There is a restaurant in Massachusetts where people are waiting an hour, sometimes more, for a table, and nobody seems mad about it. Ever After in the Woods has become the kind of place you plan your whole evening around, the kind of place where the wait itself is now part of the night.

I grew up outside Naples, and I want to tell you something about waiting for food. In Italy, the wait is not a bug, it is a feature. My grandmother would start her ragu at eight in the morning and you ate it at two in the afternoon, and in between you waited, and in between you talked, and in between you got hungry, which was the whole point. Hunger is the first ingredient of any good meal. Americans sometimes forget this.

So when I hear about a restaurant where people willingly stand around for hours, I don't hear a problem. I hear a kitchen doing something right. You cannot fake that. You can fake a lot in this business, you can fake ambiance with good lighting, you can fake quality with a well-written menu, but you cannot fake a line of hungry people who could easily drive somewhere else and don't.

What draws them, according to the reports, is simple Italian food done with the patience it deserves: homemade pasta and fresh seafood. The kind of cooking where you taste the care more than any single ingredient. And this is the thing I keep saying and will keep saying until they bury me with a wooden spoon in my hand: good food needs care, not money. A plate of homemade pasta made by someone who respects the food will beat a forty-dollar plate made by someone watching the clock. Every time.

There is a small lesson here for home cooks too. When people wait an hour or more for simple Italian food, they are not waiting for novelty. They are waiting for someone to cook like it matters. You can do a version of that in your own kitchen tonight, no reservation required. Boil the water properly, salt it like the sea, taste everything twice, and don't rush the garlic.

I've added this one to my list. The collection of restaurants I need to visit keeps growing, Cardiff, New Bedford, and now this one in Massachusetts. If you've waited in that line, write to me and tell me if it was worth it. I suspect I already know the answer.