A couple weeks back, Caps defenseman Brooks Orpik’s entry into The Players’ Tribune was titled “Mamma Lucia! Mamma Lucia!” In the piece, he described the differences between playing with Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and went into detail about Ovi’s game day meal from Mamma Lucia prior to every home game.
“Ovi always orders the same thing — Mamma Lucia, which is this pasta dish that’s like chicken parm with noodles, bread, cheese, the kind of thing you want to take a five-hour nap after eating. He makes a big display of it too. There’s no shame. It’ll be eleven in the morning, way before anyone is really thinking about eating lunch, and Ovi will walk into the dining area yelling, “Mamma Lucia! Mamma Lucia!”
David Kottler, who manages the Bethesda location, told me, “We’ve been feeding Ovi for over a decade.” He said, “It used to be about 1/3 of the team, but the Caps ended up getting their own chef over at Kettler. So we were asked if we could do it just for Ovi…and you don’t say no to Ovi.”
I recently had the chicken parm myself, just to see what all the fuss was about. I used the Rosè sauce on the pasta (ravioli Rosè is my favorite dish), and it was amazing.