Signora DiLelio wasn't hungry. Which was worrisome because she had just given birth to her son Armando and he needed Mama's milk. Her husband Alfredo fretted and fretted, then tried to coax her with a dish of pasta. And so was fettuccine all'Alfredo created in 1914.
     Simplicity,” said Leonardo da Vinci, “is the ultimate sophistication,” and, with the possible exception of the Martini, nowhere is that more the truth than with fettuccine all’Alfredo, for which we have an origins story, so we know exactly what goes into the dish. Which is: Fettuccine, butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. What? No cream? No  cream. No parsley? No parsley. Elimination of these last two ingredients is not just preference, it is Italian culinary history.
        Alfredo (left), who owned a restaurant in Rome on the Via della Scrofa, made some egg noodles and tossed them with butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. His wife took a bite, smiled and her appetite came roaring back. Alfredo knew he was on to something.
      Roman cookery on occasion uses butter in recipes, but classic Roman pastas like spaghetti alla carbonara, all’amatriciana, all’arrabiata and cacio e pepe do not. Alfredo Di Lelio went further: His fettuccine was made with an enormous quantity of eggs and three kinds of flour; the  butter was a triple cream—the richest available—and the Parmigiano-Reggiano was cut from the core of the wheel. And that…was…it.
      The dish would have remained one among many on Alfredo’s menu, and since World War I intervened, Rome was not teeming with tourists until the Roaring Twenties, when Americans, dying for booze and wine unavailable back home during Prohibition, hopped steamships and set sail for Europe. Among those who traveled to Rome were the two biggest Hollywood stars of the period, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford (left), who were traveling on their honeymoon in 1920. Dining at Alfredo’s restaurant they fell in love with his fettuccine dish and dined at Alfredo’s daily, and, years later, returned to  present the owner with a gold-plated spoon and fork inscribed “To Alfredo the King of the Noodles July 1927.”
     The international press picked up on this item and spread the fame of Alfredo’s noodle dish around the world. Within a year a recipe had appeared in the United States, printed in The Rector Cook Book by George Rector (who in 1939 reported Di Lelio had given the golden utensils to be melted down for Mussolini’s war efforts).
      World War II shuttered Rome’s restaurants until the U.S. 5th Army liberated the city in June 1944. Two years later Alfredo sold the restaurant on the Via della Scrofa to two of his waiters, named Urbano and Ubaldo, who were permitted to retain Alfredo’s name. But in 1950  Alfredo gave his son Armando—without whose birth there would be no fettuccine all’Alfredo— a new restaurant in Rome that they called, “Il Vero Alfredo” (“the true Alfredo’s”) in the Piazza Augusto Imperatore (left), where to this day it is managed by Armando’s son Alfredo (“Alfredo III”) with his sister Ines Di Lelio. Alfredo II garnered enormous publicity by posing himself and his noodles with show business stars like Gary Cooper (below). The trademark to the name “Alfredo’s the Original of Rome” was bought by Guido Bellanca for a series of restaurants under that name in the United States, which flourished in the 1980s.
      Both of the Rome restaurants under the name Alfredo’s are still open: the one on Via della Scrofa is now run by Mario Mozzetti, who every February 7 hosts National Fettuccine Alfredo Day with a big, festive party and a soup kitchen for the poor. And to this day the finest renderings of fettuccine all’Alfredo are to be found at both restaurants, however competitive they are. (They keep their prices competitive.)
      So how did other chefs elsewhere botch such a perfect, simple dish? One could say it happened in Hollywood, after the dish became so connected to Fairbanks and Pickford on their return from Rome. The problem was that no American (or Italian-American) cook could possibly obtain the same ingredients Alfredo had at his disposal. The ground wheat flour for the pasta was not available, and Italian eggs from a variety of chicken breeds differ from those laid by American hens. The butter here was not anywhere near as rich as it was there, and, most important, Parmigiano-Reggiano was not imported into the States until well after World War II.
    In order to make the dish, then, cooks resorted to boosting the richness by adding heavy cream, even a little flour to help thicken the sauce. Then, of course, some cooks had to elaborate on the dish by adding parsley. There’s an Italian saying that “Parsley is like children. It gets into everything,” which is not a compliment. As time went on Italian food chains like Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill started tossing in all sorts of things, and the frozen food section of supermarkets calls any number of items with an oleaginous cream sauce “Alfredo.” You can even buy a whole jar of the stuff, but it is about as close to what Alfredo created back in 1914 as Annette Funicello is to Sophia Loren.
       The snootier Roman restaurateurs who used to bridle at American tourists asking for fettuccine all’Alfredo would carp that it’s not really a Roman dish, so they list it under “fettuccine al burro” (with butter) or "alla crema” (with cream) for their American clientele.
       So, that’s the story. The good news is that you can come pretty close to the original fettuccine all’Alfredo without too many compromises. First, find a recipe for fresh pasta—not dry—that uses plenty of eggs: one per cup of flour—even adding an egg yolk or two. You can now buy so-called superfine OO (“doppio zero”) Italian flour, which is essential for texture; even King Arthur sells it.  Seek out the finest aged Parmigiano-Reggiano available from an Italian grocer or serious cheese store. From 24 to 36 months is a good age. Ask your cheese monger to cut as much of a wedge as he is willing to close to the core. And if he does not use a short, wood-handled Parmigiano knife to cut the Parmigiano (left), walk the other way. The quality of the unsalted butter is essential. Various high-fat French butters are fine, as is Kerrygold from Ireland; the best American butter I know is made by Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, but it's not easy to find and goes for about $15 a pound. Zanetti, imported from Italy in the fall and spring, is made with the same milk as is used to make Parmigiano-Reggiano.
        To get the perfect consistency of creamy cheese and butter will take some practice, but the recipe calls for you to boil the fresh pasta in salted water for no more than a minute, in order to keep it al dente, or, as Italians say, in the time it takes to say one Hail Mary. In a saucepan melt the butter till just starting to sizzle, add a handful of just ground Parmigiano and immediately throw in the drained fettuccine. Add another handful of cheese and keep folding the ingredients together till thick and creamy. Put salt, pepper and more grated Parmigiano  on the table, and serve pasta in heated pasta plates. Tell your guests to eat immediately upon receiving their plate. “Friends and fettuccine must be warm,” goes an old saying.
      Fettuccine all’Alfredo cannot be made in big batches and kept on the stove. It’s best to do the final toss right at the table. If left sitting around for too long you’ll get a lump of gluey pasta.
     And if done right, with plenty of practice— and no parsley!—you’ll have a dish that is perfectly simple and simply perfect.

     There are at least a dozen Lebanese cookbooks in the market and about 20 Lebanese restaurants in Manhattan alone, with many more in pockets of the other boroughs. One of the best and most successful has been Au Za’atar, which was opened downtown on Avenue A back in 2014 by Tarik Fallous. Now, four months ago, he expanded into the former premises of the long-running Rosa Mexicano near the 59th Street Bridge, and, while only operating outdoors for the moment, it’s clearly a big hit.
      Fallous (left) learned to cook from his mother, Salwa, and his range is very deep and very broad in every category of Lebanese cuisine, which is at least as rich in variety as Turkish. The menu is long, though there is repetition in various categories, and, as always with Mediterranean cooking, the first course mezzes are the most tantalizing. What distinguishes Au Za’atar is what follows them, all of it  buoyed by basket after basket of fresh, smoky, puffy pita bread. The word za’atar refers to an herb mixture of dried wild thyme, sesame seeds and sumac.
        It’s best to come with friends who will happily share all the small plates and the dips like the delicious hummus ($10), also in a spicy style, and the spiced cauliflower called arnabeet mekle ($14). A tabouli salad ($14.50) of bulgur mixed with parsley, tomatoes, scallions, mint, fresh lemon juice and olive oil is the essence of summer. Beautiful oven-roasted beets take on creaminess and tang ($13.50) with chèvre. There is of course traditional falafel ($11) of chickpeas, sweet onions, cumin and chopped parsley. Aside from the pita bread there are also some scrumptious flat breads manae’esh ($14). 
     There’s lots more, so the best way to go is with Au Za'atar’s Mezze Mix Tray ($54) or Mezze & Dips Tray ($54). Fattet Al-Betenjane ($17.50) is particularly savory, a dish of eggplant with warm chickpeas and crispy pita chips smothered with garlic-rich yogurt sauce and sprinkled with sun-dried cranberries, rose-red pomegranate seeds and pine nuts. Batata harra ($11.50) are sauteed spicy potato cubes with cilantro, garlic and red pepper flakes, while bemieh bzeit ($14) is a  sauté of baby okra—not my favorite veg—in olive oil with tomatoes, garlic and cilantro and makes them special. Somewhere in the meal you should get the sumac-dusted fried potatoes ($9) in a perfect aïoli. The remarkable thing is that, using many of the same spices, these individual dishes taste so different yet are distinctly Lebanese, with somewhat more bite than, say, Turkish or Persian food.
     On to the main courses: There are a couple of platters of grilled meats and makanek beef sausages ($54 and $78) I’d recommend, and there are various kabobs. I loved the hefty, thick lamb shank ($29), a generous one, braised slowly and suffused with an Armagnac prune sauce served over red skin mashed potatoes and sweet caramelized onions. Kibbi kabaniyeh ($30) is finely ground beef scented with mint and tossed with toasted pine nuts, served with wonderfully suffused vermicelli rice.
       I confess that my ravenous desire to taste so many dishes at Au Za’atar meant I did not order—this time—its “Original tableside Shawarma®️,” available with chicken, lamb or beef ($78 or $98), which comes to the table as a thick shaft of meats to be carved off and served with those great sumac fries.  I’ll be back.
       Not that I was any longer hungry, but I tried several desserts that were fairly dull by comparison with everything else.
       The wine list is very good, with plenty of unusual bottlings at modest prices, including some Lebanese wines (and beers) that go well beyond the usual Château Musar (I’ve never known why it is so expensive since there is so much of it around). Château Wardy white and red are very good at a much lower price. They also serve laban ayran, a traditional salty yogurt drink I can’t see enjoying with dinner.
    As noted, the 120-seat terrace is where all dining now takes place (indoors will be open soon), with wooden walnut decks and lovely flowered vines with partial glass windows. The only off note is that one wall is set with unsightly (closed) garbage dumpsters they really should shield from view. But the crowd is very happy to be outside, despite the rumble and noise of eighteen-wheelers trying to get to the bridge.
     Maybe Au Za’atar’s menu is a bit too long for everything on it to be first-rate, but I had no complaints about a single dish I ordered, reminding me again of how sophisticated and varied Lebanese cuisine really is.

Open nightly for dinner.