Chicken Riggies

Chicken riggies is an Italian-American pasta dish from the Utica area of New York. Most often, it consists of rigatoni pasta, hot or sweet peppers, chicken, and a spicy, flavorful cream and tomato sauce. Almost every Italian restaurant in the Utica area serves the dish. Its story starts in the late 1970s at the Clinton House restaurant in Clinton, NY. The lawyers, doctors, and union workers would come in to play cards and eat the "riggie dish" with chicken, tomatoes, and cherry peppers, but without the sauce. Since they wanted the same dish every week, chicken riggies quickly gained popularity with other customers, and a new American classic was born. A simple dish that has yet to reach the peak of popularity, chicken riggies even has its own annual festival in the city, where the cooks change up the recipe by adding ingredients such as steak, shrimp, and heavy cream.