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| In 1993, ] invited Lidia to film an episode for Child's upcoming PBS series, '']'', a series featuring acclaimed chefs from around the U.S., cooking dishes in their own home kitchens instead of within a restaurant setting. The series gave Lidia an instant boost of recognition and strengthened Lidia's desire for expansion of their franchise; by 1997, Lidia and Joseph had opened their first restaurant outside of Manhattan, Lidia's Pittsburgh. | In 1993, ] invited Lidia to film an episode for Child's upcoming PBS series, '']'', a series featuring acclaimed chefs from around the U.S., cooking dishes in their own home kitchens instead of within a restaurant setting. The series gave Lidia an instant boost of recognition and strengthened Lidia's desire for expansion of their franchise; by 1997, Lidia and Joseph had opened their first restaurant outside of Manhattan, Lidia's Pittsburgh. | ||
| Lidia's restaurants were now a true family-run business in the late 1990s: Erminia Motika maintained the large garden behind the Bastianich family home, from which Lidia would choose ingredients for use in recipe development; Joseph Bastianich was now the chief winemaster of the restaurant group in addition to branching out into his own restaurant line with old friend and famed Italian chef ]; Joseph's wife, ], |
Lidia's restaurants were now a true family-run business in the late 1990s: Erminia Motika maintained the large garden behind the Bastianich family home, from which Lidia would choose ingredients for use in recipe development; Joseph Bastianich was now the chief winemaster of the restaurant group in addition to branching out into his own restaurant line with old friend and famed Italian chef ]; Joseph's wife, ], began developing recipes for the restaurants, especially entrees for children; ] had parlayed her Ph.D in Italian art history into co-ownership with her mother of a high-end travel agency called Lidia's Esperienze Italiane, where Tanya and Italian cooking expert Shelly Burgess Nicotra (wife of Felidia's Executive Chef Fortunato Nicotra, who took over the role from Lidia in 1996) led tour groups throughout Italy to study the historical architecture and sample true Italian cuisine; Tanya's husband, attorney ], became the restaurant group's chief legal advisor<ref>; retrieved January 31, 2008.</ref>. | ||
| However, Felice and Lidia began having serious disagreements about the direction their lives had taken--most notably, the pace of the expansion of their business--and the couple finally divorced in 1997. They remain close friends<ref>, retrieved January 30, 2008.</ref>. Since the divorce, Lidia has continued her business expansion with her son as her partner by successfully opening Lidia's Kansas City<ref></ref>. | However, Felice and Lidia began having serious disagreements about the direction their lives had taken--most notably, the pace of the expansion of their business--and the couple finally divorced in 1997. They remain close friends<ref>, retrieved January 30, 2008.</ref>. Since the divorce, Lidia has continued her business expansion with her son as her partner by successfully opening Lidia's Kansas City<ref></ref>. | ||
Revision as of 02:17, 1 February 2008
| Lidia Matticchio Bastianich | |
|---|---|
| File:LidiaMBastianich.jpgLidia Bastianich, host of Lidia's Italy | |
| Born | Lidia Motika |
| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | Italian |
Current restaurant(s)
| |
Television show(s)
| |
| Website | http://www.lidiasitaly.com/ |
Lidia Matticchio Bastianich (born Lidia Motika on October 10, 1947 in Pola, Istria (now Pula, Croatia)) is an Italian-American chef and host of several television cooking shows on PBS; in 2007, she launched her third TV series, Lidia's Italy. She also owns four restaurants in the U.S.: Felidia and Becco in Manhattan; Lidia's Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Lidia's Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri.
Early life
Lidia Motika, three years younger than her brother Franco Motika, was born in Pula (Pola) on October 11, 1947, just eight months and a day after Istria was ceded to Yugoslavia (Paris Peace Treaties, 1947). Her family name had been Italianized to "Matticchio" when Istria was part of Italy between the two world wars, and then reverted back to "Motika" under Yugoslavia. Lidia's family background contains Italian, Croatian and Istro-Romanian ethnic groups.
When Lidia was 10 years old, the Motikas--Lidia, Franco, and their parents--left Istria for Trieste, where they lived for a time in a refugee camp for displaced persons (Campo Profughi, formerly the concentration camp San Sabba). A wealthy Triestian family hired Lidia's mother Erminia as a cook/housekeeper and Lidia's father as a limousine driver. After two years living in "displaced refugee" status in Trieste, the Motikas were able to obtain relocation placements in the U.S., and the family arrived in New York, New York in April 1958. Supported for a few weeks in New York by Catholic Charities Sponsorship, the family soon moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, where Lidia's father took a job as a mechanic at a Chevrolet plant. However, as more displaced Istrians arrived in the U.S., they began forming their own ethnic neighborhoods inside New York City, and the Motikas moved to the Astoria section of Queens to join one such neighborhood while her father continued to work in New Jersey.
According to ‘’Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen,’’ she and her family were among the thousands of Istrians who came to the United States to make a new home for themselves. More than 4.5 million Italians had entered the U.S before 1920, many from South Italy (e.g., Sicily, Campania, and Apulia). Due to the flux of Italian immigrants, Italian-American cuisine and culture emerged in the U.S.
Career
In an interview with Antoinette Bruno on her cooking inspirations, Lidia stated:
I don’t remember life without cooking. My grandmother had a little inn in Italy, and she cooked for all the laborers coming into town. I helped with the little tasks, like shelling beans. But my grandparents did it all – they farmed, and they also processed their own olive oil, distilled grappa.
The early years (pre-1971)
In several episodes of her various television series, Lidia has related the story of the early years of her family's life in America and their struggle to find their way financially in a new country. To help bring in money for her family, 14-year-old Lidia lied about her age to get a job at a bakery on Broadway in Astoria named Walken's Bakery, owned by the parents of actor Christopher Walken, who later became a close family friend. Lidia started as a salesgirl but gradually moved up to assisting the bakers with baking breads and decorating desserts, and even managed to get her mother a job at the bakery since Erminia did not speak English well enough to return to her former profession as a schoolteacher.
Eager to rediscover her Italian cooking roots, Lidia moved on to work in several Italian restaurants in Astoria. At one of them, she was introduced to her future husband, fellow Istrian immigrant Felice "Felix" Bastianich. The couple were married in 1966. Their first child, Joseph, was born in 1968. Lidia became pregnant with their second child as the pair of immigrants from restaurant backgrounds planned to open their own restaurant.
On the good road from Queens to Manhattan (1971-1981)
By 1971, the Bastianiches had opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, meaning "on the good road", in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. They came up with their menu by collecting menus from the most popular and successful Italian restaurants in 1971, and hired the best Italian-American chef they could find to execute their plan. After a brief break to deliver her second child, Tanya, Lidia began to work as sous-chef at Buonavia to learn everything she could, and was gradually able to make top-quality Italian food while adding Istrian traditional dishes to the menu.
The success of Buonavia led to the Bastianiches opening a second restaurant in Queens, Villa Secondo. It was here that Lidia first gained notice by food critics and cookbook authors, and here where Lidia began giving live cooking demonstrations, a prelude to her eventual career as a TV Cooking show hostess.
In 1981, The Bastianich family sold their two Queens restaurants and moved to Manhattan to create what would eventually become their flagship restaurant, Felidia (a portmanteau combining "Felice" and "Lidia"), in a small Manhattan brownstone. After nearly $750,000 worth of renovations and liquidating nearly every asset they had to build the restaurant of their dreams, Felidia finally opened to near-universal acclaim from food critics around the country. According to Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, Felidia received "three stars from the New York Times and nationwide recognition for serving 'true' Italian fare."
Expansion (1993-2001)
Though Lidia did not want either of her two children to go into the restaurant business, son Joseph Bastianich, who had frequently worked at Felidia between school years as well as gaining expertise in winemaking, convinced her to partner with him in 1993 to found Becco (Italian for "peck, nibble, savor") in the Theatre District in Manhattan. Like Felidia, Becco was an immediate success and led to Lidia and Joseph deciding to open restaurants outside of New York as the beginnings of a franchise.
In 1993, Julia Child invited Lidia to film an episode for Child's upcoming PBS series, Julia Child: Cooking With Master Chefs, a series featuring acclaimed chefs from around the U.S., cooking dishes in their own home kitchens instead of within a restaurant setting. The series gave Lidia an instant boost of recognition and strengthened Lidia's desire for expansion of their franchise; by 1997, Lidia and Joseph had opened their first restaurant outside of Manhattan, Lidia's Pittsburgh.
Lidia's restaurants were now a true family-run business in the late 1990s: Erminia Motika maintained the large garden behind the Bastianich family home, from which Lidia would choose ingredients for use in recipe development; Joseph Bastianich was now the chief winemaster of the restaurant group in addition to branching out into his own restaurant line with old friend and famed Italian chef Mario Batali; Joseph's wife, Deanna Bastianich, began developing recipes for the restaurants, especially entrees for children; Tanya Bastianich Manuali had parlayed her Ph.D in Italian art history into co-ownership with her mother of a high-end travel agency called Lidia's Esperienze Italiane, where Tanya and Italian cooking expert Shelly Burgess Nicotra (wife of Felidia's Executive Chef Fortunato Nicotra, who took over the role from Lidia in 1996) led tour groups throughout Italy to study the historical architecture and sample true Italian cuisine; Tanya's husband, attorney Corrado Manuali, became the restaurant group's chief legal advisor.
However, Felice and Lidia began having serious disagreements about the direction their lives had taken--most notably, the pace of the expansion of their business--and the couple finally divorced in 1997. They remain close friends. Since the divorce, Lidia has continued her business expansion with her son as her partner by successfully opening Lidia's Kansas City.
Television (2001-present)
In 2001, PBS offered Lidia her own cooking show, which became Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Lidia Bastianich has been a fixture in the PBS cooking show lineups ever since, hosting two additional television series, Lidia's Family Table (still in reruns around the U.S.) and Lidia's Italy, launched in April 2007. Lidia closes out every episode with an invitation to join her and her family for a meal, "Tutti a tavola a mangiare" (Italian for "Everyone, to the table and eat").
To accompany her various television series, Lidia has authored several cookbooks:
- Lidia's Family Table
- Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen
- Lidia's Italian Table
- Lidia's Italy
She also owns her own television production company, Tavola (Italian for "table") Productions.
Personal life
Lidia now lives in Long Island, New York, in a Tudor-style manor house, with her mother Erminia Motika (widowed in 1981) and her mother's longtime companion Giovanni Bencina living in an apartment adjacent to the manor house. Lidia's kitchen has served as the set for all three of her TV series, and the garden that Erminia maintains provides many of the ingredients used in featured recipes for the shows. Erminia, who answers to "Grandma Minia" or "Nonne Minia" on-camera, frequently serves as a sous-chef in Lidia's various TV series.
Joseph Bastianich, his wife Deanna, and their three children (Olivia, Miles, Ethan) live in Connecticut, but frequently return to New York to handle business matters for the Bastianich restaurants.
Tanya Bastianich Manuali, her husband Corrado Manuali (who serves as legal advisor to the ever-growing Bastianich restaurant business), and their two children (Lorenzo and Julia) live on Long Island just a few miles away from Lidia's house. Tanya serves as the main on-camera tour guide for the segments shot in Italy as part of Lidia's 2007 PBS series, Lidia's Italy.
All four generations of the Bastianich family have appeared at one time or another as contributors to Lidia's TV shows; Lidia's Family Table frequently featured Lidia giving simple pasta shaping lessons to her young grandchildren. In an interview with American Public Television, Lidia shared her opinion on how important passing along family traditions is to her and to her family:
"...food for me was a connecting link to my grandmother, to my childhood, to my past. And what I found out is that for everybody, food is a connector to their roots, to their past in different ways. It gives you security; it gives you a profile of who you are, where you come from.".
References
- Istria on the Internet -- Gastronomy -- Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 30, 2008
- Istria on the Internet -- Gastronomy -- Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 30, 2008
- Bastianich, Lidia Matticchio. Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, 2001.
- StarChefs.com; retrieved January 31, 2008.
- Istria on the Internet -- Gastronomy -- Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 30, 2008
- Istria on the Internet -- Gastronomy -- Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 30, 2008
- "Lidia Bastianich Navigator" from NYTimes.com
- Cast of Characters for Lidia's Family Table; retrieved January 31, 2008.
- At Home With Lidia Bastianich, A Recipe Kept Warm For 55 Years, retrieved January 30, 2008.
- "Lidia Bastianich Navigator" from NYTimes.com
- Chef of the Month Club: Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 31, 2008.
- "American Public Television Online"