MIX HAPPINESS, FOOD, FAMILY
Italian cooking powerhouse still thriving in a male-dominated culinary world
Some of the culinary world’s biggest names — with egos to match — were gathered in a beachside ballroom to launch the annual Cayman Cookout festival. Anthony Bourdain. Daniel Boulud. Eric Ripert. Jose Andrés. Rick Bayless. Martin Picard. All men, except for one woman, Lidia Bastianich.
There was plenty of macho banter, and a decided whiff of testosterone in the air. Then, with a single quip, tiny, soft-spoken Bastianich quietly stole the show.
She laughs when she remembers the event. After all, being the lone woman in a room full of male chefs is nothing new for her.
“When I started as a young chef, I was Italian and I was a woman, and everyone else in New York was French and a man,” she recalls. But she conquered them all with her passion, her determination and her skill in the kitchen, where it really matters. “We’d go to all the events, but afterward they’d come back and eat my food.”
Today Bastianich is a chef, TV star, author, entrepreneur, mother and grandmother. She is also an inspiration for women chefs, living proof that they cannot only balance family and career, but actually thrive in what is still the male-dominated world of professional kitchens.
That’s why she’s here in Vancouver this week. She is the guest of honour at “Una Bella Notte con Lidia,” the Sept. 23 fundraising gala for the B.C. Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, an organization supporting women in careers related to food, wine and hospitality.
“The Dames is an organization that I’ve been involved with for 25 years,” Bastianich says. “It’s an elegant organization with a wonderful roster of members from all walks. And it supports a great cause — education.”
She believes in supporting women in part because it was another woman who gave her the confidence to step out of the kitchen and conquer the culinary world.
“Julia Child came to my house and wanted a lesson in making risotto,” she says.
Her 1993 appearance on the PBS TV show Julia Child: Cooking with Master Chefs propelled Bastianich to expand her restaurant empire, launch her own award-winning TV shows, cook for the Pope and become a co-owner in Eataly, the giant Italian marketplace.
It’s only fitting, then, that the title of her essential new book, Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine, echoes Child’s famous one published 55 years ago. “I hope it remains a reference in many libraries,” she says.
She makes it all look easy. But it wasn’t.
“Our industry is unforgiving,” she says, noting that the challenge is the “dual mission” of being wives and mothers while carving out a demanding career. “Women really have to get themselves organized and have a support system around them.”
She counts herself lucky to have had her mother help care for her own two children, Joe and Tanya.
Even so, she recalls how hard the early years were, when she’d leave them to go to work.
“I felt guilty. I had the children, and I thought I should be home with the children,” she says.
But she realized that the most important thing for any child was for them to have happy parents.
“You have a passion, you are successful, you are happy,” she says.
For Bastianich, happiness, food and family have always been connected
As a little girl in postwar Istria (once part of Italy, now part of Croatia), she helped her grandparents produce food from their fruit and vegetable gardens, from their chickens, goats, olives trees and grapevines.
After Bastianich came to America in 1958, when she was 12, she always missed the food her nonna made, and grew up to become a champion of simple foods, made by hand from good ingredients, the way her nonna cooked.
“Food remained my connection to my grandmother,” she says.
“As a chef, I feel that it is my duty to make the most of what the Earth gives us.”
It all comes back to family, and in her world, family is inextricably connected with food and career. Her mother, who is 96, is still a force in her life and her children work with her on myriad projects; indeed, Tanya co-wrote the new book.
“I represent the family, the Italian culture. I am an advocate of pure food,” she says and adds, encouragingly, “You should just feel comfortable with food and your own culinary culture, whatever your mother and grandmother know.”
LIDIA IN VANCOUVER
Lidia Bastianich will be the guest of honour at “Una Bella Notte con Lidia,” the annual fundraising gala for Les Dames d’Escoffier’s B.C. chapter, Sept. 23 at the Four Seasons Hotel. Tickets are $325 per person, available at lesdames. ca/gala. Money raised goes toward Les Dames’ scholarship programs supporting women in the culinary fields.
On Sept. 22, Gourmet Warehouse will host a book-signing event with Bastianich. Tickets are $79 and include a copy of Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine, gourmetwarehouse.ca.