You can be surrounded by the best restaurants in the world and still miss your mum’s cooking. Case in point, Peppe Corsaro, who moved from Sicily to London at 17 and, within days, began to crave his mamma’s potato gateau and slow-cooked ragu. “London was full of Italian restaurants but mainly you could find carbonara,” he says. “Mainstream dishes. I was out for dinner and my friend said ‘Peppe, why don’t you bring your mamma to cook? You’re always complaining.’ I thought, ‘one day I will’. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. She should have her own restaurant. So, I rang and asked, ‘Would you consider moving to London?’ She said, ‘Peppe, I’ll come tomorrow. Even today.’ She was googling flights while we were still on the phone.”
Peppe quickly realised that perhaps he shouldn’t let his 60-year-old mother work in a new restaurant seven days a week. So, in 2018, he put out a Facebook call for additional mammas [mothers], nonnas [grandmothers], and zias [aunts] who’d like to come to London to cook. He was inundated with applications. What began as a crumb of an over-dinner idea rapidly grew into La Mia Mamma: three London restaurants, with a fourth opening this month, where all the food – pappa al pomodoro from Tuscany, cacio e pepe from Lazio, pacchero al cinque pomodori from Puglia – is made by Italian mothers from each region. “We flew them over, we found them a house,” Peppe says. “It’s amazing.”
A decade earlier and the other side of the Atlantic on Staten Island, New York, the same seed had been sown in Joe Scaravella’s mind. The Brooklyn-raised entrepreneur had lost both his mother and grandmother and missed the ritual of sitting down for a family meal. So he opened Enoteca Maria, a restaurant where all the chefs are Italian grandmothers. Eighteen years later, the eatery is still thriving and its origin story – from its logistical struggles to the spats between the chefs – is the basis for the new Netflix film Nonnas, starring Vince Vaughn. “It was like reading my story,” says Peppe, who only became aware of Joe last week when a friend shared the film’s synopsis.
Peppe and Joe may have never encountered one another, but their shared idea is symptomatic of an age-old Mediterranean tradition: “If you go to Greece, Italy, it’s all the women: mammas, nonnas, zias in the kitchen [while] the whole family manages the restaurant. We haven’t really made something new,” he says. “We’ve just put the nonnas together. We haven’t reinvented the wheel.” Yet in the UK, where just 17 per cent of professional chefs are women, Peppe’s army of mammas and nonnas is revolutionary.
Upon walking into La Mia Mamma, I’m bundled into a hug by Mamma Annamaria, 59, who chastises me for not speaking Italian – then merrily shares the recipe for her bruschetta. “I love it, it’s a new life,” she beams, when I ask about her time cheffing in the Notting Hill branch of the restaurant. I am then bombarded with food. She brings over “the best” suppli [fried rice balls from Rome], “the best” fried polenta with pecorino and “the best” ragu for me to try. “It’s all ‘the best,’” jokes Peppe as he mimics her. “I made it,” Annamaria retorts. “So why not?!”
Annamaria is joined in the kitchen by Mamma Alessandra, 54, who worked as a pasta chef in Italy until an undisclosed “bad period” in her life prompted her to follow her son to London and start a new chapter. Alessandra’s mother was English but never taught her the country’s language or traditions, so following her death two years ago she decided to discover them for herself – she found her job at La Mia Mamma along the way. “Cooking is my passion,” she says. “In the restaurant, we are like a big family.”
The last member of their trio, Mamma Ida, 72, from Abruzzo, beams from behind the counter as she artfully shapes semolina dough into cavatelli pasta shells. “I worked for 50 years in a hospital, preparing people for surgery,” she says. “Then I was a volunteer for the Red Cross in the ambulance. I saw [Peppe’s] Facebook group and after one week, I said ‘okay!’ I sent the email, after one hour they wrote me back. I came, just me. Taught my 35-year-old son – who doesn’t know how to do nothing – how to use the dishwasher and I left,” she laughs. “It was my dream. The Beatles. London.”
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La Mia Mamma has faced its fair share of challenges. When Brexit arrived, the length of time each mamma could even stay in the country was suddenly up in the air – an issue they’re still navigating on a case-by-case basis. They survived the pandemic, which saw more than 10 per cent of the UK’s hospitality businesses permanently close, through a combination of rent breaks, home deliveries and pop-ups, and emerged on the other side of the global disaster with three restaurants – one more than they had when 2020 started. “In a restaurant, passion is everything,” says Peppe of his success. “If you open a restaurant because you want a Michelin star, amazing. But it’s very different work than cooking because you want to make people happy and enjoy it. It’s like a factory.”
As Annamaria claims, their food is the best. These women are masters of the dishes of their own regions – and far beyond. The cacio e pepe is creamy and comforting, the cinque pomodori [five tomato pasta] palpably fresh. Meanwhile, the tiramisu and semifreddo are so delicious that I spoon up both despite my jeans straining under the pressure. “This is what happens,” says Peppe of the lifelong blessing and curse that mums will always want you to eat more food. “I had to start telling them I had allergies,” he confesses.
Creating La Mia Mamma with the woman who raised him allowed Peppe to see his mother in a new light, from the cooking she did in the home to the effort she put into feeding him and his three siblings. And it’s a beacon that could still do with being shone on the domestic labour of many mothers toiling thanklessly in homes today. Who knows, a British restaurant where all the roast dinners are made by mums could get us some way there.
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“It was like getting to know my mother again,” Peppe says of his evolution. “I really re-appreciated all of the work.” But did he expect their success? “No! I thought we weren’t going to make it,” he admits. “We didn’t know what we were doing but we’d already made the commitment. The operation was so complicated. So unusual. It was the most beautiful journey of my life.”
Peppe’s mother died two months ago, aged 70 – but he still feels her here when he’s with the restaurant’s mammas. “Every time they’d hug me, I’d cry,” he says, pausing to regain composure. “It unlocks memories. Brings you back to your childhood. Even just through a hug or the smell of their hair. It’s crazy. You might think I’m overexaggerating,” he adds. “But the number of customers who’ve been crying… It’s not just about the food. That’s one part of it, but to me, the most important thing is the emotional connection.”
‘Nonnas’ is streaming on Netflix
