N.110 - Mangiaspaghetti

You're sitting across from him. He looks straight at you, halfway through a conversation, with a strand of spaghetti still suspended between his mouth and his plate. This is the moment Luca Boni has captured: wine and spaghetti, two of Naples' most recognisable icons, and an ordinary Mangiamaccheroni - a pasta eater. It's been a moniker for centuries. At first, it referred to Sicilians, then to Neapolitans, and eventually became a derogatory label for Italians who had emigrated abroad. In Naples, macaroni was street food, eaten with one's hands. During the Grand Tour decades, what was a matter of hunger for Neapolitans became folklore for tourists: all it took was tossing a coin to the lazzari and you could watch them rush to the nearest stall and, heads thrown back, gulp down handfuls of spaghetti. It became one of Europe's most familiar sights. To sell their pasta on the streets, Neapolitan maccaronari came up with two practices that would become standard: keeping large pots of water constantly boiling before adding the pasta, and cooking it al dente, which also helped make people feel fuller. We owe the pasta we know today, and the way the world associates it with Italians, in part to those street vendors and their ingenuity.