This recipe is after the one served at Tonari in Washington, D.C., a spot in Chinatown that does Japanese-style or 'Wafu' pasta and pizza. The dish is a twofold reminder of my favorite pre-pandemic luxuries: restaurants and live NBA basketball, and the “treat yourself” nights when one would follow the other.
Rewind back to the beginning of 2020 (I know, I know): Something I had resolved to do more often was go to Wizards games. The arena was four stops from me on the Metro, and since the Wiz were pretty bad, it was always easy to find good-to-great seats on the cheap whenever a player or team I liked was in town.
I’d just watched from behind the visiting team’s bench as Ja Morant, the electric young Grizzlies star and Rookie-of-the-Year-to-be, notched the first triple double of his professional career the evening I sat at Tonari’s bar and ate this dish for the first time.
I‘d come for the Mentaiko spaghetti.
A version of it appeared on their sister restaurant Daikaya Izakaya’s menu, and it was so good I’d ordered a second helping in the same sitting more than once. So when I read the restaurant group was opening a whole place dedicated to this type of cuisine, I planned to check it out the next time I went to a game, as it was just across the street from the arena.
The mentaiko was as I remembered, but not on this occasion memorable, if that makes any sense.
It was this other pasta, the one called “Napolitan,” that stuck with me. Known colloquially as “ketchup spaghetti,” it had a colorful backstory dating to the post-WWII era that all the reviews I’d read so far had highlighted. What I thought would be kind of a gimmicky dish ended up being something much more: homey but complex, and extraordinarily soulful: comfort food but with finesse. It’s an apt descriptor of both the dish and Tonari.
I went back for more after watching the Wizards lose in overtime to the Bucks, despite league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo fouling out early in the game and Washington’s Bradley Beal going for 55 points. I ate it again after they lost to the eventual conference champion Miami Heat, who were led by the dominant Bam Adebayo and the sweet-shooting Duncan Robinson. And on March 10, 2020, I ate it for the last time, before I watched the Wizards and the Knicks play an obstensibly meaningless mid-season game between two extremely non-playoff-bound teams. The next night, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced their positive coronavirus tests, and Rudy Gobert became the first NBA player to test positive, shutting down the entire league. Two days later I saw my office for the last time in nearly 11 months and counting, and a night after that I worked what was clearly going to be my last bartending shift for a while, going on hiatus just as spring was arriving and the weather in DC turned most hospitable to al fresco drinking. I had two customers all night.
I didn’t think about Tonari or this pasta again until recently, when I suddenly became obsessed with perfecting a version of it after a trip to the Asian market inspired me to make it on a whim for me and my partner. Since they haven’t offered carryout service during the shutdown, I don’t have a basis for comparison outside my sense memory, so I’m not sure how close my take on the ketchup sauce is to the actual thing; probably not very. The early months of 2020, when I first fell in love with this dish, feel like they happened approximately 40,000,000 years ago rather than merely one. I’ve certainly taken some liberties with the recipe over time, adding cabbage, sundried tomatoes, and scallions to the traditional mix of onions, bell peppers, sausage, and mushrooms. I like andouille for the sausage because it provides a nice undercurrent of heat to balance the sweetness of the ketchup sauce, but anything smoked or hot dog-like will do. (Even hot dogs.) If you want to lean into the sweetness of the sauce a little, Chinese-style sausage is a fun variation. I also find that a touch of cream or half and half, along with the pasta water and the last addition of butter, adds richness and helps round it all out. Tabasco and parmesan—the cheap shaker kind you find in the pasta aisle in the supermarket—should be served alongside. —Chris Hagan
See what other Food52ers are saying.