By Gus Saltonstall

Pregnant women are giving birth after eating the chicken or eggplant parmesan from Pappardella on the Upper West Side.

Patrick and Andrea Gamble have lived on the Upper West Side for around seven years, but the married couple is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. In 2022, Andrea was pregnant with their first child, and the night before she gave birth, they decided to order from Pappardella at 316 Columbus Avenue, near West 75th Street.

“We love Pappardella. We go all the time,” Patrick told West Side Rag in a recent phone interview. “There’s this restaurant in Atlanta called Scalini’s, and they’ve been known as this eggplant and chicken parm place that induces labor.”

“Not that we were looking to induce labor, we just thought let’s try it at Pappardella and see what happens,” Patrick continued.

The next morning, despite not being at the due date, their OB/GYN doctor told the couple the baby was coming that day.

That was their son.

“We joked that it was the chicken parm that got things moving,” Patrick said.

But then it happened again.

Fast forward to October 30, 2024, and Andrea was again pregnant, but still a few days out from their due date with no signs of labor.

“As a joke we said, let’s see if the Pappardella chicken parm can work again, and wouldn’t you know it, we were getting into a cab hours later at 3 a.m. to go to the hospital, and we had our baby around 9 a.m,” Patrick said.

For both of the Upper West Side family’s children, Andrea consumed Papardella’s chicken parm in the hours before their birth.

“It was totally a joke,” Andrea told West Side Rag. “But, as any woman who is in their third trimester with a toddler also running around knows, you’re very ready to get the baby out of you just to get the show on the road, so I said let’s go see if this can work.”

“Pappardella’s is just such a great restaurant, they have such a great team,” she added. “It’s our favorite restaurant regardless, especially Italian, we send everybody there. So, it is special, and it is funny that it’s this restaurant that we have this new special connection to.”

It turns out Andrea isn’t the only woman to give birth after ordering one of the parmesan dishes from Pappardella, though.

Gabe Bellovin and Isabel Reckson are a married couple who lived in the same building as Patrick and Andrea.

“We were a couple of days over my wife’s due date for our child who is now two, and we were trying everything you see online, all the myths and stuff,” Bellovin told the Rag over the phone. “We were just looking for anything possible to help out, and our neighbor Andrea mentioned the eggplant parm myth down in Atlanta, and what had happened with Pappardella.”

While there is no scientific evidence that any specific food has the power to induce labor, there are old wives’ tales about certain foods helping to catalyze the birthing process, including eggplant, spicy options, dates and pineapples.

The couple decided to give it a shot.

“We love Pappardella anyway, but we had never tried the eggplant parm,” Bellovin said. “That night we tried it, and literally hours later my wife’s water broke, and the rest is history. We went into the hospital that day, and we gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, and happy baby.”

West Side Rag also sat down with Marion Maur, the longtime general manager of Pappardella, who was not aware of the possibly magical effects of their chicken and eggplant parmesans.

“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard,” Maur told the Rag upon learning about the situation.

Maur emphasized that it speaks to the type of community that Pappardella has cultivated in the neighborhood.

“I’ve been amazed and gobsmacked at the amount of community we have on the Upper West Side,” she said. “I come from a little village in Germany where everybody knows everybody, and even though New York City is a cosmopolitan city, here on 75th Street and Columbus, I sometimes feel like we are ‘Cheers.’”

As far as the restaurant’s chicken and eggplant parmesans’ side effects, and the babies and parents who now have a special connection to the dishes, she jokingly made the following point.

“It seems clear, if you are anxious to give birth, come have a chicken or eggplant parm at Pappardella,” Maur said. “And to those babies, you have to start coming here! Sooner, rather than later. We’ve had that here, where we see kids that grow up coming to the restaurant.”

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