← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Matteo Lane Talks Pasta, Humor, and His New Comedy Special
00:24:42
Stand-up comedian Matteo Lane admits he has no business writing a cookbook and yet... he discusses 'Your Pasta Sucks: A "Cookbook."'
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- [00:00]
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- [00:28]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Hey, just Just a reminder. Our May get lit with all of it book Club pick is audition by Katie Kitamura. She came on the show yesterday to preview the conversation and I'm so excited to talk with her about at this month's get lit event. Go back and listen to the preview. It's on our show page@wnyc.org Our Get lit event is happening on Thursday, May 29th at 6pm we will be at the New York Public Library Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library Branch. Tickets are free, but they tend to be grabbed up pretty quickly. So get yours now by going to wnyc.org getlit plus there will be a special musical guest. We can't announce it right now because we're still nailing down the details, but you won't want to miss it. That's all I'm going to say. Again, that's this Thursday, May 29th. Tickets and more information can be found at wnyc.org getlit that is in the future. Now let's get this hour started with your Pasta Sucks. On the COVID of Matteo Lane's new cookbook, there is an image of the comedian standing in the kitchen wearing close to nothing. He has on a heart covered apron, tighty whities, and he's feeding himself a spoonful of pasta. The book is titled you, Pasta Sucks and the Book and the Word Cookbook. It's in quotations. It's filled with 30 recipes, stories and tips like how to survive an Italian dinner, how to properly order a coffee in Rome, or a rant on why Matteo thinks Alfredo is basically a lie that transitioned into a recipe for penne alla vodka. His debut cookbook is as much a love letter to Italian food as it is to Mateo's family and culture. These are also topics he discusses in his forthcoming special on Hulu, the Al Dente Special, which streams this Friday. It's funny. By the way, his cookbook, you, Pasta Sucks is out now. Mateo, hi.
- [02:31]
Matteo Lane
Hi. I love that anecdote. You're like, it is fun. By the way. I'm like just telling you. I hope so. My God, you know, But Yeah. Hi. How are you?
- [02:41]
Alison Stewart
I'm doing well. First of all, do you like to cook?
- [02:45]
Matteo Lane
Yeah, I just wrote a cookbook. What do you. What is this?
- [02:50]
Alison Stewart
Well, it says cookbook. There's giant quotes on the COVID So I had to be clear.
- [02:54]
Matteo Lane
What I'm trying to say is it's ridiculous to think of my. Like, Fran Leibowitz said, too many people are writing books. Too many people are authors. Too many people. And I thought, she's right. But, you know, I am a writer because I'm on stage writing every single night, and I know how to cook. So I thought this is more of a cookbook with a series of essays, short essays, and exactly like you said, like, an homage to my family, my tradition, my culture, and just fun stories. So cookbook and quotations. Because, like, yeah, you're going to learn how to make cacio e pepe, but you're also going to learn about my ranting and ravings about mindless, stupid things.
- [03:28]
Alison Stewart
Your Pasta Sucks is a hilarious title for a cookbook.
- [03:32]
Matteo Lane
Thank you. And I fought for it because originally they were like, we should do, like, cooking and stories with Mateo. I was like, well, it's not poetry reading hour. Like, I'm a comedian. Like, gotta get people's attention immediately. So I thought that was funny. If you're walking around Barnes and Nobles or the Strand or you're looking for a book, especially you're trying to figure out new recipes or something, and you walk by a book that slightly insults you by telling you your pasta sucks, I'd be intrigued.
- [03:55]
Alison Stewart
You wrote in the book. I never meant to write a cookbook. Honestly, I probably should have written a book about love or Mariah Carey or Fortnite.
- [04:02]
Matteo Lane
Yeah, I could write, like, an encyclopedia. Remember, they used to come to the house and, like, try and sell you, like, encyclopedias. I could probably do half of it on Fortnite and half of it on Mariah Carey.
- [04:13]
Alison Stewart
So what, in your experience, gave you the strength, the desire to write about pasta?
- [04:21]
Matteo Lane
Oh, I mean, I think pasta for me is, like, a comfort. I mean, yeah, it's comfort food, but there's something comforting about pasta, you know? And I would come home from school and I found a pasta was being made. That was one part of my day that I enjoyed because I hated school. So for me, as a writer already, when I was doing a YouTube series on, I started, like, 2021, 2022, my YouTube channel, I was looking for ways to just continue exploring comedy and not waste any material. And I thought, well, I already cook, so I can cook, but then sort of use it as an excuse to tell stories about my family, etc. And it just kind of evolved. And I started cooking all these recipes, and people were coming to to see what I was cooking next and show me pictures of things that they've cooked. And, you know, at that point, my agent was like, have you thought about a cookbook? And I was like, under no circumstances. But they were like, well, you know, we think might be a really good idea. And I really thought about it, thought, okay, yeah, give me a year and a half. I'll just. I'm on planes anyways every weekend for touring. So I just sort of kept it as, like, a series of short essays so I could just write short stories and then sort of lob them together based off recipes.
- [05:26]
Alison Stewart
Yeah. In the first chapter, you spent a lot of time talking about your family in between the recipes or stories about your mom, your sister Kate, Nona, Aunt Cindy, your grandfather who had a secret family. How did growing up in a family like yours help shape? I'm gonna just be sort of real about this. How shape. How did it shape you, the person you are?
- [05:50]
Matteo Lane
I think your family is normal to you until you exchange stories on the playground and none of them match up, and then you realize that your family is not like every other family. So I would say for me, it feels normal. But I think other people entering in my family are sort of experiencing, like, what they experienced in Jumanji when, like, the board started becoming alive. And, you know, there's, like, animals running around and screaming and yelling and monsoons. That's really what it's like to be at an Italian dinner. But it definitely shaped me because I think my family, whether they know it or not, through all their trauma, clearly used humor as a way to deal and cope with their trauma. No alcoholism, no drugs, just humor. My family enjoys sitting around and laughing, and I just picked up on that as a young kid. Especially growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, we weren't consumed by iPads and distractions. I mean, you sat at the dinner table. You had to keep up with a 45 year old. Even though I'm 6. So I think that that probably had a lot to do with how I tell stories and how I navigate myself through the world.
- [07:00]
Alison Stewart
We're talking to Matteo Lane. He's joining us to discuss his new cookbook, your Pasta Sucks, as well as his new comedy special, the Al Dentes Besos Dreaming, on Hulu this Friday. All right, let's get into the cookbook. You have a section in the book titled how to Ruin Pasta. First of all, that many people are ruining pasta.
- [07:19]
Matteo Lane
Don't you think that many? Are you Italian? I don't know what you are.
- [07:22]
Alison Stewart
No, I'm a black chick.
- [07:23]
Matteo Lane
Oh, so you must know good food. So it's like, don't you see people making things that you grew up eating? And you're like, Mac and cheese.
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Alison Stewart
Oh, Mac and cheese.
- [07:31]
Matteo Lane
Thank you.
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Alison Stewart
Potato salad. Potato salad. Potato salad.
- [07:34]
Matteo Lane
Potatoes. I would say, doesn't it, like, irk something in you? And you see it and you know that it's just a few simple changes that they could make to better not just themselves, but also the food they're presenting to other people.
- [07:49]
Alison Stewart
True, true. Yeah.
- [07:51]
Matteo Lane
So I think it's the same way, you know, I feel like when you eat pasta the right way and then you see everybody else really messing it up, you're like. Like, case in point. I was in England, and I was at my friend Danielle, who's Italian. We found a real Italian restauran restaurant, and they made really good carbonara. So we sit, we order it, and then this very nice British woman and her daughter ordered the same thing next to us. The second they presented them with the plate, she just started cutting up all the spaghetti. And it was like I felt something, like, dying inside of me. And I was like, I think that I need to, like. Like, you exorcise these demons by just moaning and screaming about it, you know, because it's like, I don't know, like, there's so many simple rules, like, salt your pasta water enough so that it has flavor, and treat your pasta a steak so that way you're not eating sponge with a soup over it. You know, small change, because I think what people. And sorry if I'm talking too much, but I think, like, for example, people putting oil in their water. I think that is a sign of people wanting to be in the know and how to cook something authentically, but they're not in the know. So it's just a few simple rules that sort of live under your nose. And I think when people sort of apply them, you can take what's really simple cooking and elevate it to a level that makes you feel like, oh, wow, I learned something, and it's. It does taste better.
- [09:08]
Alison Stewart
Let's talk about Graham. Graham's eggplant parmigiana.
- [09:11]
Matteo Lane
Yes.
- [09:12]
Alison Stewart
First of all, you didn't really like eggplant. What did you have against eggplant initially?
- [09:16]
Matteo Lane
I don't know. Maybe it was a texture thing. I Finally fell in love with it after living in Umbria because they would do melizzane mezagni di melani. Melizane is how you say eggplant in Italian. I always get so mad. I'm like, ugh, why can't we just use pasta with cheese? And then I would spend all afternoon in the kitchen with the chef because I was the only kid that spoke Italian at the time. Same school. And I just started falling in love with it and then cooking it with everything. And then in Sicily, they use eggplant a lot, and they use a pasta called pasta a norma. They fry up eggplant and they put it in red sauce and put nicota salata and shave it over. And I slowly fell in love with eggplant. That took me a while to come around to it. But I remember my bisnona, my great grandmother, before she passed, I remember her coming over to my mom's house and cooking all those recipes for her. And my mom writing down all the recipes so she could remember it before she died.
- [10:09]
Alison Stewart
Pasta alla carbonara is a dish that you include in your Rome chapter, and it's real carbonara. But you didn't want Italy to cancel you, so you just specify, this isn't the only carbonara.
- [10:19]
Matteo Lane
Well, what's very Italian is to have rules and then to all argue about. Arguing is essentially what it is. They just love to argue with each other. But, you know, it's like the one city you could get in a cab and then the cab driver's telling you his way of making carbonara. But essentially, carbonara is one of the four Roman pastas, so they all sort of switch off ingredients. So I would say the king is carbonara, which is egg yolk, pecorino romano, pepper, guanciale pasta. Then you have alegre, which is just without the egg yolk. So it's basically a cacio e pepe with guanciale. Then you have madrigiano, which is basically get rid of the egg yolk and add in red sauce. And then there's cacio pepe, which is just the pecorino and pepper. And there are these four sort of sister dishes that live in Rome, and. And people do them their own way. Some use egg yolks, some use a full egg. Some people use spaghetti, some people use mezzigettone, some people use, you know, kind of depends. But generally speaking, those are the ingredients. Ingredients you're going to be playing around with.
- [11:19]
Alison Stewart
You write a love letter to pig jowls. I'm not going to say it. I'm gonna let you say it because it sounds so beautiful when you say it.
- [11:28]
Matteo Lane
Guanciale.
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Alison Stewart
Guanchale.
- [11:31]
Matteo Lane
There you go. That was great. That's exactly it.
- [11:33]
Alison Stewart
Thank you. Guanciale.
- [11:35]
Matteo Lane
Yeah. Brava. Parlimotto. Ben Italiano.
- [11:38]
Alison Stewart
One semester of Italian. That's all I have under my belt.
- [11:41]
Matteo Lane
That's all you need.
- [11:43]
Alison Stewart
It's really a fatty part of the pig. Why is it important when you're cooking? What's important about cooking with it?
- [11:50]
Matteo Lane
Yes. It's the buccal fat removal of the pig. The pig afterwards has great cheekbones. A lalia Michele. I think that difference with pancetta or bacon, the guanciale coming from the cheek, it can cook in its own fat. It can render in its own fat. So when you're making carbonara alla grigio madrigiana, you don't have to put a bunch of olive oil, garlic, or, you know, things that you sort of associate when you're frying on a pan. You can just take cold guanciale, chop it up, put it on the pan, put it at a low heat, and it will slowly cook in itself. It cooks in its own fat.
- [12:28]
Alison Stewart
We got this great text that says, this is giving me the judgmental Italian therapy I need. I will immediately get this book. Thank you.
- [12:37]
Matteo Lane
I know our. You know what I've noticed, being Italian, when I go to my friend's house younger, they immediately apologize before I eat the meal. They're like, oh, well, you're Italian. I'm so sorry. This meal's not going to be that good. I'm like, wow, Italians really have sort of conquered the guilt of the, like, culinary world. Like, people feel afraid of an Italian if they come over to eat, which I guess is a good thing, because, you know, we make good food.
- [12:59]
Alison Stewart
Matteo Lane is my guest. We're discussing his new cookbook, you, Pasta sucks. Okay, I'm gonna read this. From page 119, it says, Pesto is not just one thing. The word pesto is just a form of the Italian verb pestare, which means to crush. So because this is Italian food we're talking about, of course, there are a hundred different sauces made up from crushed stuff. When did you realize this was the case?
- [13:27]
Matteo Lane
You know, honestly, being in Italy so often, just talking to locals and talking to people about food, you just start learning more and more about food. I know that sounds so crazy, but it's like, I remember when I was young, I was in sicily. I was 16, and I'd never seen how tiramisu was made. I didn't even know what Mares Capone was. I didn't know how to put all that together. I didn't know. And you sit there and you make it with people, and then you just kind of build up the knowledge. Like I said, sat in a kitchen at Luciano, who make. Who's like the king of carbonara, and he taught me how to make a proper carbonara. It's just. It's really. It's kind of like learning a language, right, where it's like you just pick things up by being surrounded by it so often. You know, I never made risotto before, and so my friend Elena cooked the risotto for me. So picking up little tiny things. Also, my friend Katie Parla, who can look at a basil plant and tell you how old it is and what it's from and what it's used for. You know, I pick her brain all the time to talk to her about food and talk to her about pasta and talk to. About why this ingredient? Why not? What's the history of this? Why, you know, even like with fettuccine Alfredo, it's. It's a really rich history and a really complicated dish, and you just learn it by going and talking to people. Well, how did this come to America? How did this change like this? Why is the Olive Garden so. So where did it actually come from? You know, just talk. I know that sounds so crazy, but it's equal also, too. I. Saturday night, how fun am I? I sat and watched a carbonara documentary for an hour and a half.
- [14:57]
Alison Stewart
Oh, what did you learn?
- [14:59]
Matteo Lane
That the original recipe was published in Chicago, and it was from an Italian immigrant. So obviously he had brought it from Italy. But there were no publications before 1950 about what carbonara was. And the original recipe actually called for pancetta cream, garlic, and parmesan cheese and fresh pasta. And the dish sort of evolved both in America and specifically in Italy. And then sort of the dish that we know today arrived in the late 80s and 90s, I think, at a Michelin chef restaurant. And now the ingredients and sort of how it's cooked with the pasta water is more recognized today. But it really, carbonara is a dish about trends as opposed to, like, sticking to historical facts.
- [15:45]
Alison Stewart
In the book, you often highlight the differences between Italian and Americanized Italian cuisine. What are some of the major differences that come to your mind when you think of how American have come to understand Italian food versus food made in Italy?
- [16:00]
Matteo Lane
Well, Italian food from Italy is simpler. Portions are Smaller. The pasta is often cooked in the sauce. It has an al dente, like, a real bite to it. There's more rules, you know, in America and a lot of places you can go and pick the kind of pasta with the kind of sauce that you want. And they're not so blase in Italy about that. But I love American Italian food. You know, American Italian food is Italian food because you get all these immigrants from southern Italy living in one tiny area of New York City. So you have people from body, people from Napoli, people from Calabria, people from Sicilia. They all speak different languages because they don't speak Italian. And they're all there trying to stay alive. They're immigrants. How do we make money? Well, when American immigrants or when Italian immigrants came over, Americans had the idea that you have to have a carb, you have to have a vegetable, and you have to have a meat on a plate. And that's the American diet. So, boom, you take a bunch of different recipes, you put them together, you get pasta, red sauce, and meatballs. So meatballs aren't traditionally eaten over pasta, but to make money and to please American clients, you know, you change around your recipes. Also ingredients change. They came to America and they had more meats, more ingredients, more, you know, so things change, but they're all based off of regions and places of where these people came from. But it was really to accommodate a lot of Americans and non Italians to make money, to survive. So that's really the basis of Italian American food.
- [17:27]
Alison Stewart
We're talking to Matteo Lane. We're discussing his new cookbook, you, Pasta Sucks. He also has a new comedy special, the Al Dente Special, streaming on Hulu this Friday. Al dente, it translates to the tooth. Why did you decide to call the special that?
- [17:42]
Matteo Lane
Honestly, I wish I had a more creative answer, but that was the name of my tour at the time. And they were like, what's the name of your special? And I panicked, and I was like, al dente. And that was it.
- [17:52]
Alison Stewart
In the special.
- [17:53]
Matteo Lane
Two and a half years to write that special and took about 30 seconds to panic and write, like, a really.
- [17:57]
Alison Stewart
Crappy title in a special. You talk about Uber drivers seeing Oprah out and about Mariah Carey.
- [18:05]
Matteo Lane
And when I met Gail on CBS this Morning, which there's controversy in that, but I love Gail.
- [18:10]
Alison Stewart
Oh, tell me more.
- [18:12]
Matteo Lane
She remembered me. She came up to me. She had a billion notes, and she came up in the green room. She goes, I remember you in Rome. I remember you. Me and Oprah both remember you. And I thought oh, wow. I really, really made an impression. And I said, well, Gayle, I also remember you, because I remember I was at a Mariah Carey Christmas concert, and she was two hours late, and you were sitting right by me. And I thought, you really. You're gonna make Gayle King wait two hours? Like, get on stage, Mariah, your hair looks fine.
- [18:40]
Alison Stewart
I think we could all have a Gayle King story. I saw Smash and Gayle King at this Broadway show. We could all have a whole book of Gayle King stories.
- [18:48]
Matteo Lane
Yeah, I give it to Gayle. You know, she's out and about in New York. She really is doing it.
- [18:52]
Alison Stewart
You talked a lot about your Italian heritage, but also your Mexican heritage came up in this special. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Give people a little teaser.
- [19:04]
Matteo Lane
The older I get, the more curious I am about my Mexican heritage, because it was so taboo to talk about it around my nonna, because my grandmother had married a Mexican man named Joaquin, and they had five kids together. She's Italian, he's Mexican. And at the same time, he had another. He had another woman and had five kids with her. And then he named all the kids the same name so he didn't confuse them. So clearly my grandmother. This was traumatic. And they divorced, and she later remarried a Sicilian who is my grandfather, helped raise me and cared for me and loved me and. But I know that my mom is Mexican. My family's Mexican. They're all half Mexican. But we never grew up with the strong culture. I mean, my mom did when she was a kid. Everyone was Mexican. They're all speaking Spanish. We still have photos of our family in Mexico. And it was just one day. My grandma didn't know how to handle the stress, and she was like, they're no longer a family by. My mom and my aunt are like, well, wait, we have cousins. We have aunt. No, no more. It's like, okay. So growing up and hearing those stories and knowing that that's a part of my heritage, I want to shed a light on that and explore that and continue talking about it and be proud of it.
- [20:18]
Alison Stewart
Mexican cookbook. It could be in your future.
- [20:21]
Matteo Lane
I know. Well, I have to make. I have to learn how to make tortilla and learn how, you know, it's. I don't know, another cookbook. I don't know. I kind of ran out of recipes. I was like, I'm Martha Stewart, you guys. I can't do 80 rest. I can't do a crostini for someone's bachelorette party. Like, I'M pretty limited here.
- [20:37]
Alison Stewart
How did you get started in comedy?
- [20:39]
Matteo Lane
You know, it's interesting. I didn't think it was a thing that was for me, and I'm not playing victim here. It just. I didn't see gay men do stand up. That wasn't a thing. I know that Mario Cantone existed or Jim David, but you have to remember, like this. This was not accessible to me. Whatever came on TV was what I saw. And I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, So I was 23 years old. That was the first time I ever saw an openly gay man do stand up. That's how long it took. Usually, comedy lent itself to a lot of homophobia. It just wasn't a place that gay men existed in a way that I saw. And I think this country really struggles with misogyny and homophobia, and as a result, it's maybe somehow more comfortable for them to see a gay woman do stand up. Because men, so threatened by their masculinity can't handle the idea of anything feminine that they're not making fun of in a male. So you had Wanda Sykes, you had Ellen DeGeneres, you had Rosie O' Donnell, you had Judy Gold, you had. There were so many representations of gay women, lesbian women, and never gay men. So, yeah, the first gay person I ever saw do stand up, I had to wait TILL I was 23 years old. And his name was Bill Cruz, and he was a local Chicago comic. And what I admired about Bill is that he treated comedy how everybody else did. He was gay, and that's that. And let's keep working on the jokes. And I always admired that because I didn't feel like tokenizing myself for the sake of trying to get ahead was fair. I thought that I need to be a part of this community and challenge myself.
- [22:16]
Alison Stewart
Do you feel like it has gotten better?
- [22:18]
Matteo Lane
Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. Like, now there's so many queer comics out there in all different types and ways and shapes and forms. And it's so, so cool to watch, because even when I started in 2009, you know, it was just so far and few between. It really, like, on the grand scale, it was so far and few between. But then, you know, I moved to New York, and you meet people like Rick Chrome, you know, you meet people like Jim David, you meet other people, you meet closeted people. You know, you really get to hear what it was like. And I remember talking to Rick Chrome, who's been doing comedy since, you know, the 80s, and I said, when was it okay to be open on stage. And he thought for a second and looked at me, he goes now, so imagine trying to build a career that, that, that begs you for authenticity. And so many people just had to be closeted for years and years and years and years. And Mario Cantona has reached out to me personally to say thank you for, you know, saying such nice things. But, you know, someone's got to say it. So for me to see comedy that had anything to do with anything that I was thinking or feeling started with Kathy Griffin.
- [23:23]
Alison Stewart
Ah, Kathy Griffin.
- [23:25]
Matteo Lane
Mm. I don't know why. She just really, like, locked in on how gay people felt or thought or. So that was the first spark. But then when I saw Joan Rivers when I was 21, that was it for me. That unlocked the door. And I thought, oh, this is what I meant to do. And I've never looked back.
- [23:42]
Alison Stewart
All right, final question. How do you become good at comedy?
- [23:50]
Matteo Lane
Well, I would say comedy is up. It's many things. I would liken it to singing. Right? Like to sing, you have to learn how to breathe. Support project. You have to practice. You have to learn about different types of music. You have to listen to other singers, you know. But sometimes at the end of the day, you are either born with it or you're born with it. Or Maybelline, you're born with it or you're not. Like I always say, like, people can study singing their entire lives with the best trainers. But Whitney Houston is still Whitney Houston. There was something innate in her soul and body that just. She was born to sing. So I think some people really just kind of have it. You're just funny or you're not. And if you have even that tiny little bit of spark of just naturally being funny, you just have to work really hard. You have to do open mics every single night. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. You have to miss weddings, funerals, parties, dating, and just be within the comedy community and do it 247 and, you know, really give your talent a chance to grow.
- [24:47]
Alison Stewart
Matteo Lane has a new cookbook. It's called you'd Pasta Sucks. He has a new comedy special called the Al Dente Special, streaming on Hulu this Friday. It was nice talking to you, Mateo.
- [24:57]
Matteo Lane
It was great talking to you. This was such a fun interview and you asked great questions.
- [25:04]
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