Maybe we can blame Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese for forging an unbreakable connection between food and organised crime in the minds of pop culture mavens anywhere. Their mafia movies don’t just revolve around airport robberies and off-the-cuff executions, but a lot of culinary capers as well – recall Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) learning how to make meat sauce from Clemenza (Richard Castellano) in The Godfather, and Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) . There’s a reason “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” is a classic line.
The new six-part VICE documentary series Devoured hungrily digs into the intersection between food and crime. Narrated by Jon Cryer, the series explores a number of cases where gluttony and greed came together, resulting in crime, corruption, and occasionally murder.
We shouldn’t be too shocked – it’s easy to forget that food is big business, and whenever there’s a lot of money changing hands, there are always going to be people who want the biggest wad of cash ending up in their particular mitt. Debut episode ‘A Slice of the Pie’ looks into how the Mafia’s famed Five Families wield influence over the New York City pizza scene, often using pizza parlours as distribution hubs for the lucrative heroin trade.
When crime turns food bad, in ‘Devoured’. Source: VICE
However, it was dough rather than drugs that almost sparked a full-blown mafia war in 2011, when alleged Colombo crime family associate Frank Guerra reportedly attacked Staten Island restaurateur Eugene Lombardo outside his pizzeria, The Square. Guerra was convinced that Lombardo’s sons had stolen the pizza recipe from famed Brooklyn venue L&B Spumoni Gardens – which Guerra’s former wife owned a piece of.
In 2016 one of L&B’s owners, Louis Barbati, would be gunned down outside his house in what prosecutors later determined was a robbery gone wrong.
You might think a recipe is not worth committing a crime for, but Devoured puts as much focus on the food as the felonies, bringing in the likes of pizza guru John Arena to school us in the history and significance of pizza in general and individual styles in particular (in L&B’s case, they put the cheese on the base, then the sauce on top). When vast sums of money depend on a restaurant’s reputation and individuality, the oddest things become worth killing for.
Allon Lifshitz, US Deputy Chief Attorney, Criminal Division, explains the Mafia pizza situation in ‘Devoured’. Source: VICE
Later episodes spread a wider net, such as ‘The Codfather’, which looks at the corrupt fishing empire Portuguese immigrant Carlos Rafael built in New England in the 1980s and ‘90s. A gregarious, cheerfully amoral figure who used to tell investigators “I am a pirate. It’s your job to catch me”, Rafael concealed millions in income by misreporting catches and taking illegal hauls, but his prominent business position in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the highest grossing fishing port in the United States, made him difficult to prosecute – shuttering his business would cripple the community.
Much like Al Capone, Rafael’s downfall would be the result of being investigated for tax fraud, and it’s surely just a matter of hilarious serendipity that the lead investigator was one Ronald Mullet.
‘Devoured’ reveals how a self-proclaimed “pirate” corrupted the fishing industry. Source: VICE
And that’s barely scratching the surface – we also get a fast food serial killer, a bee heist, vicious rivalries between New York City delis, and more. If you’re a fan of crime shows, cooking shows or both, make a reservation for Devoured – this is a tasty TV treat.
Six-part series Devoured airs 11.30pm Monday 19 September to Saturday 24 September on SBS Food (ch. 33). The full series is also now streaming .
