RL Reeves Jr Recipe: Spaghetti With Sweet Onion Brisket Ragu [photo courtesy Ryan Adams]

When in the presence of a superior cook, I like to focus, laser-like, on the subject at hand, take notes and give proper deference to the higher authority.

Such was the case on many trips to Agata’s kitchen in Alabaster, Alabama.

There is an enormous Italian diaspora in central Alabama.

For decades, immigrants from the Boot have traveled to Dixie to settle into the fertile blacklands, and begin their new lives among the country folk of Chilton, Shelby and Jefferson counties.

It’s a little known fact that the Birmingham area hosts some of the finest Italian restaurants in the whole United States.

Places where they still bring a hot loaf of bread to table the moment you’re seated, Chianti bottles line the walls, and the tablecloths?

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