The kitchen at Saucy Noodle Ristorante at 727 S. University in the Bonnie Brae neighborhood cooks up more than 1,800 pounds of garlic every year, and it’s been serving it for 50 years this month – that’s well over 75,000 pounds of garlic.
Erin Markham, the third generation of the Badis family who now operates the restaurant with her husband, Nathan, invites the public to a 50th birthday celebration starting 4:30 p.m. Saturday. The party will include menu specials and special prices that will evoke the early days of The Noodle: Large one-topping pizzas for $3.95 (limit one per table) and spaghetti and meatballs for $4.95. There will also be a birthday cake, gifts and giveaways.
Markham grew up at the restaurant, which her grandfather Sam bought in 1964 and renamed from Jim Sano’s to “The Saucy Noodle,” with the culinary warning out front on its distinctive red and white canopy awning: “If you don’t like garlic, go home.”
A lot of garlic goes into the Noodle’s spaghetti marinara, which is vegetarian but has so much garlic in it that it looks like ground beef. “The red sauce is grandmother Inez Badis’ recipe,” Markham said. “It’s been a menu staple throughout the decades, alongside the most popular dish, lasagna, as well as spaghetti and the restaurant’s baseball-sized homemade meatballs.”
The menu also features one appetizer that might not catch a younger person’s eye: Morey Amsterdam’s fried ravioli. The dish is named after the late actor and comedian who is best remembered as part of the ensemble cast of the classic “The Dick Van Dyke Show” on television.
“It’s called that because in the ‘60s he came in and asked if we had such a dish, and we didn’t so he helped himself to the kitchen and made it himself,” Markham said. The dish became part of the Noodle’s culinary culture.
The menu has evolved over the decades. When Markham’s grandfather, a former big band leader, opened the restaurant he smoked barbecue in the back. The Markhams will bring back barbecue for the Aug. 30 birthday celebration.
The family-owned, family-friendly restaurant has earned the loyalty of customers who have come on a regular basis over the decades – even after a fire on April 1, 2000, closed the restaurant for seven months. And, although Amsterdam died in 1996, The Noodle’s regulars will toast his spirit with the fried ravioli that bears his name, and all the other garlicky family favorites that have been served for half a century.
For more information, go to www.saucynoodle.com.
The Saucy Noodle named its fried ravioli dish after ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ actor Morey Amsterdam (above) when he helped invent the dish during a visit to the University Boulevard eatery.
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