Lidia Bastianich

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Lidia Matticchio Bastianich
Born February 21, 1947 (1947-02-21) (age 62)
Pula, Croatia
Cooking style Italian
Official Website

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich (born February 21, 1947) is a chef born in Croatia. She specializes in Italian-American cuisine.

She has been a regular contributor to the PBS cooking show lineup since 1998. In 2007, she launched her third TV series, Lidia's Italy. She also owns four Italian restaurants in the U.S. in partnership with her son, the winemaster and restaurateur, Joseph Bastianich: Felidia (founded with her ex-husband, Felice) and Becco in Manhattan; Lidia's Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Lidia's Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri.

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[edit] Early life

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich was born on February 21, 1947, in the town of Pola, Istria (present-day Pula in Istria County, Croatia). In 1958, when Lidia was 11 years old, her father, Vittorio, sent his wife, Erminia, and their two children, to visit family in Italy. Vittorio remained in Istria to honor a government requirement that one member of a family remain in Istria as hostage to ensure the rest would return.[1] Hours later, Vittorio fled across the border under cover of darkness to join them.[1]

The Matticchio family reunited in Trieste, Italy,[2] joining other displaced families in a refugee camp in the former Nazi concentration camp, Risiera di San Sabba. A wealthy Triestian family hired Lidia's mother as a cook/housekeeper and father as a limousine driver. After two years living as displaced persons in Trieste, the family was able to obtain relocation placement in the U.S.[2] They arrived in New York in April 1958.[2][3]

Bastianich gives credit to the family's taking root in America to Catholic Charities:[2][3][4]

The Catholic charities brought us here to New York … We had no one. They found a home for us. They found a job for my father. And ultimately we settled. And I am the perfect example that if you give somebody a chance, especially here in the United States, one can find the way.[4]

After a few weeks the family moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, near the Chevrolet factory where Lidia's father began working as a mechanic. Later, they moved to Astoria, Queens. When Lidia was 14 she went to work part time after school, starting full-time in several Italian restaurants in Astoria after high school. She met her future husband, fellow Istrian immigrant and restaurant worker, Felice "Felix" Bastianich, at her sweet sixteen party. The couple married in 1966. Their first child, Joseph, was born in 1968, and second child, Tanya, in 1972.

[edit] Career

[edit] From Queens to Manhattan (1971-1981)

By 1971, the Bastianich family opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, meaning "on the good road", in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. They determined its menu by collecting those from the most popular and successful Italian restaurants of the day and hired the best Italian-American chef they could find. After a brief break to deliver her second child, Tanya, Lidia began as assistant chef at Buonavia, gradually learning enough to make high-quality Italian food and add traditional Istrian dishes to the menu.

The success of Buonavia led to the opening a second restaurant in Queens, Villa Secondo. It was here that Lidia both gained notice of food critics[5] and began giving live cooking demonstrations, a prelude to her eventual career as a TV Cooking show hostess.

In 1981, the family sold their two Queens restaurants and moved to Manhattan to create what would eventually become their flagship restaurant, Felidia (a contraction of "Felice" and "Lidia"), in a small Manhattan brownstone. After liquidating nearly every asset they had to cover $750,000 worth of renovations, Felidia finally opened to near-universal acclaim from food critics, including three stars from the New York Times.

[edit] Expansion (1993-2001)

Although Lidia did not want either of her two children to go into the restaurant business, son Joseph, who had frequently worked at Felidia between school years, gave up his newly launched career as a Wall Street bond trader[6] and convinced her to partner with him in 1993 to open Becco (Italian for "peck, nibble, savor") in the Theatre District in Manhattan. Like Felidia, Becco was an immediate success and led to the pair opening additional restaurants outside New York City, starting with "Lidia's Kansas City" in 1993[7], their first restaurant outside of New York. [7].

In 1993, Julia Child invited Lidia to film an episode for her 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. The series gave Lidia instant recognition and strengthened her desire to expand the Bastianich family franchise. After many disagreements about the direction their business and personal lives had taken - most notably, the pace of the expansion and character of their business - Lidia and Felix divorced in 1997. Felix remarried, while Lidia continued expanding her business interests.

By the late 1990s, Lidia's restaurants had evolved into a true family-run enterprize: Erminia Motika maintained the large garden behind the family home, from which Lidia would choose ingredients for use in recipe development; son Joseph Bastianich was the chief winemaster of the restaurant group, in addition to branching out into his own restaurant line with friend and famed Italian chef Mario Batali; daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali applied her Ph.D in Italian art history in a travel agency partnership with her mother called "Lidia's 'Esperienze Italiane'", where Tanya and her friend Shelly Burgess Nicotra (the wife of Felidia's Executive Chef Fortunato Nicotra since 1996) conducted tours throughout Italy to view the historic architecture and sample genuine Italian cuisine; Tanya's husband, attorney Corrado Manuali, became the restaurant group's chief legal advisor[8].

[edit] Television (2001-present)

In 1998, PBS offered Lidia her own show, Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, which established her as a fixture in the network's cooking show lineups. Since then she's hosted two additional television series, Lidia's Family Table 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 to eat")[9]. She also appeared on an episode of the 2006 PBS series Chef's Story.

Lidia has also been a featured chef on Great Chefs Television. [10]

To accompany her various television series, Lidia has authored several cookbooks:

  • La Cucina di Lidia
  • Lidia's Family Table
  • Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen
  • Lidia's Italian Table
  • Lidia's Italy

Lidia now has her own television production company: Tavola (Italian for "table") Productions. The family's business empire includes vineyards in Italy, olive groves in Istria, and a host of commercial food products and new business ventures revolving around the culinary arts.

[edit] Personal life

Lidia resides in Queens, New York, with her mother Erminia Matticchio (widowed in 1981). 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 featured in the shows. Erminia, who answers to "Nonna Mima" on-camera, frequently serves as a sous-chef in Lidia's various TV series.

Joseph Bastianich occasionally appears in Lydia's series to offer wine expertise. He, his wife Deanna, and their three children live in Westport, Connecticut.

Tanya Bastianich Manuali, her husband Corrado Manuali, and their two children live just a few blocks away from Lidia's house. Tanya served as the main on-camera culture expert for segments filmed in Italy as part of Lidia's 2007 PBS series, Lidia's Italy.

All four generations of the 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 grandchildren, and episodes of Lidia's Italy often feature the adult Bastianiches touring the various areas of Italy significant to their family and recipes demonstrated in the programs.

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."[11]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b “Author Interview,” Lidia’s Italy. Random House, Inc., online catalogue. (Retrieved 2009-07-31.)
  2. ^ a b c d Lidia Bastianich to Receive Bpeace Economic Impact Award. Press Release. Business Council for Peace, April 29, 2008. (Retrieved 2009-08-01.)
  3. ^ a b Fernandez, Tommy. “Chef Lights Fire Under Millions: Lidia Bastianich,” Crain’s 100 Most Influential Women in NYC Business. (Retrieved 2009-08-01.)
  4. ^ a b Rosenberg, Sarah and Christina Caron. “Nightline Platelist: Lidia Bastianich: Italian-American Chef Breaks Bread with the Pope,” Nightline. ABC News. April 20, 2008. (Retrieved 2009-08-01.)
  5. ^ Istria on the Internet -- Gastronomy -- Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 30, 2008
  6. ^ Passing the Toque: For a New Generation, Hospitality Is Destiny, Suzanne Hamlin, published January 10, 1996; retrieved February 1, 2008.
  7. ^ a b "Lidia Bastianich Navigator" from NYTimes.com
  8. ^ Cast of Characters for Lidia's Family Table; retrieved January 31, 2008.
  9. ^ Chef of the Month Club: Lidia Bastianich; retrieved January 31, 2008.
  10. ^ Great Chefs Television
  11. ^ "American Public Television Online"

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidia_Bastianich"