Italian bros put down your cappuccino and explain.

[Echetlaeus]

I was with an Asian friend of mine in a restaurant near the university library and we ordered "Spaghetti alla puttanesca". Because we use the same word in Greek to describe the prostitute --- in common slang, for there is a more formal way to say it --- I told him that it may have been some kind of service in whore houses in the past. I don't have that much experience in these "pleasure houses" and I started to wonder.

Is my hypothesis right ?