Al Dente Sauce!

There's a restaurant up the road from us that serves passable pizza - nothing great, but better than anything else we've found in this region that is apparently devoid of Italian immigrants and their culinary skills.

Here's Maria, whose mother's maiden name was Guerrinni, smirking over the restaurant's menu, which features spaghetti and meatballs with Al Dente sauce.

Huh?

Just to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding something, I went to the Busy Cook website to verify my understanding of the term al dente.

Here's their definition: Al dente refers to the desired texture of cooked pasta in Italian cooking. It literally means "to the tooth." When the pasta is cooked al dente, there should be a slight resistance in the center when the pasta is chewed.

So how in hell can there be such a thing as al dente sauce? I ordered the spaghetti and it arrived with plain old red tomato-based sauce. And the sauce wasn't chewy in the least.

Al Dente sauce, indeed.

Maybe they have a cook named Al Dente.