Spaghetti and Meatballs. Mostaccioli and Meatballs. Pasta with Italian Sausage.
Consider it a veritable plethora of pasta—all yours to enjoy by the heaping forkful at the Sons & Daughters of Italy Lodge. Located on S 10th Street, the community dinners served at this old-fashioned food hall pay homage to Omahans with Italian heritage. But you don’t need to boast a tie to the Old Country to pull up a chair for dinner or lunch. Anyone who loves authentic Italian fare is welcome.
Although meals are served only on Thursdays and Fridays, the kitchen is bustling with activity at the beginning of the week. On Mondays, a group of women, affectionately known as “the Meatball Mavens,” come together to make the meatball mix. On Tuesday, a group of men (who have not yet earned a catchy nickname—perhaps the “Sausage Sirs?”) season the mix and cook the meatballs. On the eve of serving, all the food is finished and readied for Thursday.
The Lodge rotates meals, serving one dish they have ready for the day—whether it’s spaghetti and meatballs, mostaccioli and meatballs, or pasta with sausage, with the abundance of noodles and sauce certain to satisfy. The Sons & Daughters of Italy even offer a fried fish option on Fridays during Lent.
“Every third week, we have Italian sausage that we make ourselves,” said Ola Partusch, the venue’s manager. “A group of guys make that, and it starts on Tuesday. They’ll cut the meat, season it, and then on Wednesday, they’ll make the links. Sausage is pretty popular. Those are our busiest days; it’s crazy.”
Busy they are indeed, though the chaos has some order to it. It’s easy to get the hang of the system once inside the doors. Meals cost $12 and include pasta, salad, and bread. Diners pay with cash or check at the window by the entrance and receive their meal tickets. They then pick up their pasta at the next window, where volunteers load foam plates with deliciously traditional Italian fare. Next to the food window is cutlery, napkins, condiments, and bowls of salad featuring a slice of bread. Ice water is available toward the back of the room, alongside a table stacked with cannoli (a mere $1 each) for dessert.
The set-up is quaint and reminiscent of a community center or church kitchen. The lodge is a place to gather and be communal, after all. Historical photos and memorabilia line the walls, providing guests with exactly that sense of nostalgia and community. Volunteers run these dinners, from making and serving food to bussing tables, an endeavor that adds to the feeling that you are visiting with neighbors over a casual shared supper.
This aspect is why Local Lodge President, Sarah (“Sarita”) Ruma, cherishes the pasta suppers. “I was employed at the [Nebraska] Medical Center when my father used to work in the window,” she shared. “I would get my dish of pasta and I’d always kiss my dad hello, and the Italian men behind me would say, ‘Oh my God, he’s kissing a girl’ in Italian. After my father died, my mother (whose name was also Sarah) started working in one of the old rooms, and they would always say, ‘Oh my God, Sarah’s in the kitchen!’ Now they do that for me, and it makes a kind of heartwarming memory of my family doing that.
“There’s a lot of Italian family history,” Ruma continued. “I could list names, but I’d be embarrassed if I left somebody out. There’re a lot of good people. We have retired restauranteurs who are working in the kitchen. We have retired postal workers, teachers, city workers, state workers—we just have a great group of guys and women.”
Ruma is the first woman president of the local lodge in Omaha, which was founded in 1926. She was amused that her presidency seemed to “stir things up a bit,” but she’s okay with that, giggling as she explained.
When the Lodge started in the 1950s, men met in one room and women in another. It wasn’t until the ‘70s or ‘80s that the women, who made the food, proclaimed that they would stop giving the men dessert if the Lodge remained segregated by gender. “They stepped in, and I’m very proud of them,” Ruma said.
Thursdays at the Sons & Daughters of Italy Lodge are the busiest, filled with people grabbing a pasta meal to-go on their lunch breaks from work, while Friday nights seem to be most attended by families and groups of friends who want to relax and enjoy a pasta meal.
“It smells like you’re at your nonna’s house, which is a great feeling,” Ruma said. Or, as one diner proclaimed in the dining room, “Man, I’m not even Italian, but I feel like my grandma just made me dinner!”
These family-friendly dinners are not without their challenges. The tradition endured a fire, followed promptly by the COVID-19 pandemic. Neither calamity stopped the dinners for long.
The fire hit in 2017, unluckily enough on Friday the 13th of January. The Fire Marshal guessed it was a case of “spontaneous combustion,” Ruma explained, the result of oily cleaning towels going through the dryer and catching on fire. It was a significant disaster that shut down the pasta dinners for three years and one week, according to Dan Matuella, Grand Lodge President.
The pasta dinners returned for four weeks before COVID-19 shut down restaurants. In the late spring and early summer of 2020, the Sons & Daughters of Italy began offering a drive-thru option for the pasta dinners so the community could once again enjoy the tradition, although the familial community presence had to be absent.
“We had it set up where people would come in off 10th Street and drive around in a horseshoe, get their food, pay for it, and go. We would have a line on 10th street that would go from the hall north about six or seven blocks,” Matuella recalled.
Partusch laughed at the memory. “We got in trouble a couple times for blocking traffic!”
Matuella estimated it was around October 2020 when they reopened the dining room, but that was with social distancing. “In 2021, it got a little more normal,” he said.
The three mentioned that they’re trying to expand community offerings at the Lodge. They already host birthday parties and other events, but there are plans to add BINGO, karaoke, bocce ball, cooking classes, and language classes.
“Our mission is to preserve the Italian culture and heritage,” Matuella averred. “Originally, it was to help Italian immigrants assimilate into American culture. Naturally, the Italians have assimilated quite well, and now we’re here to preserve the culture.”
The Sons & Daughters of Italy give back to the community in a variety of ways. The organization donates to various charities and awards scholarships. It offers members opportunities to immerse into Italian culture by organizing trips to Italy—and by enjoying a traditional pasta meal twice a week at the Sons and Daughters of Italy Lodge, served September through May.
To learn more about the Sons & Daughters of Italy, located at 1238 S. 10th St., visit sonsofitalyne.org. Pasta lunches: Thursdays, 10:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Pasta dinners: Fridays, 5:00–8:00 p.m.
