Living: It's a Pasta Avalanche!

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It was that ubiquitous gastronome Thomas Jefferson who first brought pasta to prominence in the U.S. After visiting Naples in the late 18th century, he ordered home four crates of "maccarony." Like the European grapevines he brought back to Virginia, however, pasta alia

Tommaso got nowhere, except to decorate Yankee Doodle's hat. Pasta languished in Italian neighborhoods, to be consumed, over red-check tablecloths with raw chianti, by young people out on a cheap date. (Those neighborhood restaurants today often serve very good food.) What most Americans did not appreciate was pasta's infinite variety. One New York City restaurateur, Naples-born Tony May (the Rainbow Room), insists, "There's no reason why you should eat the same type of pasta with the same sauce more than once in your whole lifetime."

Nadine Kalachnikoff, who opened a chic carry-out and catering service called Pasta Inc. two years ago in Washington's Georgetown section, sells more than 1,000 Ibs. of pasta weekly, in five different widths and in a spectrum of ten flavors that include curry, dill, sesame and choco late. The White House occasionally sends out for green and white agnolotti and nut meg sauce. At Prego in San Francisco, Owner Larry Mindel says, "There's not one pasta on the menu that any of our customers had ever heard of a year ago."

In fact, for an aficionado, pasta is fine any time. Actor James Coco (Only When I Laugh), who has waged a heroic battle to shed more than 100 Ibs., observes, "When I'm really happy, I have to have pasta. When I am really depressed, I have to have pasta. Even when I'm dieting, I have to have pasta."

Mangia! Mangia!

—By Michael Demarest. Reported by Frances Fiorino/New York and Michael Moritz/San Francisco