At Enoteca Maria, grandmas rule the kitchen.
Hailing from all over the globe—Argentina, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Taiwan—they come to cook at this tiny restaurant on Staten Island, New York—a stone’s throw away from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
They’re known as the “nonnas of the world”—“nonna” is Italian for “grandmother”—a rotating cast of dozens of women who make family recipes from their home countries. Come for a meal, and they adopt you as their own.
“I wanted to cook just like I am cooking at home for my family, without using additives or artificial flavors,” said Yumiko Komatsudaira, who specializes in Japanese food. Whether she’s cooking at home or at the restaurant, “it’s the same thing, which is to take care of people you love and provide the food [they] enjoy eating. The outcome is they feel really good about eating great food.”
There is no pretension here, no ego—only the generous spirit of people who just want you to eat well. It’s a restaurant-sized celebration of that universal truth: Grandma’s cooking is the best.
Recreating Comfort
Jody Scaravella, an Italian American born and raised in Brooklyn, opened the restaurant in 2007 after losing his mother and sister within the same year. His grandmother Domenica, who had effectively raised him while his parents worked long hours, had passed in the years prior.In the throes of grief, “I would have done anything,” he said. So, with no prior experience—and no business plan—he used a small inheritance from his mother to open a restaurant named after her, where all the cooks would be Italian grandmothers. “It was trying to backfill everything I lost,” he said. “Those are the memories that stick out for me: being in my grandmother’s house and everybody’s sitting around the table and … sharing a meal together. That was my comfort zone.”
He put an ad in the local Italian newspaper calling for housewives to cook regional cuisine. The response was enormous.
“I invited them into my home. They came with their husbands, their children, their neighbors—and they all came with plates of food. I had a house full of kids running around and these ladies chasing after me with dishes of food to try. It was like a Fellini movie.”
Nonnas, Assemble!
The only requirements for applicants are: They must be at least 50 years old—not necessarily grandmothers—and they must be passionate about cooking. Such a casting call has brought together women from all walks of life.Maria Gialanella, 89, came to the United States from Naples, Italy, in 1961 and worked as a seamstress. She’s been cooking at Enoteca Maria for nearly a decade, after her daughter told her about the opportunity, and has become a local sensation for her towering lasagna, handmade cavatelli, and propensity for leaving the kitchen to greet all her customers. “I talk to everyone,” she said, grinning widely. “Everyone likes me.”
Komatsudaira, who is in her mid-50s, is one of the few nonnas who aren’t grandmothers—she has a 17-year-old son. She first came to the restaurant as a student in the “nonnas in training” program, which allows anyone to sign up for a free cooking class with a nonna as she preps for the day’s service. She was looking for inspiration for her new seaweed business, after a career change from the fashion industry that had brought her from Japan to New York in her mid-20s.
“They see me cooking with passion,” Komatsudaira recalled, “so they ask me, ‘Why don’t you come and start cooking for us?’” Now, her Japanese dishes are a mainstay on the menu, including crowd favorites like handmade gyozas, along with a medley of seasonal, vegetable-driven dishes highlighting the nutrient-dense sea vegetables and fermented foods she grew up eating.
Ploumitsa Zimnis, 77, found Enoteca Maria in a season of grief. She had just lost her husband, with whom she came to America from the island of Chios, Greece, as newlyweds in 1969. When she first arrived, she had no idea how to cook. But she devoted herself to learning, with the help of her restaurant-owner husband, his aunt, and handwritten recipes mailed from her mother, while working at a New York public school cafeteria. She grew to love and excel at it, becoming famous for her moussaka (meat and eggplant casserole), pastitsio (Greek lasagna), and especially her desserts: baklava roses, loukoumades (honey-soaked fried doughnuts), and mastic syrup-soaked galaktoboureko (a phyllo and semolina custard pie).
For her birthday in September 2016, less than two months after her husband’s passing, her daughter, Maria, brought her to the restaurant to try to lift her spirits. There, they discovered what they took as a sign: The neighborhood where Enoteca Maria is located, St. George, shares a name with Zimnis and her husband’s village in Chios. With support from Maria—and the kindred spirits she found in the other nonnas—she started coming to cook once a month. Maria set up a YouTube channel and Instagram page for her mother’s fans, who now write to her all the time, Zimnis said: “When are you coming? When are you coming?”
Authentic Flavors
Manager Paola Vento coordinates the nonnas. “It’s a lot of work on the days off, a lot of planning,” she said. “But it’s a lot of fun, too.”Most live in the New York area and come in about once a month; a couple of them make an annual flight just for the occasion—one from Louisiana, one from Taiwan. An Italian nonna always works a downstairs kitchen for a set Italian menu, while a visiting nonna cooks upstairs.
Vento treks to specialty stores for the harder-to-find items on their shopping lists: lotus root from the Asian market, curry leaves from the Sri Lankan store, grape leaves from a Mediterranean shop. For the nonnas who have been with them for years, like 72-year-old May Joseph from Sri Lanka, Vento knows exactly what to get: “I know the leeks, I know the way that the curry leaves have to look.” For newer team members, she may ask for more guidance: On a trip for Nonna Linda from Hong Kong, “I did need to FaceTime her to get her approval on the pork ribs.”
Cooking To Give
The restaurant is small, run by a tiny team, but they operate with outsized passion.“What we do here, it’s not designed to make money,” Scaravella said. “And I can tell you that financially, it’s a disaster”— kept alive by infusions of his own money. “But I love what I do, and it really helped me through some difficult times.”
“These ladies have a lot to offer; they actually carry culture forward,” he continued. “Nonnas in training” is meant to further facilitate “that passage of knowledge from one generation to the next—and it’s not only [cross-]generational but cross-cultural. That’s why I love it; that’s why we never charge for it.”
As for the nonnas, “they’re very happy to share their food and culture,” said Vento. Diners clap for them every evening when they leave, “and they’re so happy. It’s the best part of the day.”
Komatsudaira is heartened by customers’ positive reviews of her food, but she tries not to pay too much attention to it. “I just try to do a better job today than yesterday; I do my best to represent who I am and the cuisine I want to share with people here.”
