Was Chef Boyardee a real person?

Chef Boyardee was born Hector Boiardi in 1897 in Piacenza, which is in northern Italy, near Milan. He immigrated to New York City as a 17-year-old. His brother, a waiter at the prestigious Plaza Hotel, helped him get his first break as a cook there. Later, he worked in other hotels, moving to West Virginia, where his next big break came when he directed the catering for President Woodrow Wilson's second marriage in 1915. He later moved to Cleveland, where he opened up his own restaurant, Il Giardino d'Italia in 1926.

In those days Italian food, such as pasta, macaroni, and pizza, was little known outside the big East Coast centers of New York and Boston. Boiardi's food was so popular, especially the spaghetti sauce, that he started selling it to his customers in milk bottles to take home. The spaghetti sauce because famous in Cleveland, and he had to open up a small factory just to keep up.

Demand kept growing, and finally he opened up a much larger factory in Milton, Pennsylvania, selling all kinds of pasta and Italian food. Boiardi was very proud of his family name, enough so to make the concession of spelling it Boyardee, making it easier for Americans to pronounce it properly.

The introduction of modern canning resulted in broad national distribution of Boyardee products and contributed heavily to the company's success.

He won several awards for supplying the American Army in WWII and the Korean War. More importantly, he singlehandedly did more than other American to introduce Italian food to the American (and international) pallette.

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