Chef Boyardee
Gimme a break, you say. Chef Boyardee? What kind of name is that? And look at the dude on the label — straight from Central Casting, a cheerful old guy wearing a huge chef’s hat. But what kind of self-respecting chef would put his name and picture on something called “Beefaroni”? In a can, no less. Must be an ad agency creation, phony as Betty Crocker or Charlie the Tuna.
But there really was a Chef Boyardee, and, Beefaroni notwithstanding, he really was an excellent Italian chef. His name, however, was actually Hector Boiardi, and he was born in northern Italy in 1898. Hector’s family emigrated to the US when he was just 17, and he soon got a job alongside his older brother in the kitchen of New York’s prestigious Plaza Hotel.
Hector, who had begun working in restaurant kitchens in Italy at the age of eleven, quickly honed his cooking skills and was a hit at the Plaza and other restaurants, eventually, in 1929, opening his own Italian eatery, Il Giardino d’Italia, in Cleveland. There his signature spaghetti sauce became the talk of the town, with patrons asking for extra portions to take home with them. Hector began selling his spaghetti sauce, packaged with pasta and cheese for home use, and before long what had begun as a sideline became his primary occupation. To make Boiardi easier to spell for his customers, he adopted the phonetic spelling “Boyardee,” and eventually sold his business to American Home Products (now International Home Foods, Inc.).
And that really is a picture of Hector on the label.
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