Renee Restivo

a cooking instructor and photographer with a passion for italian regional food

For the past eight years, I have worked in Italy’s cooking schools, vineyards and Palermo’s villas of the era of Il Gattopardo. My favorite place is the heirloom vineyard of my great-grandfather Calogero, who left Sicily for New York City in 1907. My family’s farm is located minutes away from the Valley of the Temples near Agrigento.

My quest to unravel the mysteries of lesser-known Sicily and its food has driven me to explore almost every inch of the island. I decided to move there at a time when magazines were filled with images of women in black veils and the mafia instead of Etna’s wine. My blissful experimental journey, collecting “real life” recipes and stories about opera-singing fish sellers, shepherds on vespas and thousand-year-old olive trees led to a destiny I never imagined: a life creating Sicilian cooking programs and “tours” (which are really more like improvisational culinary experiences) where students learn about old traditions of the contadino, artisan food producers and fading cultural traditions in Sicily. My mission is to raise awareness about problems Sicily faces due to rapid development and mass tourism.

When I first moved to Italy, it was for a job I was offered as a cooking instructor at the 500-year-old farm Campo Romano, in the Tuscan province of Lucca, located in the middle of 10,000 olive trees. Forty chefs from New York’s top culinary schools interviewed for the unpaid position in the olive groves, and I only had experience as a chef and recipe tester for a magazine, but a Lasagna Bolognese I made for the hiring committee got me the job. It must have been the sauce. The late Anne Bianchi, a well known food writer who shared many of her secrets with Frances Mayes, founded the school.

At Bianchi’s cooking school, the owner called me pepperoncino or terremoto, hot pepper or little earthquake, to the Tuscans, words associated with my gutsy devotion to la cucina Siciliana, despite the fact I was working at a Tuscan cooking school. (Please see my amazon page for more information on Anne Bianchi’s excellent cookbooks). In New York, I appeared at The James Beard Foundation with the school. Tuscans scolded me for choosing the ingredients from that “that rock in the middle of the sea,” instead of those from their own region. Eventually, I left my dream life in the olive groves at Campo, to work for the wine producer Tasca D’Almerita in Sicily while researching a book on rare Sicilian fruits for the owner.

During a visit to the states in 2005, a top NY publicist heard about me and offered me the rare opportunity cook on TV with the English translation of Il Cucchiaio d’Argento, The Silver Spoon, which has sold more than 1⁄2 million copies. The original Il Cucchiaio d’Argento was first published in Italy in 1950; that original Italian version is one of my favorites.

I have an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Narrative Non-Fiction) from The New School. I am now finishing my own cookbook, I blog about Sicily, and am the founder of the NYC Sicilian Food & Wine Club (which I lead when I am in the states) -- a dinner club with the mission of eating authentic Sicilian food as often as possible.

I am Polish-Sicilian American and lived in Poland for one year in 1997. I loved it so much there that I could have stayed forever. I still dream of the wild mushrooms there, and plan to return someday. When I am back in the US, I enjoy making traditional family recipes with my Polish grandmother who is 92 and an amazing cook.