what makes the Prima donna special. Is that life that you bring to that party, so to speak, every time that you're there, right that?
Joe:was the difference? You can walk right past an owner in a restaurant and that owner, after you spent some money, won't even look at you or won't even thank you, and that's just the way it is and was. But I was able to put purveyors' names on my menu, like Ricci's Sausage or Wholey's Food on the menu, which nobody did. And today you see, if you buy gift certificates, they're giving you gift certificates. You buy $100, they'll give you a $20 bonus type of thing. I did that 40 years ago. I started all that.
Doug:You were such a pioneer in marketing, that's it. One of the things I love from the book and I don't want to give too much away but going to all of the different hotel concierge and inviting them to the restaurant and then they would invite the guests of the hotels, yes, People would come down Amazing People would come down and say you know, we're?
Joe:we're staying at the Hilton refreshment in Chicago and the concierge told us that this is the best Italian restaurant. Yes, Well, I would go back down there and thank them. You know, give them a $50 gift certificate to come down. And anytime anybody ever come in and wanted an Italian restaurant, they'd say write down 65. You're there in five or 10 minutes. Mention that we sent you. You'll get an appetizer. So I did that with the Vista, the Westin, William Penn, the Hilton, and everybody was there and they sent all these people down and that's how it all worked. It was just, everybody wanted what I had, but nobody would do what I did.
Doug:You had great ideas and original ideas and I was able to share the wealth.
Joe:Yes, and that's the bottom line. And I had a product and we had linen tablecloths. You had a maitre d' All this was all part of it and you had the owner talking to you.
Doug:It had soul to it because you were there, right. But such shrewd and smart ideas for someone that you know, you took this leap from postal carrier to restaurateur kind of overnight Right Amazing. And I do also want to say you spent like 17-hour days there, oh yeah every day.
Joe:We were closed on Sundays, which would have been a great day, but I had little children. Maria was four, kelly was nine months my two daughters. When I first got in there I was 32 years old at the time, but Sundays I still spent eight hours down there just doing payroll disbursements receipts. After the kids, we went to church, after the kids went to bed, I went down there. I never went to a wedding reception in those 20 years that I was there, went to the church but had come back, never went to a family reception for a wedding, total dedication. It was there, yeah, and I had focus, but you loved it, yeah, and I had focus.
Doug:I do want to. I'll ask this to both of you because I saw recently you did. You've been doing some speaking tours and demos and you were at the Kitchen at Vangura.
Doug:Yes, and you did some cooking. Can we talk about the food? Because I got to tell you, as I'm reading the book, the thing that pains me the most is that I never got to go. That's what I loved. I was so glad that you mentioned a few of the dishes, like the pasta with the bacon, and I, like I want to make those things.
Maria:Oh, yes, oh absolutely, and you know, I think, that whenever we were writing the book, the one thing that I really grossly underestimated was people's love of food, nostalgia, right Like if you have that spot that you felt at home at and you really love the food. You long for that. So I kept on getting emails about not only how people just love the story, but they loved the food behind that story and they miss that food. So I really did want to create or find a way to recreate that experience with people. But I am not a chef by nature. I am more or less a home cook. So there's no way that I could open up a restaurant and I don't even live in Pittsburgh full time anymore. It just wasn't feasible. But the Kitchen by Vang ura reached out to us and said hey, we have this idea that we want to talk to you about and they have this beautiful if you haven't been 8,000 square foot open kitchen, stadium seating style space.
Doug:It is like the Food Network food stadium. It's kind of crazy, it is. It's insane.
Maria:I actually I live right outside of New York City and the company that I work for. We shared space with a place that I work for. We shared space with a place that was used for food network sets.
Doug:The.
Maria:Kitchen by Vangura in Irwin blows this place away Like totally you know, if you haven't been, there's three jumbo-trons that really you know zoom into exactly what you're doing. You're mic'd up, it's just. It's an amazing experience. But they said, you know we'd like to recreate the restaurant. You guys can pick the food you know based upon your signature dishes. You pick the time we'll provide you with. The chef will provide you with a way of taking all the reservations and setting everything up. We'll provide you with a way of taking all the reservations and setting everything up. You guys just show up on the night of and recreate the environment. That once was the prima donna, and so that's how that got started, which was amazing. And I know my dad will talk about some of the signature dishes of the restaurant too.
Doug:Yeah.
Maria:What were some of the things you cooked that night, or just like to still cook now, which is medallions of chicken with peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, mushrooms In a red sauce, yeah. We did fried zucchini because you have to right you have to do the fried zucchini yeah that was always our go-to appetizer, and then we did an Italian rum cake for dessert, and that was also on the menu all the time, all the time, all the desserts were made in-house, some of the signature dishes that we had that we loved, you know, like a veal or chicken parmesan.
Joe:Today the chicken parm or the veal parm comes in frozen, already breaded, and all the restaurants do is just deep fry them Blasphemy, yeah, how dare they? The prima donna, the chicken we bought, deboned it, potted it out, breaded it, same with the veal, but everything was pan fried and then baked. So it was nothing was deep fried. You know all the parmesan.
Doug:That technique? Why is that so much? It is better. You know all the parmesan, that technique.
Joe:Why is that so much? It is better, it's so the chicken and the veal comes out so juicy. After you pound out the chicken or veal In a deep fryer, you get all this crust around the edges and it's harder. Yes, when you pan fry and bake it it takes a ton. You need more people in the kitchen. Yes, and it takes a lot of work. You know, if you just deep fry it, you just throw it in and pull it back out. But we're breading the stuff to order and it's unbelievable. All the veals. I bought a whole leg of veal. We cut the veal off the leg and then all of it was not breaded or anything to that effect. And then we did that, had it in the refrigerator. So everything was made to order.
Joe:There was a dish called spaghetti con sausage, which was chunks of loose sausage with mushrooms, onions, green peppers and a red sauce. The difference between Prima Donna and most other restaurants is that we had loose sausage, not links. So we chunked the sausage up, you know, kind of like a meatball, but not that uniform. Yes, so you had that. I'll take that. Yeah, it was so good. All these unique pastas. We had 32 different made-to-order pastas, all the Alfredos and all the other were made. The sauces were made to order. Now, of course we did eight to 10 gallons of sauce a day and of course you know, if somebody were spaghetti meatball, the sauce was on the, you know, on the- Because it had to be on the kettle.
Doug:That's just what you had to do. That's right, but you weren't taking shortcuts in any of this other stuff. No, none of it.
Joe:No, all the meatballs were made with a ground veal that were scraps from the scraps we cut from the leg and ground chuck I mean. So the meatballs were so soft. Most people buying meatballs today they're just buying them frozen. There's a lot of filler in there the homemade wedding soup. The meatballs were actually made. We made them small. Oh my goodness, most people just buy them now.
Doug:I buy the bag at Penn Mac. I'm lazy.
Joe:Exactly Everybody is. All the restaurants are too, so these are things that made the restaurant different. Back then, all the shrimp that we had was de-shelled and de-veined by hand, which nowadays they just come in already de-shelled by hand, which nowadays they just come in already disheveled. But back then if you wanted really good shrimp, this is what you had to do. Every soup was made in-house every day. We had two to three soups a day Amazing amazing.
Doug:Yeah, I do want to go back, since you mentioned the rum cake.
Joe:I also recall your wife Donna made the chocolate cheesecake and the regular new york style cheesecake.
Doug:your mom made apple pie, apple pie, my goodness, yeah, tiramisu we made it in.
Joe:Oh, that's right, because you had to figure it out, because it was new, right, Harry Met Sally? Yeah I had no idea yeah, Sleepless in Seattle yeah, Sleepless in Seattle they mentioned it and it went crazy all over the country.
Doug:But it sounded like yours just from the description. It sounded like a looser, like one lady finger.
Joe:Yeah, lady fingers, you had like a pillow of the mascarpone Mascarpone. I am visual.
Doug:I think that's one of the best things that, maria, you and your co-author did, some of the descriptions of the food. Yeah, that was fun. That is really what brought me in too, because, to your earlier point and to all these customers that have experienced it, is all that connected memory to taste and flavor. It reminds you of where you are or where you've been that's right and who you were with.
Maria:That's right, just incredible. It's a better time. It was fun writing about the food, and I think what's even more fun now is hearing, whenever people are reading the book, getting really nasty text messages, that they had to do Uber Eats at two in the morning because they were reading about the zucchini or the tiramisu, and this is what happens, and so that's when, as a writer, you know that you've done your job when you get those types of nasty text messages from people.
Doug:I didn't text you, but guilty. You felt that way we were going out to dinner that night and between a kind of bar spot or Italian. I'm like we're going to the Italian place. I just have to Right.
Joe:So Hi, I'm Joseph Costanzo Jr.
Maria:And I'm Maria C Palmer.
Joe:And you're listening to The Pittsburgh Dish.
Maria:Dish.
Doug:Is there a couple of dishes from the restaurant that you do make regularly at home?
Maria:So we would do this chicken Milano special, which is medallions of chicken breast. It has onions, it has sauteed mushrooms, tomatoes. Artichoke hearts Artichoke hearts, yep, and it's in a white wine butter sauce with a splash of clam juice and I believe, does it have. Do we do a little bit of capers too?
Joe:I can't remember it has maybe it's just the clam juice. Yeah, it's just the clam juice that has that kind of a tart. Yeah, that tart flavor. I would never have done that. Yeah, it was fabulous. People loved it. Anything with artichoke hearts people would go after.
Maria:Yeah, it was just part of the times, yeah, and so that's one of my go-to comfort dishes.
Doug:Now, there was a dish named after you at the restaurant. That wasn't really a dish that you loved.
Maria:No, I hated it. Was that a veal dish? Yeah, and I don't eat veal. A lot of people did though yes, a lot of people did and a lot of people loved that dish and it was never my favorite.
Joe:That's right. Yeah, it was. You know, medallions of fresh veal in kind of like an Alfredo type of sauce. What else was in there?
Doug:I can't remember right now it is in the book.
Maria:I can't remember either but it definitely had some vegetables.
Catherine:I should know this because I did, I'm working on a new book, it was only 17 years.
Maria:I know right, but I'm working on a new book that's a narrative cookbook that has this dish in it.
Joe:So I should know this off the top of my head, but I cannot think of it right now and one dish that was so unique and I was the only one in the city that had this pasta, and I got the pasta from New York City. It was black pasta, which was squid ink pasta. The pasta was dyed by the ink of the squid. It was a fettuccine noodle. It had a little different texture to it and a little different taste. We served it with fresh sea scallops and green peppers, red roasted peppers and onions in an olive oil and garlic sauce. So it's shine. I bet it just looked beautiful. It looked beautiful. People would ask me about it and I would say, if you're not daring, I don't think you should eat it because it has a different texture to it. But people loved it who love black pasta. Now you can get it in some places.
Doug:Again. You were probably a pioneer back then. Squid ink pasta was not on anybody else's menu no, not at all.
Joe:And then there was another dish that people who liked chicken livers I was going to ask you about that one.
Heather:It was called spaghetti caruso.
Joe:It was fresh chicken livers with mushrooms and onions in a red sauce. Okay, and people loved it. Now I don't really like chicken livers but in that sauce with the pasta, it made the sauce unique and different. The flavor and people. There was nobody in the city that had that except me. I got that off of my chef, Tony Mastondrea, who was from Naples, and they cooked it there. So I got these ideas from people who were indigenous Italians that cooked this type of stuff in Italy.
Doug:Fabulous. You had the goods because you had the right folks in the kitchen. That's right. You were the right person out in front.
Joe:That's right. Yeah, Everything came together. You know Recipe for success? That's it.
Doug:I think what's also quintessentially Pittsburgh to me when I read about the experience people were having there and the location. There's always this unique Pittsburgh thing about being a little gritty and a little different and special and I love that. People had to go to the rocks to go to your place and they had to. Maybe if they were a little more I don't know in an upscale mindset, they had to take a risk.
Joe:That's right, that was fun and they did that. Yeah, and like even the food critic, Mike Kalina, they said it became chic to go to Ravish McKee's Rock. Yes, that's right, Joe Costanzo made it chic.
Doug:Well, I know we could wax on for a long time about the food and thank you both so much for sharing some of it. I want to go back to the book Overwall, because there is a lot more to the story. It's about family, it's about the community, it's about business decisions and mistakes. When you think about people picking up the book, what are some things you want them to get out of the book?
Maria:You know, I think that one of the things that make people get them very much drawn to the story is that we do tell a lot of really great stuff about the restaurant, about my dad, about, you know, the pool and how it changed the economy of McKee's Rocks and really how it changed Pittsburgh. It became a very important part. But we also tell some of the darker sides. And you know, um, as we look now at social media, right like we're always putting our best foot forward but you don't see what's going on behind that curtain, and I think one of the things that people appreciate the most is that we've told a very balanced story. We've admitted whenever there are things that maybe we weren't as proud of.
Doug:I think part of these for you in this new business was. It was a learning experience, for sure, and I think overall, Maria, back to what you're saying, it's honest humanity. The whole book shows what it means to be a real human being.
Maria:Exactly, yeah, I mean everybody in the Rocks.
Joe:There's 86 licenses in the rocks. Everyone had poker machines except me, except for you. I didn't have poker machines. I didn't want them. I didn't necessarily think that they were bad, it's just that it messed up the environment that I wanted people to come in. But once I got the reviews after two and a half three years it was a little bit different. The whole place turned into a restaurant, upscale place and it brought in people from outside the area. Without the reviews it never would have happened. It would have just been a local place. But the reviews gave the restaurant credibility and people from Squirrel Hill, Mount Lebanon, Upper St Clair, Sewickley came and people from Beaver County, Washington County, Westmoreland County, even Erie. I had people drive two hours from Johnstown to come down.
Doug:Amazing. The point that I also hear from you, Joe, is you always had a vision. You sort of knew, day to day, I need to do a few of these things to get where my vision is, and so over that time you were able to transform from that bar place to that upscale place because you had the prize in mind.
Joe:So most people open a restaurant. It's a restaurant. I opened up a restaurant that didn't have any customers and I had to generate bar business till I got the review and then it was crazy, but I would do 10 dinners a night. Yes, you know, after the reviews, you know I'm doing 100, 150. Then after the big review, I'm doing 250 dinners a night. That was from four forks to five forks?
Doug:Yes, exactly, and we did not have our Yelp or our Uber Eats None of that. People had to really learn from the smart marketing that you were doing word of mouth most of the time and the papers on where to come.
Joe:I was buying desserts off of Teresa's Italian bakery, which she did out of her house, and I got her to move next door to me because it was an empty storeroom. I was going to buy that. But when I ran for county commissioner as in the book, you'll notice that I got into some major financial distress. But I gave her the recipe. She made some of my tiramisu and some of the cannolis, which was all my recipes. But she told me she never had to give directions when anybody called, because they would come down to the prima donna and they'd go. She'd stay open Fridays and Saturdays late and people would wait two hours. They'd go in there and buy stuff.
Joe:It was fabulous for her but she said anybody that ever called, they asked directions and she would say do you know where the Primad onna restaurant is? And every single person said yeah. And she said right next door. That was her direction.
Maria:Yeah, yeah that's marketing, oh my gosh. And then also on the two-hour wait piece. So dad had a whole apparel line that he had shirts that said I survived the wait at The Prima donna restaurant. So not only did he have billboards, uh, tv ads, newspapers, but people were walking around with Prima donna apparel.
Joe:And that's been fun too Amazing Jackets, tennis shoes, T-shirts I actually had at one time horse and buggy rides around Stowe Township, mckees, rocks Okay, and I actually paid for it. So people are waiting two hours. They took a horse and buggy ride around the rocks and came back, which is unheard of Unheard of.
Doug:But I think the old adage, the more you give, the more you get.
Maria:And you did For certain.
Doug:I want to take us forward. I know the book's been out for a bit. When did the book release?
Maria:Remind us the book released on August, the 8th, 2023. Okay so it's almost coming up on a year and a half here, that's right. Yeah, which is crazy.
Joe:And tell them the first two weeks it came out.
Maria:Yeah, so this is not only a story about an underdog, but this book itself is an underdog and we had lots of challenges trying to get it published, trying to find an agent you name it and people were very much naysayers about how this couldn't compete and sit on the shelves with other culinary memoirs like Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and Stanley Tucci's Taste. And in the two weeks that preceded the book's release we were the number one culinary memoir on all of Amazon and number two was Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and number three was Stanley Tucci's Taste. And I always like to share that with people, because when you're in entrepreneurial spirit, you hear a lot of no's, you get a lot of laughs, people don't take you seriously at all. But if you can take yourself seriously and you can have that sort of hyper focus that my dad had for The Prima donna and that I really have had for the book, it says something and those results then follow, and so that's been a crazy way to start this venture and what has happened since then has actually even been crazier.
Maria:Not just with the Kitchen by Vangura stuff, but we also do cook-in-books experiences, which are three-hour experiences, an hour and a half of hands-on cooking, normally some type of pasta. We've done regular homemade pasta, We've done ricotta gnocchi, We've done homemade raviolis with our marinara sauce. That's my grandmother's recipe. That was, you know how the restaurant recipe was kind of inspired as well. And then we sit down and have lunch or dinner and do about an hour and a half book discussion. And those have been so popular that I've done them not only here in Pittsburgh but in New Jersey, New York, Florida, all over the place, Because those type of experiential elements are things that people really enjoy. And so, you know, most books kind of flounder after six months and I just actually had to order some new books because we're out of hardcovers. Now that's the final hardcover.
Doug:She's mentioning the book that Maria and Joe just gave me.
Maria:It's on the table here.
Doug:So, thank you guys so much, of course, and congratulations on having to order more hardcovers.
Joe:Yes, and we're talking most books are self-published, which she didn't have to do. She was able to get a publisher Most people who write books. 200 to 300 books are sold. We're talking between 7,000 and 10,000 books sold a year, which is unbelievable. The book has won two national awards the New York Book Festival Award for the best biography of 2024, and the American Book Fest Award for the best narrative nonfiction book in 2023. And it's actually amazing what has happened and it transformed. You know I've been bored for 20 years. My wife did tell me, joe, for the next 20 years, please bore me, and I did. But after this book came out, it, you know, it generated so much publicity after 20 years of being out of business and it rejuvenated me because I've had some major health problems. Yes, but it made me excited again and it brought back fabulous memories.
Doug:You've got one proud dad there.
Maria:Oh, I know.
Joe:I know he is the best. And Maria marketed this book just as well, if not better, than I marketed the prima donna.
Doug:Well, she's tenacious. I'm going to tell our listeners she actually just came to my house straight from New Jersey.
Joe:She hasn't even gone home yet? No, no, she hasn't.
Maria:I told you. I said let's make 3 o'clock just in case I hit some traffic. Thank you guys so much.
Doug:You have had a tremendous time. Since the book has launched, it doesn't sound like it's let up yet, so I sort of wanted to ask what's on the horizon.
Maria:We have a lot of really fun events coming up, actually within the next month. We've taken a little bit of a breather here over the winter, our own little hibernation, but we're ready to get back out there again. So March 23rd, which is a Sunday, you can see us at Flour Power in Allison.
Doug:Park. I have done some cooking things there myself. Isn't it amazing? It's a great little place.
Maria:It's a great space, so we're going to be and Amy is great.
Maria:We're going to be making some ricotta, gnocchi and homemade sauce and then we're back again in April, and April the 25th we will be at the Kitchen by Vangura at 6:30pm. And that's going to be for The Prima donna pop up night. So that will be a four course tasting menu, inspired recipes from the Primad onna. That is a BYO as well. Really fun night of food and discussion. And then you'll actually find us the next day, on Saturday, April the 26th, in Spring Hill and North side at High Street Studios, which is a place very near and dear to us. We love Dax Paris and we're going to be doing a homemade pasta cook and book that day from 11 to 2.
Maria:So we hope that you definitely do join us for one of those events, and I'm sure we're going to be having some more things coming up in the later spring and early summer as well.
Doug:So we're coming up on not quite two years of the book being out and you're busier than ever. Yes, if people want to follow you for these events, is there a Facebook page or a website they should be going to? Can you remind us what those are?
Maria:Absolutely so. My website is probably the best catch-all for everything, and that is Maria M-A-R-I-A C, like cat palmer, P-A-L-M-E-Rcom, and our Facebook and Instagram handle is at Joe Costanzo, like my dad, J-O-E-C-O-S-T-A-N-Z-O. Prima Donna, like the restaurant P-R-I-M-A-D-O-N-N-A, and we post things about exactly what we're doing, all of the events that we have upcoming, and also you can join my newsletter on the website too, which helps you out to do that too.
Joe:Excellent. Also, you talk about the book itself. There's been interest of a Broadway play, there's been interest about a movie. These things are in its infancy, infancy there's potential on a show, a play, in Pittsburgh on Broadway.
Maria:So we'll just wait and see. Yeah, and if you are one of those people that's listening here today to Doug's podcast, please do reach out, because we really think that this would make an excellent screenplay, and or script.
Doug:I second that. I mean you can't create this kind of a story.
Joe:It's so real, it is real 35 years ago, Robert De Niro was going to play me. I was going to ask who Now he's going to play my dad. Okay, I don't know if Christian Bale is young enough or not, but that might be You'll take it yeah.
Joe:He played in Vice Dick Cheney and my wife, if everybody can remember, and of course you have to be old now to remember Charlie's Angels. But the person that would have been the perfect actress to play Donna Costanzo would be Jacqueline Smith Beautiful, classy, and the big thing was that my wife made the restaurant. She made it classy. She was a classy person, an ex-flight attendant model, and she was in the rocks. People would come in and say that has to be Joe's wife, because there's nobody with that much class and that much beauty that would come down to the rocks and work. What a compliment.
Doug:Yeah, oh well, we've covered so much ground and I could keep going. Yeah, me too. I do have just one more question for both of you, and it's going to bring us back to how we usually end our shows. The name of the podcast is The Pittsburgh Dish. You people seem like food people. What's the best dish you've eaten this past week?
Maria:Okay, I have mine. So, and mine is actually from a chain restaurant, it's from Bahama Breeze, but it's a piece of red snapper and it had mango avocado and it had this glaze on the side glaze on the side, drawn butter, dijon mustard and, I believe, either like a smidge of vinegar or maybe some capers to kind of create that like tartness over a white, sticky sushi type of rice. It was really amazing, really, really good, and actually not bad for you either. So for me, that is, I think, the best type of food right that's high in taste but also high in nutritional value. So I think that was the best thing that I ate this week All right, Joe.
Doug:what was your best dish this week?
Joe:I'm really glad you asked that question. My younger daughter, Kelly. She made homemade raviolis and homemade fettuccine pasta and a buddy of mine months ago gave me a sauce that he made with loose sausage onions made with loose sausage onions and hot banana peppers, in a red sauce, of course, and my wife cooked up the pasta and then she cooked up the sauce. Delicious, I had it for two days.
Doug:Sounds amazing. I'm jealous.
Joe:So, jealous.
Doug:Well, I just want to say thank you again for your time for sharing your story and thank you for being on The Pittsburgh Dish.
Maria:Thank you. Thanks for having us, Doug.
Joe:Thank you, Doug. We really appreciate your enthusiasm for the book and for our story, and thank you so much. It was our pleasure coming down.
Maria:Same here and I love to see your journey as well. I think it's been so wonderful just to start out following each other on Instagram, and I love to see all of the wins that you're having. It's amazing what you have done and what you have become. You are Pittsburgh food royalty. What you have done and what you have become you are Pittsburgh food royalty. So thank you, Doug.
Doug:Well, I certainly think Joe and Maria are also part of Pittsburgh food royalty. And up next, since we're talking about royalty, let's discover an Italian wine that's fit for a king. Hey, everybody, we're joined once again with our favorite wine expert, Catherine Montest of Your Fairy Wine Mother. Hey, Catherine, welcome back. We're in 2025. Can't believe it. I know so, Catherine. We just heard about the story of the Costanzo family, the rise and the fall of the Primad onna restaurant in McKees Rocks, and so many great dishes that came out of that. So you know hearty red sauces with chunks of sausage and veggies, a chicken medallion dish with white wine. I was just wondering do any of those dishes conjure a wine pick for you?
Heather:Well, they sure do, because I remember going to the Primad onna years ago and just feeling like I was eating like royalty and a wine that really kind of aligns with that and just the richness and the beauty of the food, is a Nebbiolo Nebbiolo. Nebbiolo is a grape grown in Italy and there's two wines that are made from the Nebbiolo Barolo and a Barbaresco. Barolo was considered for a long time to be the wine of kings, oh, and is considered to be the king of wines, oh.
Doug:Now what's the second one? I don't think I've ever heard of the second one.
Heather:It's a Barbaresco. Barbaresco and Italy's fun, different than America where we tend to name our wines after the grapes. The wines over there are named for the region, so that's why I called out our little grape friend the Nebbiolo. Okay, that, and we're Pittsburghers, we're Nebby, so kind of like. I feel like we should adopt this grape, I kind of love that oh. And the reason I would pick the Barolo or a Barbaresco is because it has high acid and high tannins, so it's got a really nice structure in your mouth.
Heather:And a lot of those foods are just so lush and delicious that the flavors and the structure of the wine can hold up to all of those beautiful Italian foods they were serving.
Doug:Oh my gosh. Yes, he was talking about how they used to, you know, cut the veal or the chicken parm, like right there on site, pan fry it instead of deep fry it, and so like it was rich, but it was still crispy and juicy. I'm sure those wines would go great with that.
Heather:Absolutely, and they're red wines. You're going to get flavors of cherry, red plum, maybe strawberry, fig, and then some of the more interesting notes are going to be some of the dried herbs, so that really ties into a lot of the foods in the Italian repertoire as well. Even a little bit of cedar and leather, because they are aged in oak barrels. So the wines are going to pick up some of those Real full-bodied, very flavorful, and for these wines you can expect to spend about $30. And up.
Doug:So a Barolo or a Barbaresco with your next Italian meal.
Heather:Yes, Catherine, thanks so much. My pleasure, happy drinking.
Doug:You can follow Catherine Montest on Instagram at yourfairywinemother. That's U- R Fairy Wine Mother. With all of this talk of Italian cuisine, you might have the urge to cook up something at home yourself. Our friend, heather of KDKA's Talk Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Today Live, shares her husband Frankie's recipe for meatballs. Heather, last time we were talking on the show, we were talking about Frankie's meatball recipe that you love and you dropped a couple hints about how he makes it. Could we actually go through the full recipe? Sure.
Catherine:Okay, so I've only observed, and it's usually. I'm drinking a glass of wine and watching him cook.
Doug:Oh, that's okay. Yeah, we'll put the recipe up on the blog for, like the full details, we don't have to go into exact measurements.
Catherine:Okay, so on the blog for like the full details, we don't have to go into exact measurements. Okay, so here is. I will tell you the two keys to this one. You must buy the like the old school meatloaf mix, so it has to be beef, veal and pork and a little bit of warm water.
Doug:All right.
Catherine:So you're adding that in. I don't know what it does if it's like an extra moisture, but it makes the meatballs so tender. You'll add in a little bit of seasoned breadcrumbs. Sometimes he'll add in some fresh basil as well, or parsley and salt and pepper.
Doug:No cheese, any cheese.
Catherine:He doesn't put cheese in meatballs. Every once in a while he'll sneak a little bit in, but it's not like part of the mainstay recipe. If you have some extra parmesan, like shredded, and you wanted to put it in, have at it, okay. And then he fries those in oil, all right. And then he sets them out like lets them kind of drip, dry onto kind of a cookie.
Doug:Yeah, like a wire rack, something like that.
Catherine:Does that, and then he will put them back into the sauce to cook to finish cooking. It's amazing.
Doug:Oh, that sounds so perfect. So, good when he makes them. Do you have any idea? Like is he using? Like out of the meatball mix? How many he gets out of? I'm wondering how big they are.
Catherine:Anywhere from a dozen to two.
Doug:Okay, you know, it depends A golf ball size. Yeah, okay.
Catherine:Yeah, I would say somewhere in that range, probably more like a dozen and a half. I would say that's pretty good yeah.
Doug:Now in Frankie's mind, and maybe in your mind, what is the best pasta shape to go with meatballs?
Catherine:Oh, this is a big debate too. I'm a big rigatoni fan and I think it's because when I would visit with my dad's side of the family, anytime my grandma would make homemade sauce, and she was not Italian, but anytime she would make her homemade sauce. She always served it with rigatoni.
Doug:Yeah.
Catherine:And so for me it's like the only way to eat red sauce is with Rigatoni. Yeah.
Doug:And rigatoni is so nice and toothsome. I like it because you can really get your fork on it.
Catherine:Right, he's a big, he likes like a good spaghetti.
Doug:Oh, this is Frankie.
Catherine:This is Frankie.
Doug:Yeah, I mean, I get spaghetti and meatballs too. That just seems like old school tradition.
Catherine:Right, I respect it. Yeah, the kids are. They'll go angel hair every time. They love angel hair pasta.
Doug:Oh, my least favorite, but quick to cook.
Catherine:It's very quick to cook.
Doug:You know what it's delicate, though, and that's probably what they like it is.
Doug:Heather Abraham. Thanks so much. Of course, we're so happy to be back for a second year of shows. If you want to support the podcast, you can buy us a coffee by clicking the link near the bottom of this show's description or tap that support button at the top of our website, www. pittsburghdish. com. And if you want to follow more of my personal food adventures, you can find me @DougCooking on social media. That's our show for this week. Thanks again to our guests and contributors and to Kevin Solecki of Carnegie Accordion Company for providing the music to our show. We'll be back again next week with another fresh episode. Stay tuned.
