That sausage pizza you had the other night – what did it mean to you?
Well, maybe it reminded you of your youth and Saturday night treats with your family. Or maybe, if you are Italian, it struck a cultural chord.
Or maybe it was just food.
Sometimes, after all, a pizza is just a pizza although you wouldn’t know it from watching “The Meaning of Food,” a three-part series airing Thursday nights starting this week on PBS (check local listings).
Which is OK, to a point. This is a very entertaining series, with a very charming host- Marcus Samuelsson, the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised executive chef of Riingo and Aquavit, two acclaimed Manhattan restaurants.
The first show, which examines the ties between food and love, is the best. We watch as Mike Piancone, owner of a California Italian deli, caters his daughter’s wedding a labor of love in every sense of the word.
He shows off a jar containing enough garlic to ward off legions of vampires. “Lots of garlic, already peeled and ready to go. God bless America,” he says.
In the course of the hour, we also meet a former prison inmate who found his ministry in cooking the last meals of condemned men; a Muslim teenager who struggles to fast each day during Ramadan as others scarf down their food around her; a concentration camp survivor, who makes dishes from a cookbook written by women in the camps.
Most poignant is Thomas Soukakos, a Greek immigrant who closed his restaurant after his beloved wife, in the throes of postpartum depression, killed herself. Now, with his young son at his side, he’s opening a new restaurant-a cafe called Vios, the Greek word meaning life.