Pasta performance is no guarantee.

Had a box of Ronzoni Angel Hair pasta (#12, if you're keeping score at home) and was stunned when spaghetti came out. Spaghetti! #8! In an angel hair box! Whoa! But it was even MORE astonishing than that. Because about a third of the pasta in the box WAS angel hair pasta!

NO. WAY.

WAY. WAY.

Spaghetti's supposed to be in THIS BOX!!!! (!!!)

It may seem like no biggie, but no: Biggie. Because angel hair cooks in half the time of spaghetti. To get the spaghetti portion cooked, you have to cook the angel hair portion until it's mushy. I tried to compromise, and wound up with al dente spaghetti and mushy angel hair.

AND THE BOSS WAS THERE FOR DINNER!

Okay, I made that part up. I don't have a boss. I'm a freelancer; I have 89 bosses. And none of them were there.

So after dinner, which was not totally ruined, I shot a note off to Ronzoni's customer service department. Since I didn't see any recalls on their site or the government's recalls site, I thought the company ought to know that there was a packaging issue.

Within a day I got a nice note thanking me for my input, saying these things occasionally happen due to the automated packaging process, and I'd get a coupon for a complimentary product. A week later, score! Two coupons!

I'm glad Ronzoni owned up to the problem, but I wonder how it happened. How could the significantly thicker spaghetti have gotten into the box with angel hair? It just seemed weird. I never saw an episode of Unwrapped about a pasta factory, but you wouldn't think both pastas would be running on the machine at the same time.

Well, they're busy at Riviana, the parent company. In addition to Ronzoni, they make Creamette, Light 'n Fluffy noodles, Prince pasta, San Giorgio, etc. etc., plus at least 13 brands of rice. The Houston-based Riviana is itself owned by international rice giant Ebro, based in Spain. They basically own side dishes.

I know Ronzoni is just a small cog in the Ebro machine, but I'm still pretty brand-loyal to it. Like pretty much all New York families, ours was a Ronzoni family. When the company was bought by Hershey and production moved out of Long Island City (which I've discussed here and here), the demolition of the factory in 1998 made the Times. A Home Depot stands in the spot now. I don't think it was a loss on the scale of the Domino Sugar Refinery or even the Taystee Bread factory, but it was another blow to manufacturing in the five boroughs.

I understand that there are a lot of reasons why smaller food manufacturers get bought up, moved around, and all that, and I still think Ronzoni makes quality products. But I have to wonder... back in my parents' day, we never got two kinds of pasta in the same box.