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 Lidia
Bastianich was born in Pula (Pola), Istria, on February 21, 1946,.
Her parents are Erminia (b. Pavicievaz / now Pavicevac) and Vittorio Motica
which Italianized to Matticchio after World War I, then Croatized
to Motika after World War II. She has an older brother Franko Motika. |
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master chef, television celebrity and entrepreneur born in Pola |
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Although Lidia was born in the outskirts of Pula called Busoler, both her paternal and maternal ancestries trace back to the Istrian region between the towns of Labin (Albona) and Pazin (Pisino), an ancient peasant area in the Arsa Valley that had been a part of the Roman empire that was linked to Rome by road and that many centuries later evolving into a repopulated region of mixed Slavic and Italic heritages. Her maternal grandparents came from Tupljak and were Istro-Romanians, part of a nearly decimated community in Istria that is now called the "smallest ethnic group in Europe". Their ancient Romanian dialect (sometimes called a separate language) is nearly extinct. (See: UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages of Europe.)
Although the mass exodus from Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia began even before Lidia was born, it intensified because of the ceding of Istria to Tito's Yugoslavia at the end of World War II. Lidia's family remained in Istria for another nine years, and she attended the Communist-based school system there. In 1956, the Motika family, including Lidia's brother Franco who is three years older, left Istria for Trieste, and thus joined the "displaced persons" who had taken part in the earlier mass exodus of Istrians. Classified as "stateless", the family lived for two years in San Sabba, the refugee camp in Trieste that had previously housed an infamous Nazi-Fascist concentration and death camp. The Motika family had expected to emigrate to Australia, but the quotas to the United States opened up and so they headed West instead of East. Unlike the majority of refugee families that left during the peak period of the Istrian exodus (1947-54) who were transported to their new countries mainly on "liberty ships", their family was blessed to cross the Atlantic Ocean by plane. In April 1958, they boarded a KLM plane at Ciampino Airport in Rome, made a refueling stop at Reykjavik, and then landed directly in New York City. The family's relocation to the U.S.A. was sponsored by Catholic Charities which also gave them free room and board for two weeks at the Woollcott Hotel on West 31 Street in Manhattan, an added bonus that was likewise not enjoyed by the majority of earlier Istrian immigrants. Lidia's father found a job as a mechanic at a Chevrolet plant in New Jersey, so the family moved to an apartment in nearby North Bergen. Later, they relocated to Astoria, Queens, one of several known enclaves of Istrian immigrants, but Vittorio continued to commute to his job in New Jersey. During those early years, Lidia's mother, like so many other immigrant mothers, worked in a sewing machine factory (commonly referred to as a "sweat shop"). Lidia enrolled in Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High School 204 in Long Island City, but to help with the family finances, she went to work parttime at the age of 15 in the back room of of the Walken Bakery on Broadway and 30 Street in Astoria, Queens. The owners were the immigrant parents of child actors and models Ronald Christopher (later shortened to Christopher), Kenneth and Glenn Walken. All three Walken boys helped their own family make ends meet by working in the bakery when they were otherwise not working professionally. They had all appeared in television shows and on Broadway. Of the three, however, only Christopher Walken went on to launch a Hollywood film career (around 1968).
Growing up in Astoria,
Queens, Lidia's social
life
was confined to the Istrian community. At her sixteenth birthday party, she met Felice (Felix) Bastianich,
a native of Labin (Albona),
Istria. He was a restaurant worker, a fate shared by many Istrian immigrants
who arrived in the U.S.A. as unskilled laborers and not speaking the
English language. Lidia and Felice married in 1966,
honeymooning in Italy and Istria, her first trip back home since her
family's departure ten years earlier. Their son, Joseph Bastianich was born
two
years later. In 1971, the couple purchased a tiny
restaurant called Buonavia that was located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills,
Queens, at which time Lidia was pregnant with her second child, Tanya. Lidia started working in the couple's restaurant as the
nominal bartender and cashier, later
gravitating to the kitchen where she learned to cook by
working with the Italian-American chef they had hired. Geared to popular
tastes, the restaurant became a success, and they slowly began to
add Istrian regional dishes to their menu. "People loved our polenta
and risotto. It was a novelty
and little by little we introduced food served in Italy, not just the
Italian-American cuisine that everyone was used to." Lidia has fond
memories of her first restaurant which she admits taught her a great
deal about cooking and how to manage a business.
A
few years later, the couple opened Villa Secondo in another store-front
location in nearby Fresh Meadows, which also became a hit. While they kept conventional dishes on the
menu, they got their lucky break in the news media by offering a "special cuisine for special customers". People like Arthur Schwartz, the Daily News critic, an
a noted cookbook author, Giuliano Bugialli, would travel from Manhattan
to sit at the Fresh Meadows
restaurant, and they passed the word along to others.
That's when the Bastianich couple started doing their popular food
preparation demonstrations.
Lidia's father passed away in 1981. Soon
afterwards, Felice and Lidia
Bastianich sold both of their Queens restaurants and
purchased an old browstone on East 58th Street near Second
Avenue in
Manhattan that housed a small restaurant. "We had to go a long way
backward before we could go forward," Lidia said. "We had come to this
country as immigrants, with nothing, and now we were immigrants again,
and had nothing again. We had put everything we had into the new place,
mortgaged our house to raise more, and tapped my parents' resources."
Lidia and Felice envisioned a
restaurant with a duplex layout that was four times larger
than the former establishment, plus a much larger kitchen in the rear
and additional kitchens in the basement. The previous occupant had a
narrow dining room that comprised little more than what would become
Felidia's bar and it ended where the present ground-floor dining room
begins! The couple hired an architect to draw the plans and oversee the
construction of an extension to the existing brownstone building into
its rear yard. That major construction project resulted in a cost
overrun of $150,000. In aggregate, they ended up spending $750.000 on
the restaurant before it even opened. "We came out with $250,000 in
cash, but the architect estimated that we'd need $350,000 minimum. He gave us a
choice of three quality grades for every proposed installation, every
detail, and we chose the best in every case." They named their new
restaurant Felidia, which is a contraction of their given names Felice and
Lidia. The news media quickly acknowledged and embraced them. |
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Lidia Bastianich gives some credit for her success in business to her mother, Erminia, who had been a grade school teacher in Pula before they left Yugoslavia, with giving her the freedom to pursue her dreams. "My mother was feeding us - we were back to eating chicken wings - and even my son Joseph chipped in what he earned on a paper route... we did a lot of the detail work ourselves. We stripped all the wood paneling at home in our garage, with the kids, and we finished and upholstered all the chairs ourselves." About her mother, she added: “I had my two children when I was young and never would have been able to work without her babysitting... We owned a three-story house in Astoria and she lived downstairs and kept her door open. The kids were the better for it.” On holidays, such as Mothers Day, Lidia’s mother would bring the two children to the restaurant to celebrate the holiday. Then they would go home with grandma and Lidia returned to her work. Her mother is now in her 80s and continues to live with Lidia in her present luxurious home. Her daughter Tanya and her family live within walking distancem while Lidia's son Joseph, lives in Greenwich, Conn. with his wife and children.
Lidia admits that she did not get a college degree. The saying goes, however, "The apple does not fall far from the tree", and her children have turned that famous saying into a continuing success story. Her son Joseph received his B.A. from Boston College, started working as a bond trader at Merril Lynch on Wall Street, but after a year returned to the family's restaurant business; whereas daughter Tanya went to Oxford, got a Ph.D. in Renaissance art history and spent six years in Florence, Italy where she continued her studies and taught Art History. There, she married Corrado Manuali, an up and coming attorney specializing in International Law. The Manuali couple moved back to New York where they also became part of the Bastianich family dynasty. Despite all the hard work and the many trials and travails that had transformed into a uniquely successful all-family business, Felice and Lidia divorced in 1997 after 31 years of marriage. Felice retired and remarried, whereas Lidia continued to focus on her gastronomical ambitions. Lidia's son Joseph is now co-owner of both the Felidia and Becco restaurants in New York and Lidia's in Kansas City and Pittsburgh. Lidia's daughter Tanya, besides also being a co-owner of some of the family restaurants (see the full list below), is also co-owner of Lidia's Esperienze Italiane, a high-end travel agency that specializes in food, wine and cultural tours of Italy.
Notwithstanding Lidia's expanding global enterprises and her non-stop guest appearances and many other business commitments, she says that her family still always comes first. She claims that her fascination with cooking originates from memories of her grandparents who were typical rural Istrian farmers who grew most of the food they ate and sold their produce to make ends meet. They made their own olive oil and wine, distilled their own grappa and cured their own meats - prosciutto, pancetta, guanciale and salsicce, but they also ran a trattoria. Lidia even remembers going with her grandmother to the communal mill to grind the wheat into flour for the making of pasta and bread. Her mother Erminia has been a formidable presence at Felidia. She has said, “My mother acts as sous-chef (second in command) and gets the stocks going for me. It is also tremendous satisfaction for me that my children are involved.” It’s not uncommon for her mother or one of her older grandchildren to appear on her PBS series, helping with the cooking or lending support. Her son Joseph, a wine specialist, also shows up on the programs. “On Christmas eve I make the traditional bacalà (dried salt cod) (1) and I know my (late) father is with me. Putting food on the table keeps you straight and gives you security.” The turning point in Lidia's career came in 1993 when the famous chef, 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 celebrity. Then followed the major break-through in September 1998 with her first television show, "Lidia's Italian Table" which was released with a companion cookbook of the same name. That same year, Lidia ventured into the commercial food industry with the creation of a line of gourmet pasta sauces which are currently available in local supermarkets and specialty food retailers all over the U.S.A.. In 2001, PBS offered Lidia her own TV cooking show which was renewed for two additional seasons and thus evolved into a 52-part series. All of the show segments have been taped at her fully-equipped Queens home (not only culinary, but also built-in cameras, etc.) with Little Neck Bay (part of Long Island Bay), visible from her kitchen windows. “We do three recipes per show that come from the cookbook.” Her cooking shows are being shown nationwide on Public Television as well as in Australia, Canada and Japan. She has published six cookbooks (see list below) that are companions to her TV shows, with a seventh book expected to debut in 2009 and which will be titled Lidia Cooks from the Heart.
Lidia makes frequent appearances as a celebrity guest on local television networks and on national morning shows such as "The Today Show," "Martha Stewart Living", "Good Day New York," and "Nightline". She also has her own website, Lidia's Italy. Lidia, her cooking and her restaurants are also frequently publicized in national magazines such as Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Wine Spectator, and Food and Wine. In addition, she and now also Joseph, has often been featured in American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. Among her many awards, in 2002 Bastianich was named outstanding chef by the James Beard Foundation, an award compared to the movie world’s Academy Awards. Among her other honors, she also was one of the featured guests at the Italian American Museum Gala at the Plaza Hotel New York City in May and which was attended by George Pataki, the then-Governor of New York State (pictured below). On February 27, 2007, C-CAP honored Lidia Bastianich for her outstanding contributions as a chef, cookbook author, restaurant owner and philanthropist (pictured below). That Honors Award was previously given to Thomas Keller, Charlie Palmer, Danny Meyer and Michael Romano, Daniel Boulud, Jacques Pepin, Egidiana and Sirio Maccioni, Nina and Tim Zagat, and Saul and Stanley Zabar. Also in 2007, she was appointed Grand Marshall of the Columbus Day Parade held on October 8, sharing that honor with only two other women, the actresses Sofia Loren (Italian) and Suzanne Lucci (American). In 2005, that same honor was bestowed on another Istrian-born American who is a car-racing champion and founding father of his own family dynasty, Mario Andretti. Unlike Mario, Lidia told the whole world that was watching the parade on television that she is proud to be a multicultural Istrian - an unprecedented and historic feat! In April 2008, she had the honor of being chosen as the dinner chef for Pope Benedict XVI during the New York leg of his first state to the U.S.A.since becoming Pope. Since then, she has become even more widely sought after for guest appearances on TV shows, at cooking schools, restaurant openings and a wide variety of social events. Lidia Bastianichh has reached the epitome of success in her field and has been called the "The 'First Lady' of Italian cuisine" and the "Martha Stewart Istriana" ["Ritratto della cuoca italiana più famosa nel mondo", Panorama Mondadori, 21 June 2002]. Nonetheless, the echoes of her truncated childhood in near poverty still manage to resound through Lidia's luxury home in the exclusive section of Douglaston Manor, Queens. Her Tudor-style house was built in 1902 and sits right on the bay. It has a vegetable and herb garden, a wood-burning bread and pizza oven (reminiscent of the outdoor Istrian ovens) and even a rotisserie in the back yard. Fluent in both the Italian and Croatian languages, Lidia makes frequent visits to her family's home in Busoler in the suburb of Pula, Istria, where she had spent her earliest childhood. |
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Between her travelling, cooking lectures and writing, Bastianich also manages to find time to visit the various ethnic neighborhoods of Queens to eat and shop. “It’s a great source for groceries and to find ingredients. I love Flushing for the Chinese cuisine, Greek food (in Astoria) for the grilled fish and Spanish food in Jackson Heights,” she said. “Vietnamese is starting to come in and there is a little mom-and-pop-style Egyptian place on Steinway Street that is like an extension of their home kitchen.” Admitting that she loves all food, Bastianich is as comfortable with a cheeseburger as she is with her special shrimp scampi. She also likes to experiment with ingredients, especially at home. “I love braised bok choy (an Asian green) and I make it Italian style instead of using broccoli rabe. I also use Chinese cabbage in soups for flavor.” However, she confessed some time ago in a more private moment that her favorite place to dine in New York City is the Istria Sport Club in Astoria which was founded in 1959, just one year after her family emigrated to the U.S.A. In 2009, the club will proudly celebrate its 50th Anniversary. (2)
Restaurants:
Published cookbooks:
Other publications:
Community Services:
The Lidia Matticchio Bastianich Foundation: Lidia uses her talent as a chef to organize benefits and generate support for humanitarian causes. She has helped raise funds for the less fortunate throughout her career, especially with organizations like UNICEF and UNIFEM. In 1999, the Not-for-Profit Lidia Matticchio Bastianich Foundation was established. The foundation's goals are to benefit the indigent, abandoned, oppressed, neglected, ill or handicapped without regard to race or creed by promoting their health, welfare, happiness and academic and vocational training and development. The Foundation funds educational programs at the elementary through post-graduate levels. Aid has been given to immigrants from war-torn Croatia, Albania, Yugoslavia and other Eastern European countries in their integration into United States society by providing housing, educational and financial assistance and to promote their activities and cultural endeavors and the preservation of their cultural and ethnic heritage. Programs and artistic efforts in music, the visual arts, the performance arts and cultural activities in general have been supported. Research in the field of medicine has also been supported, bringing the latest medical technologies in the United States for doctors and other medical personnel from other countries. Video clips:
Articles by Lidia Bastianich:
Selected media coverage:
Notes:
Sources:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran and Guido Villa Created: Sunday, April 28,
2002; Last Updated:
Monday, December 14, 2009
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Honors and Awards: