The sauce.
The woman recounts how on her first visit she and her husband made to II Panino the couple asked repeatedly for more sauce, until the cook finally placed a vat of it on their table. "And we finished it!" the woman exclaims.
The two say they feel that II Panino is as good as any Italian restaurant in the Boston and Cambridge areas, despite its notably low prices.
The sauce--which comes gratis with the pasta--is made from a distinguished brand of Italian tomato paste made of Pastine plum tomatoes.
The cook, Joe Diaz, was once a dishwasher. Now, Carreiro says, "the cook is almost as good as me.
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"Almost," he says. "I'd never let him get the edge."