Background and career
Lidia Giuliana Matticchio Bastianich (born February 21, 1947) is an American celebrity chef, television host, author, and restaurateur. Specializing in Italian and Italian-American cuisine, Bastianich has been a regular contributor to public television cooking shows since 1998. Born in the allied-occupied Pula, Matticchio Bastianich's family emigrated to the United States when she was nine years old during the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus. In 2014, she launched her fifth television series, Lidia's Kitchen. She owns or has owned several Italian restaurants in the U.S. in partnership with her daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali and her son Joe Bastianich, including Felidia (founded with her ex-husband, Felice), Del Posto (closed and sold in 2021), and Becco in Manhattan; Lidia's Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh (closed in 2019); and Lidia's Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri. She also is a partner in Eataly locations in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Silicon Valley, Dallas, and São Paulo, Brazil.
Lidia Giuliana Matticchio Bastianich was born on February 21, 1947, in Pula, Zone A Allied military administration, just before the city was assigned to Yugoslavia in September 1947 (and which is now part of Istria County, Croatia). She is the daughter of Erminia Pavichievaz and Vittorio Matticchio. Until 1956, she lived with her family in Yugoslavia, before her mother, her brother Franco and herself fled to Trieste, Italy, on the pretense of visiting their sick aunt Nina, who was a personal chef. This matched what many other Istrian Italians did during the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus. Soon after, her father joined them in Trieste after he crossed the border into Italy at night. After Nina could only provide temporary shelter, Bastianich and her family became refugees at Risiera di San Sabba. According to Bastianich in a Public Television documentary, although a wealthy Triestine family hired her mother as a cook–housekeeper and her father as a limousine driver, they remained residents of the refugee camp. Two years later, their displaced persons application was granted to emigrate from Italy to the United States. In 1958, Bastianich and her family reached the United States, arriving in North Bergen, New Jersey, and later settling in Astoria, Queens, in New York City. Bastianich gives credit for the family's new roots in the United States to their sponsor, Catholic Relief Services:
The Catholic Relief Services brought us here to New York; we had no one. They found a home for us. They found a job for my father. And ultimately, we settled. And I am the perfect example that if you give somebody a chance, especially here in the United States, one can find the way. Bastianich started working part-time at the age of 14, during which she briefly worked at the Astoria bakery, Walken's Bakery, owned by Christopher Walken's parents. After graduating from high school, she began to work full-time at a pizzeria on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
In the 1960s Lidia worked at Walken's Bakery on Broadway in Astoria, Queens NY which was owned by Christopher Walken's family.
In 1971, the Bastianiches opened their first restaurant, the tiny Buonavia, meaning "good road", in the Forest Hills section of Queens, with Bastianich as its hostess. They created their restaurant's menu by copying recipes from the most popular and successful Italian restaurants of the day, and they hired the best Italian-American chef that they could find. After a brief break to deliver her second child Tanya, in 1972 Bastianich began training as the assistant chef at Buonavia, gradually learning enough to cook popular Italian dishes on her own. The success of Buonavia led to the opening of the second restaurant in Queens, Villa Secondo. It was here that Bastianich gained the attention of local food critics and started to give live cooking demonstrations, a prelude to her future career as a television cooking show hostess. In 1981, Bastianich's father died, and the family sold their two Queens restaurants and purchased a small Manhattan brownstone containing a pre-existing restaurant on the East Side of Manhattan near the 59th Street Bridge to Queens. They converted it into what would eventually become their flagship restaurant, Felidia (a contraction of "Felice" and "Lidia"). After renovations, Felidia opened to near-universal acclaim from their loyal following of food critics, including The New York Times, which gave Felidia three stars.
Although Lidia and Felice sent their two children to college without expectations that either would go into the restaurant business, Joseph, who had frequently done odd jobs for his parents at Felidia, gave up his newly launched career as a Wall Street bond trader; in 1993, he convinced his parents to partner with him to open Becco (Italian for "peck, nibble, savor") in the Theater District in Manhattan. Like Felidia, Becco was an immediate success and led to the opening of additional restaurants outside New York City, including Lidia's Kansas City in 1998, and Lidia's Pittsburgh in 2001. In 1993, Julia Child invited Bastianich to tape an episode of her Public Television series Julia Child: Cooking With Master Chefs, which featured acclaimed chefs from around the U.S., preparing dishes in their own home kitchens. The guest appearance gave Bastianich confidence and determination to expand the Bastianich family's own commercial interests. By the late 1990s, Bastianich's restaurants had evolved into a truly family-owned and operated enterprise. Bastianich's mother, Erminia Motika, maintained the large garden behind the family home, from which Bastianich chose ingredients to use in recipe development. Joe was the chief sommelier of the restaurant group, in addition to branching out into his own restaurant line. Bastianich's daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali used her PhD in Italian art history as the foundation for a travel agency partnership with her mother called Esperienze Italiane, through which Tanya and friend Shelly Burgess Nicotra, who was the Executive Producer of Bastianich's television series and head of PR at Lidia's Italy, offered tours throughout Italy. Tanya's husband, attorney Corrado Manuali, became the restaurant group's chief legal counsel. In 2010, Bastianich and her son partnered with Oscar Farinetti to open Eataly, a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) food emporium in Manhattan that is devoted to the food and culinary traditions of Italy. Bastianich offers culinary and gastronomy classes to the public at Eataly's school, La Scuola. Eataly's motto is "We sell what we cook, and we cook what we sell". Eataly is now in Chicago and São Paulo, Brazil. They opened a second store in New York at the World Trade Center in Manhattan in 2016 and another one in Boston the same year. Recent openings include Eataly in Los Angeles in 2017, in Las Vegas in 2018, in Toronto in 2019, Silicon Valley in 2022, and Dallas. The fall of 2010 also marked the debut of Lidia's Kitchen, an exclusive line of commercial cookware, and serving ware for QVC. Along with her daughter Tanya, and son-in-law Corrado Manuali, Bastianich launched Nonna Foods as a platform to distribute an array of both existing and new LIDIA'S food products. Nonna Foods has 11 varieties of sauces (including two USDA Certified Organic sauces) available nationwide. Together with her son Joseph, Bastianich produces wine at Bastianich Vineyard in Friuli Venezia Giulia and La Mozza Vineyard in Maremma, Italy.
