For macaroni and cheese fans

It's primi, secondi, and the main dish - three different plates.
Antipasti can be primi, or a starter, or a small dish before the proper meal.

What's the term for main dish, then? And how do they differ from these secondi piatti?

Ricette per secondi piatti:

Agnello e capretto (lamn and kid)
Arrosti (roasts)
Piatti freddi (cold plates)
Brasati Stracotti (braised and potroasted meats)
Bolliti (boiled meats)
Carni bianche (white meats)
Grigliate (grilled meats)
Insolita fettina (unusual steak recipes?)
Manzo Vitello Maiale (beef feel pork)
Souffles, polpettoni, flan
selvaggina (game)
Pesce (fish)
Frittate omelettes e crepes

I wonder how long that restaurant will last. I see it has been open for two months.
I would love to go someplace to get - don't laugh at me - macaroni and cheese done well, as when it is all hot and cheesy and somehow in that lovely white sauce it is very good. I had it recently with chips, yum. Often, as has been said, its all dried up and been under the heatlamp for ages.
I don't know how often I could eat it though.
Surely no-one eats pasta and ketchup?
Every now and then I get a macaroni and cheese pie from the bakers. I would eat it cold rather than attempt to swallow the dried up version.

Surely no-one eats pasta and ketchup?

When I was a kid, we often had Kraft Macaroni & Cheese as part of a Friday meatless meal. I always put ketchup on it. It's still a guilty pleasure of mine. I can't say it's the most refined of gourmet pleasures; in fact, I can't really say it's really all that tasty. But it's comfort food to me.

Then there is Naporitan, "a pasta dish, which is popular in Japan. The dish consists of spaghetti, tomato ketchup or a tomato-based sauce, onion, button mushrooms, green peppers, sausage, bacon and Tabasco sauce."

I once dated a guy whose father put ketchup on everything. And I mean everything. If you think pasta & ketchup is bad, you should see someone putting ketchup on a tossed green salad.

That Naporitan sounds similar to a family-favorite recipe from my childhood - Quick Bacon and Spaghetti. Which is very good, but not at all in the same flavor group as macaroni and cheese.

Quick Bacon and Spaghetti

½ lb lean bacon slices, cut into squares
½ cup chopped onions
1 chopped green pepper
½ lb. spaghetti, broken into 4 or 5-inch pieces
1 ½ cup boiling water
1 large can tomatoes (3 ½ cups, chopped) – 1 lb 13 oz
½ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon worcestershire sauce

In large skillet, cook bacon, onions and green pepper about 5 minutes until lightly browned. Add uncooked spaghetti, water tomatoes and salt. Simmer covered 20 minutes. Stir in worcestershire sauce.

There's a movie about Milton Glazer, the guy who designed the IHeartNY logo and a hundred other iconic images of the twentieth century, and who was also half of the Underground Gourmet for New York Magazine in the 1960s. In it he describes his mother's spaghetti, which if memory serves consists of a pound of spaghetti boiled to death, a block of Velveeta cheese grated, and a bottle of ketchup, mixed together, baked for an hour, and turned out and sliced.

My Italian-American goddaughter once saw an English housemate eat canned spaghetti on toast with ketchup on it. And once she and a Spanish housemate in the same New Zealand auberge espagnole made spaghetti aglio ed olio (olive oil, garlic, parsley, grated cheese) for the house and a German guy stirred in several good dollops each of sour cream and ketchup before tasting it.

She survived both experiences, but she hasn't been the same since.

NOTB, why not make your own? If you can make a white sauce you can make mac n cheese.

Quick Bacon and Spaghetti

Sounds good Mid. I might have to give that a try.

My cousin used to put ketchup on her pizza. That was stomach turning enough for me.

Here's how Milton Glaser describes it:
>First, put a 1 pound package of Mueller's spaghetti in a large pot of rapidly boiling water. Allow to cook for 45 minutes to an hour, or until most of the water has evaporated. Add half a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup, and a half pound of Velveeta cheese. Continue cooking until all the contents have amalgamated. Allow to cool and de-mold from the pot. Divide into 1 inch slices and fry in chicken-fat.

When I was in my early teens, I went to a neighborhood Italian restaurant in the Bronx, and ordered spaghetti. The waiter brought me a bowl of strange-looking stringy things covered with tomato sauce. "No, no," I said, "I ordered Spaghetti, SPAGHETTI!"

That reminds me of the first time my daughter ordered lemonade in Morocco. They brought her Sprite. Fortunately, although Sprite is not her favorite, she was able to be stoic about it.

"Lemonade" in lots of places, including the UK, is a carbonated lemon drink.