ShareThisBy JAMES B. MEADOWS
Scripps Howard News Service
Monday, May 14, 2007
As controversies go, this one isn't exactly a whopper. It's more of a -- well, let's just say it's about a wopburger and what happens when the menu at an iconic Louisville, Colo., restaurant collides with ethnic sensibilities and political correctness in the 21st century.
And, essentially, what happens is the icon blinks first. Which is why the menu at the Blue Parrot restaurant will soon offer an "Italian burger" instead of a you-know-what burger.
How, you ask, could something as benign -- to say nothing of tasty -- as a "sausage patty with melted cheese served with sauce" ignite an ethnic flap? Well ..
It all began about 1919, when Michael and Emira Colacci, fresh from Campobasso, Italy, decided that opening a restaurant Louisville, Colo., made sense. A place for coal miners, of which Michael was one, to eat, to be comfortable around fellow paisanos.
The you-know-what burger's name wasn't an ethnic slur. It was, Michael and Emira's granddaughter would insist 88 years later, "A nickname. It just meant they were Italian, proud to be Italian."
At least that's what Michael and Emira thought. At least that's what their son Joe and their grandchildren Joan and Richard thought. And, apparently, it's what generations of locals like Chuck Scarpella thought.
Scarpella, former head of the Louisville Society of Italian Americans, says the you-know- what burger had "been there all my life. My grandma worked in the Blue Parrot. My mom worked there, I worked there, my kids worked there. It's never been offensive."
Until about a month ago.
A transplanted East Coast Italian-American named James Gambino came in, saw the item on the menu and, says Joan Riggins (nee Colacci), "really raised a stink. He said he was offended and demanded we take it off the menu."
Gambino admits he was "shocked," but remembers "politely" speaking to the Blue Parrot. "They basically laughed at us."
Then the April 13 letter from the Washington, D.C.-based National Italian American Foundation arrived. The one in which Chairman A. Kenneth Ciongoli wrote he was "alarmed to learn" of the you-know-what burger being on the menu. "Perhaps you are not aware that this is a pejorative term that insults the Italian American community," he added.
No way, thought Riggins, to Ciongoli's renaming suggestion. "This is our business." Apparently, the Boulder Valley School District didn't agree.
Gambino, who complained to the National Italian American Foundation, also took his case to the school district, which, it seems, had been happily buying Blue Parrot sauce for 10 years and using it in its lunch program.
"We love using the product," says Linda Stoll, director of food services for the school district. "It's 100 percent natural, exactly the kind of product we want."
When Stoll learned the Blue Parrot had a you-know-what burger on its menu, she called Richard Colacci, a restaurant owner and boss of the sauce operation.
"I explained that the district is very proud of our stance on ethnic equity issues," recalls Stoll, adding that the you-know-what burger "didn't conform to the way we felt about those issues."
Then, "I asked if they would consider renaming the item."
Colacci spoke with his sister and nephew. The next day he called Stoll back. The Blue Parrot would have new menus as soon as they could be printed. Commerce had trumped a menu tradition.
(Contact James B. Meadows of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)
