Lidia Giuliana Matticchio Bastianich (born February 21, 1947) is an Italian-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 Kingdom of Italy, Matticchio Bastianich's family emigrated to the United States when she was 7 months 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.

Early life

Lidia Giuliana Matticchio Bastianich was born to an Istrian Italian family, on February 21, 1947, in Pola, Istria, just before the city was assigned to Yugoslavia in September 1947 (and which is now part of Istria County, Croatia). Istria was part of the Kingdom of Italy, but it became part of Yugoslavia at the end of World War II, as confirmed by the Treaty of Paris (1947) and Treaty of Osimo (1975). She is the daughter of Erminia (1921–2021) and Vittorio Matticchio (1911–1980). Until 1956, she lived with her family in Yugoslavia, during which time the family's name was Croaticized from Matticchio to Motika. Bastianich, like many other Istrian Italians, fled to Trieste, Italy, during the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, with her brother Franco and her mother on the pretense of visiting their sick aunt Nina, who was a personal chef. 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. Although she and her family are nationally Italian, a DNA test indicated that her family is largely of Eastern European descent, due to the multiethnicity of Istria. Concerning her identity, Lidia has stated: "I feel very Italian, but I do have some Slavic in me, and I relate to that as well; so that forms the mixture that is Lidia."

Career

From Queens to Manhattan (1971–1981)

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, after which the couple began adding traditional Istrian dishes to their menu. 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 liquidating nearly every asset they had to cover $750,000 worth of renovations, Felidia finally opened to near-universal acclaim from their loyal following of food critics, including The New York Times, which gave Felidia three stars. One of Felidia's chefs was not Italian. He was Puerto-Rico-born David Torres, known at the restaurant as Davide'. He died of throat cancer in 1996.

Expansion

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 50000 sqft 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.

Television (1998–present)

In 1998, Public Television offered Bastianich her own television series; the show became Lidia's Italian Table. It established her as a fixture in the network's line-up of cooking shows. Since then she has hosted additional public television series, including Lidia's Family Table, Lidia's Italy, Lidia's Italy in America, and Lidia's Kitchen. She also hosts a series of hour-long Public Television specials called Lidia Celebrates America, which premiered in 2011 with Lidia Celebrates America: Holiday Tables & Traditions. In the series, Bastianich celebrates the diversity of cultures across the United States and explores the American immigrant experience. The following special, Lidia Celebrates America: Weddings – Something Borrowed, Something New, aired in 2012; Lidia Celebrates America: Freedom & Independence in 2013; Lidia Celebrates America: Life's Milestones in 2013; Lidia Celebrates America: Holiday Tables and Traditions in 2015; Lidia Celebrates America: Holiday for Heroes in 2016; Lidia Celebrates America: Homegrown Heroes in 2017; Lidia Celebrates America: A Heartland Holiday Feast in 2018; Lidia Celebrates America: The Return of the Artisans in 2019; Lidia Celebrates America: Eating in With Lidia in 2020; Lidia Celebrates America: A Salute to First Responders in 2020; Lidia Celebrates America: Overcoming the Odds in 2021 and Lidia Celebrates America: Flavors that Define Us in 2023. Bastianich ends each episode of her show with an invitation to join her and her family for a meal, Tutti a tavola a mangiare! (Italian for "Everyone to the table to eat"). For the 2010 holiday season, her new television production company, Tavola Productions, created an animated holiday children's special for Public Television "Lidia's Christmas Kitchen: Nonna Tell Me a Story" to go along with the book by the same title that was written by Bastianich. In 2013, Bastianich returned to Public Television with Lidia's Kitchen, a 26-part series produced by Tavola Productions. The tenth season premiered in October 2022. Lidia's Kitchen Season 11 launches in October 2023. Among Bastianich's television show appearances, she participated as a celebrity judge on MasterChef USA, an adaptation of the BBC MasterChef (UK TV series) in 2000. Her son, Joseph Bastianich, would later go on to star as a celebrity judge on the Gordon Ramsay version of MasterChef. Bastianich has also appeared on the Italian television show Junior MasterChef Italia in 2014 and 2015 for Season 1 and Season 2. In 2016 and 2017, she was a judge for the Italian television show, La Prova del Cuoco. In 2020, alongside son Joe Bastianich and Antonino Cannavacciuolo, she was a judge on the cooking competition show on Sky, Family Food Fight. In 2021, Bastianich co-starred along with Italian chef Anna Moroni in Senti che fame! Nonna pensaci tu which aired on Discovery+ in Italy.

Books (1990–present)

Bastianich has authored several cookbooks to accompany her television series:

Awards and honors

Other awards and honors

Personal life

At her sweet sixteen birthday party, she was introduced to her future husband, Felice "Felix" Bastianich, a fellow Istrian Italian immigrant and restaurant worker from Labin, on the eastern coast of Istria, Croatia. The couple married in 1966 and Lidia gave birth to their son, Joe, in 1968. Their second child, Tanya, was born in 1972. After many disagreements about the direction their entrepreneurial and personal lives had taken (most notably, the pace of the expansion and character of their business), Lidia and Felice divorced in 1998. Bastianich continued expanding her business while Felice transferred his shares in the business to their two children. He died on December 12, 2010. Bastianich lives in Douglaston, Queens; she lived with her mother, Erminia Motika, until her death in February 2021. Bastianich's own kitchen has served as the stage set for four of her television series, and the garden that Erminia maintained provided many of the ingredients featured in the shows. Erminia, who answered to "grandma", frequently served as a sous-chef in various episodes of the television series. Joe Bastianich occasionally appears in his mother's series to offer wine expertise. He, his wife Deanna, and their three children live in New York City. Tanya Bastianich Manuali, with her husband Corrado Manuali, lives in Arizona. Tanya is integrally involved in the production of Lidia's public television series as an owner and Executive Producer of Tavola Productions and is active daily in the family restaurant business. In an interview by American Public Television, Bastianich spoke of how important it is for her to pass on family traditions: Food for me was a connecting link to my grandmother, to my childhood, to my past. And what I found out is that for everybody, food is a connector to their roots, to their past in different ways. It gives you security; it gives you a profile of who you are, where you come from. In 2011, Bastianich was accused of keeping an indentured servant. The subsequent lawsuit was dismissed in 2012 by a lower court that held that the plaintiff was not a slave because she received health insurance, room and board and other perks in lieu of getting paid.

Philanthropy

Lidia Bastianich is an active member of society who participates in community service activities and special events on behalf of several foundations. She is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and a founding member of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, two non-profit organizations of women leaders in the food and hospitality industries. She is also a champion for the United Nations Association of the United States of America's Adopt-A-Future program, in support of refugee education. Bastianich was on the Board of the Arrupe College, a higher education program founded by the Loyola University of Chicago for underprivileged students, and regularly hosts Fundraisers for the program at Eataly in Chicago. BoysGrow, a local non-profit vocational training program, is another organization that she works with by hosting annual Benefit Dinners since 2013 at her restaurant Lidia's in Kansas City. In addition, she has helped raise funds for United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) – now known as UN Women – as co-chair of charity events and Benefit Dinners throughout her career. She is also involved with Jesuit Refugee Service, The Child Center of NY and hosts at classes at August Martin High School in Queens, New York. Bastianich is also actively involved with various non-profit organizations that are focused on promoting and celebrating Italian and Italian-American culture and heritage. She is part of the National Organization of Italian American Women's Distinguished Board, a national organization for women of Italian ancestry that focuses on preserving Italian heritage, language and culture. In 2010, the Bastianich family was honored by NOIAW for their outstanding contributions to Italian culture in America. She supports the Columbus Citizens Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on promoting and celebrating Italian-American heritage. She was the Grand Marshal of the Columbus Day Parade in New York City in 2007, and an honorary guest at the 2016 Columbus Celebration Kickoff Event at Eataly Downtown in New York City. Moreover, Bastianich has worked with the Italian American Committee on Education (IACE), a New York-based non-profit organization that promotes the study of Italian language and culture, by visiting elementary schools and speaking to students as a guest speaker, such as in 2011 in Harlem and in 2014 in the Bronx. In 2014, Bastianich led the committee that determined the winners of a contest initiative launched by Eataly and IACE for students.