La Panarda: A Taste Of Ancient Italy In America

A tasting menu showcases a chef’s culinary talents and aims to tell a story woven through the meal’s ingredients, techniques, plating, and recipes of each course. Typically comprising five to twelve dishes, these decadent menus can be challenging, even for seasoned food enthusiasts.

However, Le Virtu, a South Philadelphia restaurant specializing in Abruzzese cuisine, once a year, creates a meal that seems like a tasting menu on steroids.

Their extraordinary 40-course feast, which far transcends the boundaries of a conventional tasting menu, is inspired by an obscure Italian tradition known as “La Panarda.”

The custom originated in 1657 in Villavallelonga, a small village in Italy’s Abruzzo region, and has been celebrated annually since then.

Beyond the culinary journey, this event in the U.S. aims to immerse diners in the vibrant culture of Abruzzo.

The Tradition of the Panarda in Abruzzo

The feast is held in a few other villages in Abruzzo, Italy, although the one in Villavallelonga is best known. It honors Sant’Antonio Abate, the patron saint of butchers, pets, grains, agriculture, and gravediggers.

According to legend, a mother left her baby to get food, only to find the child in a wolf’s mouth upon her return. In response to her prayers to Saint Anthony, the wolf released the baby unharmed. As a gesture of gratitude, the mother vowed to hold an annual feast, which marked the beginning of this centuries-old tradition.

The celebration begins after the Feast of San Leucio with door-to-door delivery of frascareglie pasta with ragu. On successive nights, soups, stews, and grilled meats are grilled outdoors in the town’s main piazza, accompanied by music, singing, drinking, bonfires, and pageantry featuring life-size paper mache puppets and costumed characters, including Sant’Antonio and the wolf. A religious mass in the church follows these festivities.

The celebration’s highlight is the 35-to-50-course meal, La Panarda, always held on January 16th. The spirited communal feast lasts many hours and is enjoyed with plenty of wine. Everyone is encouraged to taste each dish, posing quite a challenge.

Initially hosted by two families, the Serafini and Bianchi families, the pot-luck style meal is now scattered across a dozen or more households in Villavallelonga. This year, almost all the 900 villagers are expected to attend one of the panardas. In addition, many Abruzzese from surrounding villages will be invited to join them.

Musicians and performers provide entertainment until 8 AM the following day when the feast concludes with a final course of fava soup and bread made with eggs. Host families distribute the soup to families throughout the town to ensure that no one goes hungry.

One Foot in America, One in Italy

Francis Cratil-Cretarola and his wife, Catherine Lee, own Le Virtu, a restaurant specializing in the regional cuisine of Abruzzo. It is located on East Passyunk Avenue and sits in Philadelphia’s largest Italian-American neighborhood. The street was in decline when they opened but has since become one of the city’s most vibrant and diverse restaurant rows.

Francis’ Italian-American father and his Abruzzese grandfather, born in Castiglione Messer Raimondo in Teramo (one of four Abruzzo provinces), had a profound influence on him. Born Alfonso Cretarola, his grandfather changed his name to Francis Cratil to escape anti-immigrant sentiments when he migrated to Reading, Pennsylvania. Francis is his namesake.

“My grandfather spoke with me almost every day about his hometown in Abruzzo, where if you walked in one direction, you arrived at the Adriatic, and in the other, the Gran Sasso d’Italia,” he says. These stories ignited Francis’ desire to explore his roots.

In 1999, Francis left his job at the U.S. Office of Congressional Information and Publishing to study Italian in Florence and Rome. During one of his trips, he experienced symptoms of double vision, headaches, and vertigo, which were later confirmed as Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

He wrote to his family in Abruzzo during his treatment, who invited him to visit. “After surviving the first bout of Hodgkin’s, I convinced my wife Cathy that time is short. One never knows, so why not take a chance?”

She left her job at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the couple moved to the tiny hamlet of Assergi in the Abruzzese province of L’Aquila. Their education, skills, and passion for the region enabled them to work on an English-language travel book, organize small culinary and genealogical tours, and bring a small PBS crew to produce a program for broadcast in the Philadelphia area.

In 2003, they returned to the U.S. and began working in an Italian restaurant in South Philly under a Napoletano chef. They quickly realized that if they were going to work in the industry, their focus had to be Abruzzo.

An Epic Meal Transported to Philadelphia

Francis and Cathy opened Le Virtu in 2007, it’s name inspired by the Abruzzese tradition of minestrone. With origins in the town of Teramo, the soup was traditionally made by women who would combine the leftover ingredients in their pantries with the first products of the spring season: pasta, salami, other meats, veggies, legumes, etc.

The dish’s ingenuity, creativity, seasonality, and connection to the land resonated deeply with the couple and represented the essence of Abruzzo.

“The name [of the restaurant] represented what we wanted to bring back to a neighborhood that had once been ground zero for Abruzzese immigrants whose traditions we wanted to celebrate and sustain,” says Francis.

Following extensive research and collaboration, including tapping into a partnership between the Chieti province and the renowned hospitality school, Istituto Alberghiero di Villa Santa Maria, they launched the first and only panarda in Philadelphia in 2011.

Francis recalls the origins of the event, saying, “While I was in the final stages of a recurrence of my illness, Cathy and I planned the menu in my hospital room at Penn as I awaited a stem cell transplant.”

The inaugural dinner spanned nearly 12 hours and fostered an incredible sense of community among the attendees, almost like a family. “Walls come down completely. It was a small miracle,” he says.

However, Francis emphasizes that delivering an exceptional culinary experience was crucial to its success. The menu was a fusion of local ingredients and centuries-old traditions paired with Abruzzese wines.

Plans For The 2025 Panarda

The Le Virtu team, led by Executive Chef Andrew Wood, along with Francis and Cathy, received an exclusive invitation this year to attend the historic festival in Villavallelonga, where it all began. Villavallelonga Mayor Leonardo Lippa and Vice-Mayor Vittoria Di Ponzio, who had dined at Le Virtu last June, extended the invitation, recognizing the importance of the Philadelphia panarda.

Francis was humbled and gratified by this rare opportunity because there was no way of attending the one in Villavallelonga without an invitation. He views the invite as an acknowledgment of his deep love for Abruzzo, its land, people, food, and culture. The visit will also allow the stateside team to enrich the authenticity of the panarda tradition in Philadelphia.

Francis and Cathy remain firmly committed to their work at Le Virtu, hoping to continue the tradition in America. By establishing a part-time second home in Italy, they want to strengthen the bridge between the worlds of South Philly and Abruzzo.

“In some ways, the culture of Abruzzo is less adulterated than we have found anywhere else. No concessions have been made for tourists,” he says. “The attachment to tradition is almost fanatical. Even native-born Italians from other regions come to Abruzzo to feel that connection.”

Note: How to participate in a panarda in the U.S.

• Le Virtu in South Philadelphia is the only place outside Abruzzo that regularly holds this event.
• The panarda will be held on February 16, 2025, starting promptly at noon. It is expected to last 8-9 hours.
• Tickets for the panarda go on sale on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, on the restaurant’s Resy Page. The event always sells out within minutes.
• The cost is $500 per person (excluding tax and gratuity), with a maximum of five guests per party.

Guaranteed: You won’t leave hungry.

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*Listen to a fascinating podcast about La Panarda on Tante Belle Cose.