Lille Allen, Jesse Sparks
The stand-up comedian became a social media standout for his whip-smart crowd work and casual cooking videos. Now, he’s taking over your dinner table.
When Matteo Lane isn’t performing his distinct brand of scathing yet sincere stand-up, he’s busy eating pasta — and being opinionated about pasta. The Chicago-born, New York City-based comedian describes himself as an “Italian, Irish, Mexican homosexual,” and brings all of that cultural experience, plus a whole lot of humor, to his debut cookbook, Your Pasta Sucks.
If you’re a fan of Lane, you’ve likely seen him cook pasta on his YouTube channel, where he makes everything from pancakes to pasta carbonara for his million-plus subscribers on the platform. It was that experience of cooking on YouTube — and seeing viewers recreate his recipes — that made Lane think that he could actually write a cookbook. “It was very accidental when I started on YouTube, to be honest,” Lane says. “I started making the things I knew how to make, like carbonara, amatriciana, cacio e pepe, and just chatting while I would cook on camera. Then people started making my recipes. They were sending me pictures, and really letting me know that they were into it.”
Your Pasta Sucks is part cookbook, part autobiography. The book traces Lane’s adoration of pasta from slurping cheesy noodles in his mother Cherie’s kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, to a summer spent studying and falling in love with eggplant Parmigiana in Umbria, up to making cacio e pepe in his current New York City apartment kitchen. Alongside the pastas, the book contains recipes for everything you need to supplement a hearty, family-style Italian dinner, including the recipes for his grandmother’s Italian dressing and his mom’s tiramisu.
Ahead of the book’s release, set for April 2025 via Chronicle Books, Eater sat down to talk with Lane about why he decided to write a cookbook, how he wove his identity and his family into the pages of Your Pasta Sucks, and what makes for the perfect bowl of pasta.
Eater: You describe Your Pasta Sucks as a “cookbook,” in quotes. What do you think makes it different from a traditional cookbook?
Matteo Lane: A couple of reasons. I’m trying to let somebody know that if they don’t know how to do pasta, and they’re in the cookbook section, it probably implies that their pasta sucks. And two, I’m trying to make a joke that this is a quote-unquote cookbook because I’m a comedian, and the book is a mix of stories and genuine recipes. But it’s not a Martha Stewart, “here’s 870 recipes including 360 recipes for crostini you can serve at a dinner party” type of book. It’s fewer recipes, but the ones I’ve chosen are authentic to my family, both in Italy and in the United States.
There’s also no recipe for fresh pasta itself — you know, noodles — in this book. Was that a conscious choice?
I can definitely make ravioli [from scratch] and do the whole hand-rolled pasta thing, but really, I think the recipes in this book are for people who want to make good meals without being overzealous. It’s also true that I’m a big dry pasta fan. People are kind of confused and think one is better than the other, but in reality, they’re just different. Even for me, if I’m going to be cooking at home, I’m gonna use dry pasta for everything.
In Your Pasta Sucks, your family members — especially your mom, grandmother, and sister — are rendered in hilariously affectionate detail. Why was it important to you that this book showcase their recipes?
The writing process for something like this is so long, and when I finally got the book back and saw everything together, it was emotional. My grandmother and my great-grandmother both had really tough lives, and I don’t think that they would have ever thought that their recipes would be published. I got emotional just thinking about it. Even the hand movements that I’m using to make meatballs are the same ones that my mom used, and the ones her mom used, and so on. It’s the greatest way to pass down tradition, and it was fun for me to go through and combine my family’s history with these recipes. When I think about my family or food, they’re just totally intertwined.
There are just so many memories attached to cooking, and I think that’s a big part of being part of a large Italian family that I want to share with other people. As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that other people don’t have the same relationship with food that I do. A smell to me is family, a taste is a memory, and that’s what’s great about cooking.
You admit that you can be a bit particular — or in your own words, “bitchy” — about good pasta. What do you think makes for a perfect bowl of pasta?
The main component for eating a perfect bowl of pasta is to be eating that pasta in Rome, but if that’s not an option, it’s really all about taking pasta more seriously. Pasta has been sort of watered down as it’s traveled around the world. It’s seen as more of a fun “sponge,” and everyone’s obsessed with the sauce. But when you go to Italy, the pasta itself is the star, the shape of the pasta matters. You have to care about flavoring it. You want to treat cooking pasta almost like you would cooking a steak. There are a lot of little things sitting under your nose when it comes to cooking pasta that most people overlook. And when [home cooks] start implementing those small things, they see big changes in their pasta, and they view it in a totally different way.
You’re a stand-up comedian, not a professional chef. Was it intimidating for you to approach recipe testing for the book and making sure that your recipes are able to produce consistent results for home cooks?
That was the hard thing. I grew up just cooking with my mom and seeing everything by eye, which I think is extremely common in cultures where people learn how to cook from their parents. When you’ve been doing something since you were a kid, it’s hard to go back and forth and figure out the exact right amount of Parmesan cheese. I can’t just say “eyeball it,” because that doesn’t help anyone. The storytelling part of the book was easy, that’s something I already do every night. But figuring out all the recipes? Oh my God. It was overwhelming, but we figured it out.
You note in the book that you have a strong aversion to one-pot pasta recipes? Why is that?
Listen, I understand wanting to make a quick meal when you’ve got a large family. I get wanting to just throw everything in a pot and not think about it. I came from a family that had no money, and there were a million cousins around. Our parents and my aunts and uncles would just line us up like we were in the army to feed us lunch. But I think if you’re really wanting to make better pasta, and you’re looking for recipes, that indicates that you’re trying to enhance what you already know about cooking. The enjoyment of cooking is actually cooking. When you’re doing a one-pot pasta, you’re just throwing ingredients together and leaving out what makes cooking special.
Do you feel like your book is a tribute to old-school Italian cooking, or does it seek to explore a more modern version of the cuisine?
I think it’s a mix of both, for better and for worse. [And to me,] that is Italy. Italy is a country that’s reconciling with the past and being modern. Tradition weighs super heavy on Italians, yet they’re always trying to bring in something new. [Sometimes,] there is something cute about saying, “Hey, I made these meatballs this way because my Nonna did,” as opposed to, “I decided to try something new.” That kind of back-and-forth is just Italy. It’s a country sort of confused by itself.
And really, it makes sense. If you live in Rome, how do you constantly keep moving forward when your house is next to a 2,000-year-old monument? It’s just the way it is. I don’t mind when people get defensive of their Nonna’s recipes and believe that they’re the best. What they’re really trying to say is that they love their family, they love their grandma, and they’re really proud of how they were raised. That’s what they’re actually saying, and no one should take offense to it.
