A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from January 22, 2022
Italian Hurricane (spaghetti with garlic sauce)

“Italian hurricane” is lunch room slang for spaghetti with garlic sauce. “Spaghetti and garlic: One Italian hurricane” was printed in the Middletown (NY) Times Herald on January 27, 1936. “Italian hurricane—spaghetti with garlic sauce” was printed in the book Hash House Lingo (1941) by Jack Smiley.
   
Lunch room slang became rare after 1960, and the term is mostly of historical interest.
   
     
Newspapers.com
9 September 1936, Middletown (NY) Times Herald, “Lunch Room Jargon,” pg. 4, col. 4:
Spaghetti and garlic: One Italian hurricane.
     
Newspapers.com
27 January 1950, Brooklyn (NY) Eagle, “Night Life” by Al Salerno, pg. 15, col. 4:
Italian hurricane—Spaghetti and garlic
     
Newspapers.com
3 August 1950, Scranton (PA) Tribune, “Broadway and Elsewhere” by Jack Lait, pg. 13, col. 1:
“Italian hurricane”—Spaghetti with garlic sauce.
   
Google Books
Hash House Lingo
By Jack Smiley
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.
2012 (Originally published by author in 1941)
Pg. 90:
Italian hurricane—spaghetti with garlic sauce
 
Google Books
You Don’t Have to Be In Who’s Who to Know What’s What:
The Wit and Wisdom of Sam Levenson

By Sam Levenson
Open Road Distribution
2016 (Originally published in 1979)
Pg. ?:
Many people are stabbed in the gut through their traditional foods: “He’s an Irish mick (or just “a mick,” which is a potato); spaghetti and garlic is an “Italian hurricane”; an Italian is “a macaroni”; his wine is “Dago Red”; ...
 
Google Books
The Stories of Slang:
Language at its Most Human

By Jonathon Green
London, UK: Robinson
2017
Pg. ?:
With garlic-flavoured sauce it (spaghetti—ed.) becomes an Italian hurricane (the garlic itself is Italian perfume).

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityFood/Drink • Saturday, January 22, 2022 • Permalink


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