Bear Paw Meanderings
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I have to go to the doctor in Great Falls today. I am not looking forward to that but I am looking forward to stopping at Borries in Black Eagle on the way home and picking up some spaghetti sauce and meat balls that are to die for. Borries sauce is a very old fashioned spaghetti sauce and is as good as any I have ever eaten.
Best of all I do not have to go to Borries to get great spaghetti sauce for Nalivka’s in Havre has it as well. They use a very old recipe and their meat balls are simply wonderful too.
I think that spaghetti and meat balls is one of my favorite meals. And yet it was not served when I was a child. I do not think that my mother knew how to cook that dish.
My father knew how to cook it though. As he delivered clothing and shoes from the Lou Lucke Company through the Italian community in east Havre, he saw their great gardens and learned all about sweet tomatoes and how they were essential for a good sauce. Out on Clear Creek once in a while he would cook spaghetti and meat balls and it was always a hit for anyone sitting at his table.
Many of the great supper clubs that flourished in Montana when I was a child started as spaghetti houses. When I think of Borries, the Jack Club and Eddies in Great Falls and Lydias in Butte or Hennessey’s in Kalispell or the Frontier in Missoula and don’t forget Andys in Havre, many of them specialized in spaghetti and ravioli dinners. Many had their own spaghetti sauce, always secret and those who never changed their recipe are for the most part still in existence.
When I was living in Somers, there was a steak and spaghetti house called Spenser’s that served just steak with spaghetti. It was plenty good as well.
Remember the feast you got at Andys when you ordered a steak? You first got a tiny shrimp cocktail, then an anti pasta plate with wonderful cheese, a salad and three kinds of dressing served right at your table. Then there was the spaghetti and ravioli, the garlic bread and finally your steak. By the time you got to the steak there was hardly room to eat it.
I make a good spaghetti sauce and meatballs as well as do some of my friends but I can’t compete with the likes of Nalivka’s or Borries and I am happy that I can still get those wonderful old sauces and their accompanying meatballs and ravioli to go!
