Who needs a Michelin star when Mamma is in the kitchen!
One homesick Italian boy missed home cooking so much he flew over a bunch of mothers to help launch London’s quirkiest – and suddenly hottest – restaurant
hunt for mammas — not trained chefs — to cook in a restaurant in London. If they’d come for at least three months, he’d pay their travel, a transport allowance while here and even put them up in a Mammas’ House in London.
He was inundated. ‘It went totally out of control. I started with Sicily, but I had messages from all over Italy — many of them put forward by their children!’
One was the mamma of one of his best friends from school — ‘ her cooking was amazing, we all wanted to go to his house’ — so, despite speaking only Italian, she was straight in.
One was a teacher. Another had worked for the council. Some had barely travelled; the Underground proved quite a shock.
Mamma Marilena, from Emilia-Romagna — the richly gastronomic region in the north of Italy — was 60 years old and had never left the country, or spent any time apart from her husband since their wedding. But when she saw an advert in a local newspaper, she said: ‘I want to go!’
She came with her son — he worked on the bar — and stayed for four months.
‘She loved it. She was so happy. We all cried when she left,’ says Mamma Sara.
After a telephone interview, all the mammas were then invited to London — armed with signature recipes from their regions, passed down through generations, which they would have to cook during the interview process.
Mamma Maria comes from Bari and likes nothing more than stuffing customers with panzerotti (savoury turnovers), orecchiette alle cime di rapa (pasta ‘ears’ with Italian broccoli) and handmade bigne (tiny, deep-fried pastries).
And Mamma Fabiana’s recipes — along with her tiramisu — include ragu marchigaiano (chicken, pork and beef slowcooked in tomato sauce) and rabbit in tomato sauce. They all came from her mother-in-law.
‘I divorced my husband ten years ago, but I took the recipes! They were the best things I got from that marriage!’ she laughs. None of them failed the cooking test. What else would you expect? Good food belongs to the Italians. It’s part of their DNA.
‘It’s not just about eating. It’s about preparing. Being together. It holds a family together. It’s part of us. When you smell the tomato pan, you have memories of summer-time with your family,’ says Mamma Sara.
And when you think of all those famous Italian chefs, forever banging on about their mammas, it seems that Giuseppe might be on to something.
Giorgio Locatelli may be festooned in Michelin stars, but he learnt how to cook from his mother and grandmother.
And Gennaro Contaldo loves to eulogise about his mother’s slowcooked ragu and bread — which she baked on Thursdays because, she said, that was ‘the day I was born’ — and the three- course lunches that, for years, she delivered to him by train.
But back to the very noisy kitchen of La Mia Mamma, where the mammas may be miles from home but are lacking in neither confidence nor chat, particularly when supervising the cooking of their signature dishes. ‘They are all very, very bossy. Very firm. They will not change a thing!’ says Giuseppe.
Which means there’s a lot of shouting. A lot of ‘No, no, no! You don’t do it like this. Why you want to do it like that? My mamma did it just like this!’
Not only is La Mia Mamma one of the liveliest and most brilliantly chaotic restaurants around, the food’s fantastic — and good value. A two-course menu that kicks off with an Aperol Spritz, followed by a selection of starters to share and a pasta course will set you back £35 per person.
Add a main, and it’s £45. I recommend the pistachio pesto with cavatelli pasta. And if, by chance, you are on the hunt for an unattached Italian man, this could be your lucky place. But don’t forget you’ll always come second to his beloved mamma.
‘They are all very bossy, they will not change a thing in the recipes’