South Philly Review

Identifying where they were from by parish -- a practice Lorraine Ranalli says is common in South Philly Italian culture -- her mother hailed from St. Monica, 17th and Ritner streets, and her father from St. Thomas Aquinas, 17th and Morris streets.

"All the time, [my mother] always, always was in the kitchen -- morning, noon and night," Ranalli, the Methodist Hospital-born daughter of first-generation Americans, said. "The best way to learn, and the only way to learn, was by watching."

A product of this technique, Ranalli was preparing her traditional-turned-contemporary Christmas Eve feast in 2005 when humor struck.

"People would be gloating over something, like, 'This is good.' And it's so easy. And as much as I'd get complimented, I started laughing over the silly idiosyncrasies that were bound to come up. 'I don't do it this way,' or something like that," the 43-year-old said.

The seeds were planted for her narrative-style cookbook, "Gravy Wars: South Philly Foods, Feuds & Attytudes," which offers her unique perspective on "South Philly Italian" culture's quirks and kinks. Though she's finding more and more it's not quite that unique.

"My family is as typical as any other family," Ranalli said. "My experiences, sure, they are mine. Other people experienced it, too, and still do. We all do. And the only difference -- and there is the Greek and the Irish -- is the food, the language. But I think as far as the relationships, it's all the same."

Wanting to share these personal yet universal happenings, Ranalli focused on her culture's passion: Food. Her first task was to convert abstract recipes into concrete measurements, which she later combined with family anecdotes to produce the 168-page, 11-chapter hybrid cookbook released in February.

"The food is all family recipes, they are all original recipes. And every family probably made them, but made them in their own way," Ranalli, whose grandparents immigrated from Abruzzo, Italy, said. "And a lot of the competitiveness that we experienced was because we were first or second generation, because we thought we knew how it was done in the Old World."

First, she set out to solve the "gravy" debate -- whether or not this is a universal term used for pasta sauce -- but the first-time solo author found the misconceptions ran far deeper.

"I talked to someone who deals with tourism in Italy to Philly," Ranalli, who divulged "gravy" is in fact unique to South Philly, said. "And he told me through his accent, 'You people want so desperately to hold on to tradition, but we've moved beyond you.'"

Lightheartedly exploring the incongruences that give rise to fits of passion within her community and the distinct Italian culture that has flourished along the Delaware River, the "Gravy Wars Phenomena," as she calls it, has spread nationally in large part due to social networking site Facebook.

"I've had responses from readers who are different nationalities say, 'We do the same thing in my house!," she said.

Immersed in South Philly Italian culture since birth, Ranalli was raised in Delaware County before graduating from Radnor's Cabrini College with a bachelor's in communications. She followed that up with a master's in education from the same institution.