The Perfect Meal

Story for edible Memphis magazine

Winter 2009

The essence of tradition can be found as much in smell, taste and muscle memory as it can in any written history. At the age of 13, amid learning of algebra and girls, I was taught my family’s recipe for ravioli.

The Zanone family has been making ravioli from scratch since further back than anyone recalls. However, we know that around the late 1930s, Charles Francis and Rosalie Cerisola Zanone were making the dish for family in their tiny home in north Memphis. They made small batches for special occasions because the work was labor-intensive and refrigeration was poor.

In the late 1960s, my great-grandparents Charlie and Catherine Zanone, along with their daughter and her husband, Jean and Bill Hollahan, opened Zanone’s Restaurant in Frayser, selling ravioli, both hot and frozen, by the pound for a take-out meal …