OmahaNebraska.com here with …
Larry Pence.
This is one of the events that we all look forward to, La Festa Italiana.
Please tell me a little bit about how it started and what you’re offering this year.
Okay. Well, this is the 41st year of our festival. It has become probably the most widely attended festival in the city.
We used to have to compete against September Fest because they always had the Labor Day weekend, but that was discontinued last year. So now everybody in the city comes here over Labor Day weekend. Last night, there was no place to sit, inside or outside. It was absolutely packed, even with this rain. We thought people wouldn’t come, but they’re here.
It’s all about the food. We have 31 homemade Italian dishes. They can’t get that anywhere else in this city, so I think that’s why people come. That’s what they tell us, anyway. They come for the music, the food, and the wine.
I noticed you have quite a few of the most popular bands in the area, too.
Yeah, those three bands have been coming here for years. And every year when they finish, they immediately ask us to put them on the calendar for next year. So we rarely have to call to find entertainment because they want to come back.
What are some of your favorite foods?
That’s a tough one. You know, everything is homemade. Probably the thing that we are most famous for is our meatballs. I think three years ago we made 3,000, and this year we made 7,500. We used almost 4,000 last night. People just can’t get enough. And it sounds weird over a meatball, but it’s a meatball you cannot get anywhere else. It is a true, original Sicilian recipe that no other restaurant in this city makes. So that’s why people come here.
I guess that’s going to be on my list to try here.
Yeah, absolutely. And we have another Italian dish that you can’t get anywhere else in the city. It’s called Farsu Magru. It’s kind of a braciole. It’s basically Italian meatloaf, and inside are hard-boiled eggs and provolone cheese, pepperoni, onions, and peppers. And then you roll it all up, bake it, and the cheese melts inside. It’s delicious. Then they put marinara over the top of it.
Fried ravioli is another real popular item. Our friends at Pasta Amore made 5,000 raviolis for us this year. We have to boil them, and then we have to bread them, and then we have to fry them.
Chicken Sicilian is very popular. It’s basically a little drummette that’s deep fried and then herb butter is poured over it and tossed.
Our pizza is a true Sicilian pizza. We make it inside and outside. We have pizza ovens all the way along the back of the property so people can get it right out of the oven if they want it.
Calamari, shrimp scampi. You name it, it’s here.
What makes a Sicilian pizza different from other pizzas?
Some people say, “Well, is it like New York pizza?” No, it’s not thin, it’s thick. Our friends at Rotella make the dough for us, and then we let it rise a little bit. We make a cheese and tomato pizza. We also make a sausage pizza that’s very, very popular.
How many years have you been doing this?
Well, I’ve served as the chairman of the board of the society [American Italian Heritage Society] for many years. I am the co-chairman of the festival, and I have been for the last five years. We start planning three to four months in advance. And then we do all the cooking pretty much here [at the Palazzo].
Really?
Yeah. We prep all the food. Anything that can be frozen, we prep months in advance, put in the freezer, and then we thaw it out for the festival. Some stuff we can’t freeze, so we have to make it fresh. But a lot of the things we serve, we can freeze them. Otherwise, we couldn’t cook enough food in one weekend because we couldn’t do the kind of volume we do. Like, the night before Festa starts, we had to boil 500 pounds of pasta.
Wow.
People say, “There’s no way you’ll use that,” but I tell them, “We’ll run out of pasta by Sunday.” One of our favorite items is mostaccioli and meatballs. That’s what people come for. That’s what we’re known for, anyway.
Can you think of anything surprising that maybe people don’t know that you’d want them to try or to experience?
Yeah. Sometimes people come to the festival, and they only come inside. They think that’s the only place they can get food. They don’t realize that there are five booths in the back.
One of the most popular booths out there is called fried dough. In Italian, it’s zeppole. Rotella gives us the dough, and we let it rise. We cut it in pieces about this big, drop it in a hot fryer, cover it with cinnamon and sugar. The line will be long until 11:00 at night. People can’t get enough of it.
If people don’t go outside and experience some of the things that are in the booths, they’ll think they have to stand in this obnoxious line and wait an hour to get food. They don’t. They can go anywhere on the festival grounds and find food. We make homemade lemon and chocolate gelato, and that’s popular. There’s a lot of stuff out there.
Thank you very much.
You’re welcome.
American Italian Heritage Society
5110 N 132nd St.
Omaha, NE 68164
