Order spaghetti at Arduini’s in south Tulsa and the owner, Judy Trout – nee Arduini – rolls a big ball of dough, carefully pounds it long and flat and slices it into thin strips with a mandoline. Then it goes in the pot. As for the sauce…
“I’ve been making that since 8 a.m.,” she says. “I learned by watching my Sicilian grandma and great-grandma cook when I was a kid. I copied what they did … and if I did it wrong they’d yell at me. I never wrote the recipe down; I kept it in my head.”
You can get lasagna, full of rich, cheesy flavor – that’s also from her grandmother. So is the chicken parmigiana, “except she made it with veal, and no one in the world could ever make it as good as hers, so I use chicken.”
She grew up in upstate New York and came to Tulsa 25 years ago, around the time she met Dane Trout, now her husband. He plays guitar, and once a month he brings his band to play at the restaurant. The place is packed and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll see his wife get on stage and sing. 5321 S. Sheridan Road; 918-271-5044; facebook.com/arduinis.
