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Posted on February 15, 2017 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
Telemundo!
This is a youtube link to watch Telemundo covering Enoteca Maria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxybbeH4QcY
Posted on February 13, 2017 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
China Global Television Broadcasting Nonnas!
Video Embedded Here:
Posted on January 28, 2017 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
This AM in NY! Nonnas in Training Coverage!
Full Article Here:
Enoteca Maria’s ‘Nonnas in Training’ program on Staten Island will teach you to cook like grandma
By Jillian Jorgensen [email protected] October 20, 2016
At Enoteca Maria, grandmothers, not chefs, staff the kitchen. So when owner Jody Scaravella decided to offer cooking classes, naturally, he made them free. Would your nonna charge you to help out in the kitchen?
“I just felt that it would cheapen the experience to charge for it,” Scaravella said during the post-lunch lull at his Staten Island restaurant this week.
Scaravella’s restaurant has made headlines worldwide for employing Italian nonnas in the kitchen and turning out plates of rustic meals that remind diners of Sunday dinner. Recently, after years of watching people from every kind of culture come sample Italian grandmothers’ food, he decided that people might like to try traditional cooking from elsewhere in the world — and recruited a slate of international nonnas to share the restaurant with the Italians.
If there’s a catch to the free cooking class, it’s that you can’t pick which cuisine your nonna will specialize in.
“Basically what we’re doing is just taking different cultures and putting them together, and that’s really what we’re about,” Scaravella said.
A little mystery about what you’ll be cooking seems a small price to pay — or really no price at all — in exchange for a spot in these one-on-one cooking classes, which Enoteca Maria will offer from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Given the publicity and the crowds that flock to his small restaurant, people surely would have paid for the chance to cook with a nonna and, perhaps, bring back memories of cooking in their own grandmothers’ kitchens. But Scaravella said he just couldn’t bring himself to charge for it.
“I didn’t feel right about it,” he said. “But I don’t feel right about charging for a lot of things.”
Frequent diners at Enoteca Maria know that well. An order of espresso at the restaurant often arrives with the standard sugar, plus an entire bottle of sambuca for topping it off, on the house.
For an idea of what you might learn to cook, on Thursday, the restaurant’s downstairs kitchen was occupied, as it is every day it’s open, by an Italian nonna — Adelina Orazzo, from Casola di Napoli. Her menu included long hot peppers stuffed with sausage, cheese and breadcrumbs, four-cheese ravioli, homemade tagliatelle pasta in a fava bean and wild fennel sauce, and veal braciola, rolls of meat filled with vegetables and mozzarella cheese in red sauce. There were also Italian delicacies less common in the United States, like a whole stuffed sheep’s head.
The international nonna, Isioma Edu, was in the upstairs kitchen cooking food from Nigeria — including Egusi soup, made with goat meat, beef, dry fish, smoked turkey, dry shrimp, melon seeds and pounded yams. There was also a salad of oil bean seeds, eggplant, hot green peppers, dried crayfish, palm oil, stock fish and onions.
The only requirements for the class are a hat, closed-toe shoes and an apron. To sign up for the cooking classes, visit Enoteca Maria’s website and fill out the registration form, indicating when you are available to attend, and Scaravella will match you with an available nonna as soon as possible (though he cautioned there may be a wait).
Posted on January 27, 2017 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
60 Second Documentary on the Nonne!
Here is the Video from 60 Second Docs:
Posted on January 3, 2017 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
HEAPS – a Japanese Magazine Covers Enoteca!
This article is in Japanese:Â http://heapsmag.com/enoteca-maria-staten-island-restaurant-kitchen-of-grandma-of-the-world-new-york-no-professional-chefs-but-yes-chat-hug-cultural-experience
Posted on December 27, 2016 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
German Radio Media covering the Nonnas of the World!
This article is in German, and there is a radio recording at the bottom of the article:Â http://www1.wdr.de/kultur/enoteca-maria-100.html
Posted on December 23, 2016 - by Enoteca - Comments are off for this post
Presenting: Nonnas of the World
At Enoteca Maria we celebrate cultural diversity by serving cuisines from around the world, but we do it in the most uniquely authentic way possible. Real grandmothers from every country across the globe are invited and hired as chefs to cook the recipes handed down to them that they cook at home for their families, that make up the fabric of the culture they were born and raised in. We aspire to build cultural connections through the universal language of cooking, and one way we can do that besides eating it, is teaching it! We hold classes where aspiring chefs can get the opportunity to learn from the nonnas in the kitchen.
Culture is a resource worth preserving. After all a tree can’t grow and change without its roots.
See the Nonnas in Action!
