STEPS of the Ferry terminal in the New York district of Staten Island, in a district overlooking the Horizon line in Manhattan, is Enoteca Maria, a restaurant with 35 places where chefs are grandmothers around the world.
The restaurant is now the subject of a new Netflix film UncommonMay 9. Vince Vaughn plays the role of founder Jody “Joe” Scaravella, 69, who opened the restaurant in 2007 in tribute to Italian women who made her love cooking, her grandmother Domenica and her mother Maria, for whom the restaurant is appointed. The film shows how Scaravella went from a transport worker to the opening of a restaurant with senior women as chefs, played by Susan Sarandon, Talia Shire, Lorraine Bracco and Brenda Vaccaro.
Time has gone to the real Enoteca Maria to discuss with the owner Scaravella on Espresso. Boasting with gray curly hair, small slowdown glasses and a t-shirt with Gene Wilder’s face from Young Frankenstein That said “I’m alive!” He took an interview break from time to time to receive deliveries from Mozzarella and Branzino. The superhero figurines decorate the restaurant-Batman and Spiderman look at the ceiling-but it clearly indicates that the real superheroes of the restaurant are the grandmothers of the kitchen. A portrait of Domenica, Maria and her sister Mariana are in a good place on a wall.
“It’s not a restaurant,” he says. “He walks like a restaurant, smells like a restaurant,” speaks like a restaurant, “but it’s not a restaurant. It is a cultural exchange. ” ENTOTECA Maria began as an Italian restaurant, but the menu has changed over time while grannies from everywhere have been invited to share their family recipes. During the time visit in May, the restaurant was preparing to offer Mexican, Uzbeks and Greek menus in a weekend.
The grandmothers, says Scaravella, “take what their mother taught them to do, what their grandmother taught them to do, and each time these ladies are in the kitchen, you have all this culture that comes out of their fingers.”
Time spoke to Scaravella of the origins of the restaurant, real women who launched it, and why the grandmothers make the best (and worst) restaurant chefs.
How the grandmothers became heads of Enoteca Maria
Scaravella is from Brooklyn, and he lived on the block where he grew up for 50 years. After the death of his grandfather, father, mother, grandmother and sister in rapid succession, he fell into a deep depression. With the money he inherited, he sought to buy a property by the water and went to Staten Island, the largest arrondissement in New York accessible in ferry and by car and has his own metro line.
He fell in love with a Dutch colonial house which was at a distance from the Ferry Terminal from Staten Island and decided to start a new life there. One day, he spotted a vacant showcase next to the St. George theater, and decided to buy it and open a restaurant in honor of his mother Maria.
As the film shows, he essentially occupied two jobs when he started to withdraw ENOTECA Maria from the ground, often making the coverage of people for him at work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
In honor of her grandmother Domenica, a confident home cook, Scaravella wanted to hire real grandmothers to cook. Domenica was from Sicily and died a few months old. She was fiery and Scaravella grew up watching her cook and shop for the ingredients. On the Italian market that she frequented in Brooklyn, she would take a plum bite, and if she did not love her, she spat it and left it on the ground. “No one has ever said a word because they knew that if it was on the ground, it belonged to it,” said Scaravella.
Scaravella publishes an announcement in search of real grandmothers to cook in his restaurant. So many people have answered, around the world, that Toteca Maria ended up having a line of rotating chief.
Scaravella is passionate about world cuisine and preserving recipes. In addition to presenting food from different countries, Enoteca Maria offers a free class where participants can obtain tutorials in head of the grandmothers. He hopes to create an online group where people can publish their own family recipes.
But making the film and making a Facebook group could be with regard to the restaurant, in terms of technology. Those interested in going to Enoteca Maria must make an old -fashioned reservation, by phone. Scaravella is not interested in obtaining booking applications like Resy or Opentable, and certainly not interested in a delivery service of grandmother via Ubereats or Doordash.
“Food loses part of its value for every moment in a box,” he says. “I don’t continue a dollar. I continue a dream. “
Place on real women who inspired non-nas
Uncommon Follows the Italian cooks who helped launch the restaurant, and in the film, the women are fictitious but inspired by the colorful women of the life of Scaravella.
Susan Sarandon plays Gia, a hairdresser who took care of Scaravella’s mother when she had cancer and is recruited by Scaravella because she is such a good baker. Talia Shire plays Teresa, a nun who left a convent after falling in love with another woman. Lorraine Bracco embodies Roberta, a friend of the mother of Scaravella who finds the kitchen in Enoteca Maria to be a nice break to live in a senior house. Likewise, Brenda Vaccaro embodies Antonella, a widow who finds a new goal in life at the restaurant after a young neighbor Olivia (Linda Cardellini) returned it to the announcement of Scaravella for the cooks.
The three original grandmothers of the kitchen when Enoteca Maria opened its doors in the Scaravella kitchen book Nun houseWho profiles the different grandmothers who have cooked at the restaurant over the years.
Carmelina Pica, the fourth of the 14 children, who worked in a sewing factory and had appetizers for an Italian market on Staten Island, including strips of torture pepper and a seafood salad that made the store a destination for the families of Staten Island. She attended the Uncommon First on April 30.
Adelina Orazzo grew up in a small town on the outskirts of Naples and got engaged to get married when she was only 13 years old. Marriage collapsed later, but, like his counterpart Uncommon She found a new goal when her niece saw the announcement of Scaravella for the cooks, and he gave her a free reign in the kitchen.
Teresa Scalici, known for her cookies in Enoteca Maria, lived with her grandmother in Sicily in her adolescence. She raised a family on Staten Island and went to work for Scaravella at the age of 60, often transporting a recipe book that her own grandmother assembled.
ENTOTECA Maria brought meaning to Scaravella and to the life of non-nas, but in the kitchen, the knives were from time to time. In UncommonAntonella and Roberta are competitive with each other, fighting in the kitchen as they compete to prove that their respective Italy regions produce the best food. It is true that the fights broke out in the Enoteca Maria kitchen. “I saw a raised pan,” says Scaravella. Among the chiefs of origin, “Adelina and Teresa do not love each other,” he says, especially “if someone has done something better than the other person did”.
And the training of grandmothers to cook in accordance with the health code was a completely different battle. As he explains, “my grandmother would make a sauce of sauce that would stay on the stove all day, and you picked up there all day. You cannot do it, regarding the health service. ” This special sauce may not be on the menu, but a version of her grandmother’s Sunday sauce makes an occasional appearance. In the film, the fictitious Joe spends the whole film trying to recreate his grandmother’s Sunday sauce and understand his secret ingredient.
In the film, Sparks also steals between Joe and Olivia, the neighbor who encouraged Antonella to join the Scaravella cuisine. Scaravella came out with women he met in the restaurant over the years, and his current partner is one of the rotating chiefs of Enoteca Maria, Yumi Komatsudaira, who makes Japanese cuisine.
One of the most dramatic scenes in the film has really occurred. The character of Shire Teresa gets kneeling and prays for an inspection going well so that the restaurant can reopen to customers. In reality, one of his friends – not one of the chiefs of origin – did not go down and prayed the famous priest Padre Pio for customers to appear. And shortly after doing this, the restaurant started filling up. A portrait of Padre Pio is also hung on the real restaurant.
