NYTable

Miss Your Grandmother? Come See the Nonnas of Staten Island

April 16th, 2014  |  Published in Uncategorized

“Nonna” means “grandmother” in Italian. It also means “chef “ at Enoteca Maria, a small seven-year-old restaurant on Staten Island.
To preserve family-style Italian food, each of the eight grandmother chefs takes her turn running the kitchen, preparing a menu in the style of the region she comes from. This includes everything from the spices in the meatloaf to the marmalade in the cookies: recipes passed down through many generations.
Nonnas never share recipes: the very idea elicited tense stares, replacing the smiles and butterfly hand gestures of moments before.
“No. No… No,” said Nonna Teresa firmly. She dashed up a winding staircase in her worn sneakers, returned to the downstairs kitchen, and pushed two different menus onto the metal counter that was dusted in powdered sugar. “We don’t copy each other’s recipes. I make everything from Sicilia. Adelena [the nonna of a different day assisting her] makes everything from Napoli.”
Enoteca Maria is smaller than most New York City restaurants with a little over ten tables, but the lead nonna does not act alone. She is assisted by another nonna, working on her off-night, and about seven other employees- the dishwashers, the waitresses, and a few male cooks taking precise orders from the focused old woman in charge.
The nonnas take as much pride in their individual regions as they do Italian culture as a whole. “It’s like the different regional football rivalries,” said owner Jody Scaravella. Scaravella, now in his mid-fifties, lives with his girlfriend in a Dutch Colonial decorated with family heirlooms, located a short drive away from the restaurant atop a garden-covered hill that provides some of the ingredients for his restaurant. He moved to the United States from Sicily and opened Enoteca Maria in March of 2007 with the hope of preserving dinner like grandma used to make it. “Tradition is our motto,” he said.

***
Nonna Teresa keeps a gold medal from the 2007 Taste of Staten Island pasta competition close by at the restaurant. She is most famous for her Sicilian lasagna, which blends eggplant, ricotta, prosciutto, speck and miscellaneous cheeses. But this was not the first thing she learned how to make.
“Fresh pasta from scratch. Ravioli. With my Nonna,” said Nonna Teresa.
“Tomato sauce… Rigatoni,” said Nonna Adelena, simultaneously reaching for her Samsung smart phone to show a picture of her four-year-old granddaughter, also named Adelena, getting her hands dirty making gnocchi. She had several other cellphone photos sent from Italy on the application WhatsApp of Little Adelena, who lives back in Italy, engulfed in more recipes. Nonna Adelena glowed.
Scaravella says he conceived of the musical chairs template of female head chefs when the restaurant opened in 2007 because he does not have a family of his own and all of the older women in his life had died. Now, the fifty, sixty, seventy-year old nonnas at Enoteca Maria fill that void.
“Having all the different Nonnas around brings me the most joy. And everyday I see how great my own Nonna was by being here,“ said Scaravella, gazing at a picture in the middle of the restaurant. “You have 100 years of history coming out of their hands right now down there in that kitchen.”
Just as the nonnas come from various regions of Italy, they live in different boroughs throughout Manhattan, including one who makes a two-hour commute from the Bronx every time it is her turn to cook. How did Scaravella find these women from all over? Part word of mouth, part other ways.
Nonna Teresa was one of the first grandmas to join the crew. She still remembers when a friend told her about seeing a job ad for a chef in the local Italian newspaper called America Oggi. She threw a jacket on and ran out the door in her pajamas to fetch the paper. “I called Jody right away,” she said, eyes twinkling, volume increasing, and hands moving more quickly.
Nonna Teresa recently celebrated her seven-year anniversary with Enoteca Maria, where she said she always makes what she wants because Scaravella trusts her. She scowls at the thought of being forced to replace olive oil, a staple in her cooking, for large amounts of butter or mayonnaise, as some unauthentic Italian restaurants in the United States use. In addition to the liberty she enjoys in the kitchen, one of her favorite parts about cooking in the United States instead of Italy is that she can shower twice a day– once in the morning and once when she returns home from the kitchen. She said the evening shower might not be possible in Italy because of the more limited water supply.

Enoteca Maria, a half-hour from Wall Street but just minuted from the ferry dock, opens at 3PM and closes when the last customer leaves. At first glance from a distance, the outside could be mistaken for the entrance to a dry cleaning shop. But if you get one of the 35 seats inside the restaurant, you might feel like the ferry took you from Manhattan to the Mediterranean.
Italian flies around in the kitchen. The menu features authentic peasant dishes like “half of a sheep’s head” and “pieces of rabbit.” And the sign in the bathroom by the soap dispenser reads, “utilizzare questo lavabo esclusivamente per il lavaggio delle mani.” Translation? “Use this sink exclusively for the washing of hands.”
Some diners might catch the meaning, since many are Italian Staten-Islanders. Twenty percent of Staten Island’s population is foreign born, and 31 percent of Staten Islanders claimed Italian ancestry in 2009, according the Center for an Urban Future. The locals are joined by customers visiting Enoteca Maria from the other boroughs and beyond.
Wilma Dull, who visits four to six times each year, came from Manhattan to catch up with a good friend from Brooklyn. “I have a special fondness for this place. And for Jody. Only in New York would you find a place like this.”
Scaravella says he sees many international customers, as well. He remembers one German couple in particular.
“They were sitting right over at that table over there. Then they realized it we only accepted cash and panicked. I told them not to get whatever they would like without worrying and to just send me the money in the mail when they returned to Germany after their trip,” said Scaravella. “Sure enough, I get a card in the mail about a month later. Then, about a year later, four tall blonde-haired, blue eyed women walked in…”
Dan Marmor and Allison Snoeck, made the trip from Brooklyn to Enoteca Maria for their first date. They were neither regulars nor Italian cuisine enthusiasts.
“Honestly, we just came in because we heard that it was great and one of my friends read about it in the Times,” said Snoeck, a waitress in her mid-twenties.
So they planned a day of activities centered on Staten Island. Before the Italian dinner, they went to museums, explored, and even found a small wrinkled message inside a squished and weathered Gatorade bottle.
“We’ll definitely be coming back to this place,” said Marmor, tossing the bottle off the balcony of the 11pm ferry on their return.

Your Comments