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Lidia Bastianich is an Istrian-American chef who is widely acclaimed and highly publicized by the international TV and print media. She 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]. Lidia was born in Pula (Pola) on February 21, 1947 to Erminia (b. Pavicievaz / Pavicevac) and Vittorio Matticchio / Motika. While her father's family was rooted in the outskirts of Pula called Busoler, both her paternal and maternal roots harken back to the region between Labin (Albona) and Pazin (Pisino). Her maternal grandparents came from Tupljak where their ancestry is Istro-Romanian and belonging to the smallest ethnic groups in Europe. Their ancient Romanian dialect (sometimes called a separate language) is in imminent danger of extinction. (See: UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages of Europe.)
Whereas the mass exodus from Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia began around the time that Lidia was born (as a result of the February 10, 1947 Paris Peace Treaty with Italy), Lidia's family remained. In 1956, when Lidia was 9 years old, she, her parents and brother Franco, who is three years older than Lidia, left Istria for Trieste, thereby following the path of the earlier Istrian exodus. As displaced persons, the family lived for two years in the refugee camp in Trieste that had previously been the infamous Nazi-Fascist concentration and death camp called San Sabba. The family had expected to emigrate to Australia, but the quotas to the United States opened up and they headed West instead of East. They were also lucky to travel by plane unlike the earlier years of the Istrian exodus when refugee families were transported to new countries by "liberty ship". Lidia's family boarded a KLM plane in Rome in April 1958. After a refueling stop at Reykjavik, they landed in New York City. The family's move 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. Lidia was then 11 years old. Lidia's father found a job as a mechanic with a Chevrolet plant in New Jersey and so the Matticchio family found an apartment in nearby North Bergen. Later, the family moved to Astoria but continued to work in New Jersey. Lidia enrolled in Junior High School 204 in Queens. During the early years, like so many immigrant mothers, Lidia's mother worked days in a sewing machine factory (commonly referred to as a "sweat shop"). To help the family finances, Lidia went to work parttime at age fifteen in the Walken Bakery on Broadway and 30 Street in Astoria, Queens, owned by the parents of actor Christopher Walken. Her social activities at that time were confined to Astoria's Istrian community where she met Felice (Felix) Bastianich, a native of Labin (Albona), Istria, who was a restaurant worker like many other recent Istrian immigrants. They married in 1966 when Lidia was 19. Their honeymoon in Italy included Lidia's first trip back to Istria since her family's departure ten years earlier. Two years into their marriage, Felice and Lidia's son, Joseph, was born. In 1971, the couple purchased a tiny restaurant called Buonavia that was located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills, Queens, at which time she became pregnant with her second child, Tanya. She started working in the restaurant as the nominal bartender and cashier, later gravitating to the kitchen where she learned to cook professionally by working with the Italian-American chef they had hired. Geared to popular taste, 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. Vittorio Motika, Lidia's father, passed away in 1981. That same year, Felice and Lidia Bastianich sold both of their Queens restaurants, and purchased an old browstone on East 58th Street near Second Avenue in Manhattan which contained a small restaurant. The couple 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 ended where the present ground-floor dining room begins! The couple hired an architect to draw the plans 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, a contraction of their given names Felice and Lidia. Although Lidia had initiated a college education, she did not earn a degree. The saying goes, "The apple does not fall far from the tree", and her children have turned that saying into a continuing success story. Her son Joseph received his B.A. from Boston College, started working as a bond trader on Wall Street, but soon quit that career path to join his parents' restaurant business; whereas daughter Tanya earned a Ph.D. in Renaissance art history from Oxford, spent six years in Florence, Italy where she studied and taught Art History, and also got married to Corrado Manuali, an attorney specializing in International Law. The Manuali couple moved back to New York where Tanya then also joined the rapidly expanding family business. |
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Despite what had become an all-family business, Felice and Lidia divorced in 1997 after 31 years of marriage. Felice retired and remarried, while Lidia continued to focus on expanding her culinary empire. The break-through for her came with her first television show, "Lidia's Italian Table" which was released in September 1998 with a companion book of the same name. That same year, Lidia created several lines of commercial line of gourmet pasta sauces, which are being sold in local and specialty food retailers. |
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Despite Lidia's many business and social commitments, her family always comes first. She states 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, produced their own olive oil and wine, distilled their own grappa and cured their own meats - prosciutto, pancetta, guanciale and salsicce, but who also ran a trattoria. Lidia remembers going with her grandmother to the communal mill to grind the wheat into flour for 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 is a wine specialist, who 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.”
Lidia's TV debut 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 recognition. 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 (built-in cameras, etc.) with Little Neck 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 published cookbooks (see list below) that are companions to her TV shows, with a seventh book expected in 2009 which will be titled Lidia Cooks from the Heart, and to be published by Alfred. A. Knopf, New York. Lidia, her cooking and her restaurants are also covered frequently in national magazines such as Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Wine Spectator, and Food and Wine. In addition, she is often featured in American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the San Francisco Chronicle. She is also featured in the chapters of several anthology-styled cookbooks. With her television debut as a guest on the legendary Julia Child's cooking show in 1991, Lidia has frequently appeared as a guest on local television networks and on national shows such as "The Today Show," "Martha Stewart Living", "Good Day New York," and "Nightline". She also has her own website, Lidia's Italy. Between her travelling, lecturing and writing, Bastianich still 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 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.
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 and Suzanne Lucci. 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 singular honor of being the dinner chef for Pope Benedict XVI during the New York leg of his first state to the U.S.A.since becoming Pope. Not one to rest on her laurels, Bastianich would like to spend more time in the future promoting her foundation to help the indigent, abandoned and neglected through academic and vocational training. In addition, she works with the United Nations to promote a peace project for women in third-world countries. In her spare time, she goes museum-hopping with her daughter, globe-trodding and sailing with friends, and she also enjoys classical music, the opera and ballet. |
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Meanwhile, the echoes of her truncated childhood in near poverty manage to resound through Lidia's luxury home in the exclusive section of Douglaston Manor, Queens. Her Tudor 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 Italian and Croatian, Lidia makes frequent visits to her family's home in Busoler in the suburb of Pula, Istria, where she had spent her early childhood.
Restaurants:
Other publications:
Honors and Awards:
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:
This is probably a misquote and meant to be "stockfish'. Salt cod is salt-cured, not dried, whereas Stockfish is a dried fish which normally is not cod. Stockfish is used to make Northern Italian and Istrian dishes that are called bacalà (in Italian baccalà). Salt cod is also called baccalà but is the fish used in the middle and southern Italian regions. Although the two fish are cured differently and share the same name - both are also traditionaly used for Christmas Eve dishes - their tastes are discernably different from each other! Sources:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran and Guido Villa Created: Sunday, April 28,
2002; Last Updated:
Saturday, June 21, 2008
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A
few years later, the couple opened Villa Secondo in another store-front
in nearby Fresh Meadows, and it also became a hit. While they kept conventional dishes on the
menu, they had a special cuisine for special customers. People like Arthur Schwartz, the Daily News critic, and
also Giuliano Bugialli, a noted cookbook author, would come from Manhattan
to Fresh Meadows
and they would pass the word along to other food professionals. Then
they started doing pasta and game demonstrations which were very popular
and which got the attention of the news media.
"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." Bastianich credits her mother, Erminia,
who had been a grade school teacher in Pula before they
left their country, 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, while her daughter
Tanya and her family live within walking distance.
Published
cookbooks: