- 13/06/2025
When we set out to record this episode of Scran we wanted to investigate the impact of Italian food and the businesses associated with it in Scotland and what we ended up making was an episode about 'generations of strong women'. Rosalind's first guest, Giovanna Eusebi, who runs Eusebis Deli in Glasgow, used those exact words to describe her family and business.
From her fascination with capers to the touching memories she's helped create around the table, Giovanna shares her passion for Italian food and culture and the story of how her business has been so successful.
From Glasgow to Edinburgh and the home and kitchen of Sabrina Damiani. Rosalind was treated to a beautiful afternoon tea prepared by Sabrina when they met. Rosalind hears all about her journey from Sicily to Edinburgh via Oxford, and a career in academia, to now running her own private dining and catering business, Damiani Fine Dining.
This episode is like a sonic hug so grab a glass of your favourite Italian tipple and settle in for a listen full of tradition, family, love and most importantly...food.
From her fascination with capers to the touching memories she's helped create around the table, Giovanna shares her passion for Italian food and culture and the story of how her business has been so successful.
From Glasgow to Edinburgh and the home and kitchen of Sabrina Damiani. Rosalind was treated to a beautiful afternoon tea prepared by Sabrina when they met. Rosalind hears all about her journey from Sicily to Edinburgh via Oxford, and a career in academia, to now running her own private dining and catering business, Damiani Fine Dining.
This episode is like a sonic hug so grab a glass of your favourite Italian tipple and settle in for a listen full of tradition, family, love and most importantly...food.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Scran, the podcast passionate about the Scottish food and drink scene.
00:09I'm your host, Roslyn Derskin, and on this episode we chat to two Italian women about
00:14their businesses in Scotland.
00:19When we set out to record this episode of Scran, we wanted to investigate the impact
00:23of Italian food and the businesses associated with it in Scotland, and what we've ended
00:27up making was an episode about generations of strong women.
00:31My first guest, Giovanna Eusebi, who runs Eusebi's Deli in Glasgow, used those exact words to
00:36describe her family and business.
00:39From her fascination with capers to the touching memories she's helped create around the table,
00:44Giovanna shares her passion for Italian food and culture, and the story of how her business
00:48has been so successful.
00:52I'm a child of immigrants.
00:53My mother is Italian.
00:54My father sadly passed away 20 years ago, but he was born in Glasgow, a real Glasgow
00:59man.
01:00His parents were both Italian as well, so the DNA's there.
01:04It's in the walls.
01:06It's in the tables.
01:07It's everything that you can see.
01:08So, yeah.
01:08From Glasgow to Edinburgh, and the home and kitchen of Sabrina Damiani, I was treated to
01:16the most beautiful and sumptuous afternoon tea I've experienced on this podcast, when
01:21I met with Sabrina to hear all about her journey from Sicily to Edinburgh via Oxford, and a career
01:26in academia to now running her own private dining and catering business, Damiani Fine Dining.
01:30She always says that she was cultivating flowers during the winter, so was for us that were
01:40me and my brother, was always spring.
01:45This episode is like a sonic hug, so grab a glass of your favourite Italian tipple and
01:49settle in for a listen full of tradition, family, love, and most importantly, food.
01:55I'm here at Eusebius Deli in West End of Glasgow with owner Giovanna, and we're downstairs in
02:06the lovely restaurant, having just been upstairs in the deli and getting a coffee and pastry
02:10for breakfast.
02:11Hello Giovanna, how are you?
02:12Hi Rose, how are you?
02:13Nice to see you.
02:14Yeah, you too.
02:14Thanks for coming back.
02:15I know you were on a long time ago in one of our first episodes, so nice to see you again.
02:20Yes, it's really, really nice to be asked.
02:23So, we are here in your lovely restaurant, and you guys have been part of the food and
02:27drink scene in Glasgow for a really long time, but for anyone that doesn't know, could you
02:31just give us a sort of potted history of how your family came to be in Glasgow?
02:35We'll be here to Christmas, but I'll make this short and sweet.
02:38My brother and I have been at this location for 10 years, but initially we were in the
02:42east end of Glasgow, so I had a small deli and took over my mum and dad about 20 years
02:48ago, 25 years ago, trying to remember now.
02:50And it was lovely.
02:52It was a real deal.
02:53It was real food made by real people.
02:56There was my mum, my dad, myself, an old Italian auntie, another old Italian lady who
03:01was 100 years of age, and some beautiful people who worked with us along the way.
03:05So yeah, and I'm a child of immigrants.
03:07My mother is Italian.
03:09My father sadly passed away 20 years ago, but he was born in Glasgow, real Glasgow man.
03:13But his parents were both Italian as well, so the DNA is there.
03:19It's in the walls.
03:20It's in the tables.
03:21It's everything that you can see.
03:22So yeah.
03:23Going right back to that kind of start, was it obviously very different for people's
03:27appetites of food?
03:29Because obviously we're in Italian deli, still are now, but what we see up the stairs
03:33we're quite used to, you know, the salads, the pastas, the olive oils, the things.
03:38What was it like way back in the start when maybe people weren't so used to that type
03:42of your cuisine?
03:43I should maybe take you back to my parents.
03:47Shedleston Road, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, very difficult to buy olive oil.
03:54Peppers were really exotic.
03:56Mushrooms were very exotic.
03:58This is before the stampede of supermarkets.
04:03When they hit our resale landscape, people shopped locally.
04:07So much more back then.
04:09So that project was really difficult to get.
04:11And I think that's why when immigrants come over, they tend to navigate to areas, try
04:18and get their food.
04:19I mean, at that time you could buy olive oil on a chemist.
04:22It was seen as medicinal in Scotland and that was in the 70s.
04:26So think how far we've come since then.
04:28But the wee shop in Shedleston, my parents' ethos was really simple.
04:32It was just about community, good food, made from scratch every day, lovely produce, salamis,
04:39meats, meats, cheeses.
04:40I mean, you opened that door and you could be in a hilltop in Rome.
04:44You know, it was so devoid.
04:46It was signage between abukis and abusers.
04:49And it just felt so comforting, so different.
04:51And people always said that.
04:52It was like a wee food hug when you went in there.
04:54And there was more people in the kitchen with my dad.
04:57He'd have the wee mocha pot on, making him a wee coffee or putting a wee sly grappa in it.
05:01So there was a real sense of your best home in that wee shop.
05:04How did it evolve from that with you and your brother to here in the West End?
05:09So I took over the shop 20 years ago and just with a wee dream, just to make the food
05:14of my grandmother, my nonna Maria, who is my mum's mum in Italy.
05:18I was very lucky as a child.
05:19I spent so much time with them in the south of Italy.
05:22They had a very simple life.
05:24It stayed within my heart till this day.
05:26Memories of that table.
05:28It was my best table.
05:29They grew everything biodynamically.
05:31They were the original no food waste movement, which was Cucina Povera, because they didn't
05:37have very much, but they were very sacrilegious about food.
05:41They grew all their own food.
05:42They worked with the seasons.
05:44And all of that stayed within me.
05:45I can pinpoint times of year.
05:47So right now, it would be, we're in spring.
05:51So it would be picking wild asparagus with my grandfather, taking it back to my grandmother
05:55with a spindly lute.
05:56And she would be making a beautiful frittata with it.
05:59I would pick snails on my grandmother when it rained.
06:03And we would pick beans and dry them out in big sheets on the veranda.
06:07So every season has huge memories.
06:09Summertime now coming up with my cousins, picking all the tomatoes in the land, washing them
06:14outside, bottling them, putting away like 400 bottles of passata.
06:20So all of that is, she's very much here.
06:24She's very much part of this story.
06:25And I guess Eusebius really is about generations of strong women.
06:30You know, so that, I think, I hope people, that comes through when you come here.
06:34You feel that.
06:35And do you feel now that people are more aware and appreciate those sort of seasonal dishes
06:40as well?
06:41I think we're coming back to it.
06:43You know, I think there was a whole revolution of the big supermarkets coming in, fast food.
06:49It's still there in the landscape.
06:51But I can see a bit of a turn.
06:52I can see small farmers markets evolving.
06:56People in lockdown may be thinking about food a bit more because it became a real focus
07:00for them at that point.
07:02You know, what were you going to eat?
07:03That was really, you know, that, I mean, that's the first thing my mother says to me every
07:06morning.
07:06What were you having for dinner?
07:07And we're just, we're just having coffee for breakfast.
07:09So everybody started really focusing in on locality.
07:14We had a fish van that came to our streets.
07:16I had never seen the fish van for the 20 years that I lived there because I was always working.
07:21So then there was queues going up to his fish van and it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
07:25We would be queued out the door in here because we have a bakery, an off-site bakery, and we
07:30have six of a team in there who are incredible who work from 5am in the morning to 1 in the
07:34afternoon.
07:35People don't see that side of us.
07:36At the point where we couldn't serve food in the restaurant, all we could do was serve
07:40coffee and cake and there were queues down the street.
07:43So I think definitely that flipped things a wee bit and that buying locally, shopping
07:48locally, buying daily or every second day, I can see a bit of a change in that.
07:55And to go back to the Italian side of things, what do you think it is about Italian restaurants
08:01or delis in Scotland, it's just an everlasting, everyone loves it, everyone loves pizza or
08:05pasta.
08:06What do you think it is that is that, like you say, that sort of food hug that's transcended
08:10the generation?
08:11I really don't know.
08:11I don't know what the secret sauce is to that.
08:14I know it's the love story that keeps going, doesn't it?
08:16Glasgow, Scotland, just, you know, it's a big Scottish-Italian love story there.
08:21In fact, I take it back to my own family.
08:23My great-grandmother came here when she was 16, I think, 16 years of age, working in
08:28a cafe.
08:29Her husband had a barber's in Shedleston Road, just a young girl.
08:33My own grandmother, Giovanna, who was my dad's mum, they had a cafe in Partic and they made
08:38ice cream.
08:39And at the start of the war, my grandfather fought for the Scottish Southerland Highland
08:43Ayers, I think is the name of the regiment, and she was left with my dad in her arms running
08:48this cafe.
08:48I mean, I think of all those incredible women who, you know, during the war, you know, working,
08:54the men all went away.
08:55And I actually remember somebody saying to me that all the women actually got to make
08:59what they wanted to make.
09:01You know, they got to run the show.
09:02It wasn't the men.
09:04You know, so all these women were running all these cafes in Glasgow while all their men
09:08were away.
09:09So I don't know what the secret sauce is.
09:12You know, I think Glaswegians just love a bit of good chat.
09:15They love sweet stuff.
09:16So ice cream and all of that at the time in the 50s and the 60s, fish and chips, you
09:21know, all of those things that the Italians were very entrepreneurial because they had
09:25to, like I said, at the very beginning, we couldn't really get our ingredients when
09:28they came here.
09:29So they were thinking on their feet, you know, how do we make a living?
09:32How do we?
09:32But I also think they were just, they became such a big part of the community, such a
09:37big part of, I'll say, Glasgow story, you know, because we're a huge part of that.
09:41And we owe a huge debt to Glasgow and the warmth of the people here.
09:44I think there's so much similarity between the Scots and Italians.
09:47Yeah.
09:47And it's sort of transcended over to Italy as well.
09:50There's like that town that's like a mini Scotland.
09:52In Barga.
09:52Yeah.
09:52I've never been actually, but I've heard so much about it.
09:55They have a fish and chip festival every year.
09:58And everybody, if you just go there, I think everybody speaks Glaswegian or, you know,
10:02with a slang sort of accent.
10:04So yeah, we're sort of loved throughout the world.
10:06How do you sort of maintain your ties with Italy?
10:08Do you go there and buying trips for like, you know, stocking stuff here?
10:12Yeah.
10:12I mean, I go as often as I can.
10:15I adore the Italian food landscape.
10:17It is so different.
10:18And that was one thing that was at the top of the page when we started in here.
10:21I wanted to show people the differentiation of Italian food from north to south.
10:27And the islands, it's so different.
10:29In the north, you've got areas like Piemonte.
10:32You've got a climate that's very much like Scotland.
10:34You eat a lot of game.
10:36Big stinky cheeses like Gorgonzola.
10:38And then you go all the way to the bottom to Puglia.
10:40And you've got this African heat.
10:42And you can taste the sunshine and the tomatoes.
10:44So I wanted to kind of bring that through the menus and weave it through.
10:48I wanted to show people the diversity of Italian food.
10:50Take them out of their comfort zone of what they think Italian food is.
10:53But with a Scottish twist on it, obviously, you know, locality and all of that is so important.
10:58Do I go a lot?
10:59Yes, I do.
10:59I love it.
11:00I got some olive oil last year.
11:02And I love the fact of just going to somebody and seeing the producer and looking him in the whites of the eyes, shaking their hand.
11:11And it's really exciting.
11:12I still get such a buzz out of that.
11:14Last year, I went to the Aeolian Islands in Sicily.
11:18I went to an island called Lippari.
11:19And I went to see capers.
11:21I've got a fascination with capers.
11:23I went to visit a beautiful place where they pick capers.
11:26There's like a hundred varieties of capers.
11:28Who knew?
11:29All of the things, they were actually making candy capers and putting them on ricotta ice cream, caper powder.
11:36It's just quite incredible.
11:38I bought our plates for the restaurant in Puglia from a beautiful ceramicist called Nicolo Fasano.
11:45And he painted a plate while I was sitting there, a caricature of me.
11:49And then from there, I visited the pottery and everything.
11:52So I love that.
11:54I love just holding things in my hand.
11:57I'm not an internet girl.
11:58I don't like buying things off the web.
12:01If I can't see it first, if I can't talk to you, if I can't shake your hand, if I can't taste it, which is the most important thing, I'm not putting it on the plate in the restaurant.
12:09When it comes to your menus and seasonality, do you see trends come and go or are people up for just the same things?
12:15Do you know what?
12:16I'm not really into trends.
12:17You know, that doesn't dictate who we are here.
12:20I have an incredible team here of chefs who've been in a journey with me.
12:24Every menu is based around a season.
12:26All our menus change seasonally, which is huge.
12:28We also have the start of the season, mid-season, and we have the end of the season because produce changes within that.
12:34We are inspired by food stories from my family.
12:37So, you know, I told you about wild asparagus.
12:40So last week, Maxine, who forages for us, I actually got some wild asparagus in and saved a beautiful dish with it.
12:45So everything is inspired by the stories, making ricotta cheese, but obviously locality using whisky milk to do that.
12:53So everything at that table is what inspires our menu.
12:57But obviously, we have the incredible larder here in Scotland and incredible producers, a network that we have fantastic relationships with.
13:04And a brilliant team of chefs, you know, in particular, who take those stories and then modernise them a bit sometimes.
13:13Or they do something very classic.
13:15Trends?
13:16No.
13:17No.
13:17It's not for me.
13:19And just to go back, you know, you obviously said you're from a family of immigrants.
13:22It's just, no matter what's going on in the world, I feel like food and eating well sort of transcends borders and politics and things.
13:28So it's like, it's a really nice starting point for people coming somewhere new.
13:31Yeah, I always say that a table doesn't know diversity.
13:35I think it's a beautiful thing.
13:37You know, I think we could probably solve a lot of the world's problems in war by simply just getting people and feeding them around a table.
13:44You know, I'd love to have five of the world's leaders in here and just sit with them and feed them and talk to them and give them food.
13:51Because it nourishes your soul.
13:54Yeah, if it comes from a good place, if you do it with good intention, if you do everything with a good heart, people can feel it.
13:59They feel the authenticity. That's really, really important.
14:02I think tables transcend, you know, so many beautiful things happen at tables.
14:06We are so privileged in here.
14:08I have witnessed tender moments at tables where, for example, I have an elderly couple who came in and he recently has dementia.
14:17So every moment at that table together they have here every week is so important.
14:22It's a huge memory, you know, and I can see that slipping away.
14:27I have been privileged to feed people their last meals and I can feel quite emotional about that as I'm talking about it.
14:32So it's a huge privilege to cook.
14:35It's not just about feeding someone in the moment.
14:39It's a food memory that can carry you well after you have left a place.
14:44Yeah, that's really lovely.
14:46We're obviously sitting in late spring, early summer.
14:49What are your plans for the next 12 months?
14:51Is there anything you can tell us?
14:53Yeah, we are constantly evolving in terms of, we have brought someone just now, Shea, who's been with us now for about five, six months,
15:00who's doing training and development with our whole team, which is great.
15:04So I think that just, if we look at the outside world, it can really mess with your head.
15:11You know, it can really mess with your head.
15:12And I really just shut that out.
15:14You know, obviously it has an impact politically and what's going on, Brexit, all of these things.
15:19I've had huge impacts on cause and everything that we do.
15:22But now I'm focusing on what I can control.
15:25And what I can control is how you feel when you come here, that moment in time.
15:29What we give you, what we feed you and how we look after our team, how we grow our team, how we nourish our team.
15:36And that's something we're really focusing.
15:38We focus on a lot, but we're really, really looking inward at the moment to all of our team, all of our people and growing them as individuals.
15:47So one of them is bringing in people for exceptional training.
15:51I think that's so important.
15:53We're looking at some new bits of apparatus.
15:55So we're changing the, looking at beautiful, we've started trialling a grill upstairs and we're going to go into that in the evenings and at lunchtime as well, going into the summer.
16:03It's part of my food memory because my grandmother cooked outside a lot, particularly in the winter as well.
16:08So I wanted to bring just an extra bit of flavour into our food profile here of our food.
16:14So, yeah, we're constantly evolving.
16:16Our bakery is constantly evolving.
16:18The team are actually, they're just all charging ahead now.
16:21They're all far, they're all further ahead than me now in the game.
16:24You know, they're coming up with all the ideas.
16:26You know, I think we've given them the story, I give them the story, I give them a heart.
16:30We sit together, we talk about it and they just go away and they're so inspired.
16:34You know, we've just sent a couple of chefs to Italy.
16:36They were visiting a vineyard, which was great for them.
16:39So it's beautiful just to pass that on now.
16:42This might be quite hard, but what are some of your favourite things on the menu, your favourite dishes that you cook throughout the year?
16:48I always say that food is not about what you're eating, but who you're eating it with.
16:53I think that's really important.
16:55There's dishes that will always stay on the menu that mean something to us.
16:59So, for example, something super simple is our healing salad.
17:03And the healing salad is based on my food memory of my mum, who twice in her life, cancer came knocking at the door.
17:13I was in my early teens, well, I was about nine the first time and then I was in university and I was in my early 20s the second time.
17:20And my mum resorted, although she was in Glasgow, resorted back to our childhood in Italy of going into the garden, picking dandelions, sage.
17:30The old ways all came back, purity, simplicity.
17:33My mum would never to this day use a packet of supermarket salad.
17:37She absolutely detests any packaged food, she says, or pumped full of chemicals.
17:42So that salad is just a really simple seasonal leaves.
17:45It always sits on the menu.
17:47Really, really good olive oil because that's so important.
17:49We put some lovely seeds on it for the bit of a mega factor and that changes around some fresh lemon juice on it.
17:57So that's a really super simple thing, but it means a lot.
18:01Other things are the ethos of making from scratch every day.
18:05I love walking into a restaurant.
18:06I see the chefs in the kitchen making pasta every day from scratch.
18:10And, you know, it's the excitement of every season.
18:13You know, what's it going to be?
18:14Well, just now it's a homemade ricotta because we're in spring with some beautiful broad beans
18:19or some summer truffle when it comes to that time of year.
18:22So it's the anticipation of the seasons.
18:24It's really beautiful.
18:25It's how I like to eat.
18:27And how do you find the process of buying the produce that you need?
18:30I think now it's easier.
18:32It definitely is easier.
18:33I mean, if I went back to where my parents were, I would say, no, it was super challenging.
18:36And at the end of the day, if we can't get it, we use something else.
18:40You know, we're not going to ship something in from, you know, the other end of the world
18:44because it's not going to, that's not going to fit what we do.
18:46It's not going to feel right for me, to be honest with you.
18:49It has to feel right.
18:50I can't sell people a song.
18:52And I kind of, I think I've always, even if I was in a wee shop, Miss Ederson,
18:57and I'd be making the food there for people.
18:59We had a wee imperial machine and, you know, a group of women kneading dough, rolling every day, cooking.
19:06I don't think I could give people something that I wouldn't feed my own children, you know.
19:09Well, thank you very much.
19:10It's been lovely to see you and chat and, yeah, kind of want my lunch now.
19:14Yeah, so, yeah.
19:15So now we're going to eat.
19:16So thank you so much.
19:17Really, really lovely to be asked, Ross.
19:20And thank you so much.
19:20I'm here at Sabrina Damiani's home in Edinburgh in your beautiful kitchen
19:32and we have walked into a lovely spread of food.
19:35So could you just tell us what we have in front of us?
19:37Yes, we have an afternoon tea and I propose some sweet and savory things.
19:43So, yeah, because I usually do with some Italian twists.
19:46So it's just a traditional afternoon tea with some Italian.
19:50So I have the Italian cannoli that actually are Sicilia, where I'm from.
19:54This is like a lemon sponge cake with a pistachio cream.
19:59And here there are some lovely sandwiches with salmon, cucumber and mint and some Parma ham.
20:09Then we have, this is one of my favorites, actually.
20:11This is a tomato, Harlem tomato, do you call?
20:16With ricotta and pesto and basil.
20:19And then we have homemade meringue with shanty cream and strawberries.
20:24And then I made some lemon card ice cream on the lemon shell.
20:32It's a very nice Monday lunch.
20:33This is not what I usually have.
20:36So for anyone that doesn't know, could you just tell us a bit about your business?
20:39Yes, I usually organize events for any, you know, any kind of celebration.
20:46So weddings, private dinner, or I work a lot with the Italian and Spanish consulate.
20:54And this is what I do, actually.
20:55I organize a lot of pop-up.
20:57This is what I actually do.
20:59I am a private chef also for private dining.
21:01And during the lockdown, I organize a lot of, and this is how I started, a lot of afternoon tea and breakfast boxes that are, actually were quite successful.
21:14You said you're from Sicily.
21:15So how did you get into what you do?
21:17Has food always been a part of your sort of interest and work life, or is it completely separate until now?
21:24My previous life, would you say?
21:25Yes, I moved from Sicily because I did a master and then a PhD in Oxford.
21:34And then I started to teach.
21:36I was teaching Italian literature and philosophy.
21:40And then we moved to Madrid, where I was still teaching.
21:45And then when my husband had an offer from the University of Edinburgh, we decided to move here again.
21:50It was the 2013.
21:51And I have two young children.
21:54They were two and three.
21:55So I just decided to leave the university for a while because I didn't know anyone here.
22:01And then I started to do this.
22:03That was my passion as a proper job.
22:07So this is how it started.
22:09And I just decided to leave the university forever and to do this as my main job.
22:14And have you always enjoyed cooking?
22:17Yes, I always enjoyed cooking.
22:19When I was at the university for my first year, I was doing some cake for the main restaurant in Sicily.
22:27So I was preparing there.
22:29And also when I was in Oxford, I was doing a lot of cooking class in the Four Seasons Hotel with Raymond Blanc.
22:39So this has been always my passion.
22:41I also organised during my class some lessons about cooking and literature.
22:48You know, how the relationship between the cooking and the food and literature and also food as memory.
22:57Through the food, for example, is very nice.
22:59You can also understand the characters of some book.
23:03So it's always something that I did in my life.
23:07We've got here, obviously, like afternoon tea, which is very British, but you've done Italian twist on it.
23:13Is that something you've always done?
23:14Have you tried to incorporate from where you are a little bit of Italian into what you're looking at?
23:20Yes, I think that is nice because I, of course, I started cooking Italian food.
23:25But then I travelled a lot, so I started also to cook, of course, other kinds of food.
23:33And also, I usually cook with seasonal products.
23:37So everything I find, you know, is something.
23:40I love now, after travelling a lot in my life, to mix, you know, what is the different cooking and different food, all the place where I've been.
23:51So I love to have, for example, like today, a very British afternoon tea, but with some Italian things.
24:02So, for example, there will be always some sweet, savory, sweet desserts, or like a very Italian tart with tomato and basil.
24:12So I really love to mix now.
24:14And I found very fascinating.
24:17For example, when I work with the Italian and Spanish consulate, of course, what they ask is just to do proper Spanish or proper Italian food.
24:26And this is what I do.
24:28If I have some event or nice celebration or private dining, I just prefer to mix them.
24:33What do you think it is about Italian food specifically that everyone in the UK loves and always has loved?
24:38I think what is really Italian, except, you know, what is pasta and pizza, that, you know, it just, but what is really Italian for me are, for example, the herbs.
24:51The herbs are specifically, for me, like when I always, for example, add basil everywhere or mint, the cheese, you know, the fresh cheese, like mozzarella or burrata.
25:03They are typically Italian.
25:05And people really love to see and to have something that is different from traditionally we find, you know, we found in the past, for example.
25:16Italian food is not just pasta alla carbonara or margherita.
25:21It's something different.
25:22And in something with every region in Italy have a different, you know, cooking.
25:27Every, I'm from Sicily, so we use a lot of vegetables and fish, for example.
25:35But the north, the cooking from the north and from the south is completely different.
25:41So there is not an Italian cooking or an Italian food.
25:46Of course, there are something that are in common.
25:48But I think that now people is learning how, you know, to choose a proper, nice Italian food, you know.
25:58For me, how we mix, for example, the herbs, the spice, the fish, the combination of these is something very, very nice.
26:09And very popular.
26:10And very, very popular.
26:11Now it's very, very popular.
26:12You know, also because people love to learn how, you know, we really eat, you know, because it is all my clients, for example, when I did a cooking class a few weeks ago, my clients said there were six and we're a lovely family.
26:28And they said, but please, we just want to have a cooking class about what we find when we go in Italy, when nowhere we go, you know, in a normal restaurant, Italian restaurant in everywhere.
26:38And so we did really something that you find just when you go in Sicily.
26:45And so we do, we did panelle and arancine and all this type of like street food that you cannot find anywhere.
26:55And they were absolutely happy about that.
26:58And we started to do also cannoli because unfortunately you find a lot of frozen ones.
27:03So to learn how to make and they are done with marsala wine, you know, and it's very, very nice.
27:10So growing up, were you encouraged to cook from quite a young age?
27:12Was it quite a sort of family type?
27:15I always tell this story that is really, is my real story, you know, is my true story.
27:20My grandmother and my mother were fantastic cook.
27:25My grandmother had a beautiful, beautiful house with a terrace.
27:30I always tell this story, so, and this terrace was full of jasmine and lemons.
27:36And my, my grandmother was used to have a lot of friends and family every single Sunday.
27:43And it was very nice because you, I was learning to cook just watching them, you know, so there were a lot of people all around.
27:51They were doing fresh sauce, pasta, and they were doing, someone was doing their dessert and was very nice.
27:58So I was just learning, just watching them.
28:02And then there was also when my grandmother, unfortunately, passed away, there were my mom with her friends.
28:08And they were doing the same.
28:09They were cooking as a, as a, every, every Sunday, every weekend.
28:15So I just had this passion from all my family.
28:18My mom was a fantastic cook.
28:20If I am able to cook it, just thanks to her.
28:23She was amazing, really.
28:24She was able to do anything.
28:27She had this, you know, this ability to, to transform a single, you know, plate in something amazing.
28:34And the art of, to set a table, the tablescaping is also thanks to her.
28:41We always have flowers in my family.
28:43I always this, use this sentence that now moved me because unfortunately my mom passed away.
28:49Because she always used flowers, you know, in the tablescaping, even if it was just for us as a family.
28:57Because she always say this sentence that is something that I really love.
29:02My mom had also a lovely garden.
29:05This lovely garden had roses and jasmine and these flowers that we call pomelie.
29:10She always says that she was cultivating flowers during the winter.
29:17So was for us, that were me and my brother, was always spring.
29:21So for her, especially when I left, the first day that I arrived, there was a spring on the table.
29:29And this is something that I learned to her.
29:31This is the reason I love a lot, to put flowers everywhere.
29:34And I want to transmit this to my, to my daughters too.
29:37I think that food is, when you cook, it's just a sort of gift.
29:43And the food is always memory.
29:45This is something that I learned from her.
29:47It's just always a care about someone.
29:51For example, when I was reading, one of my authors was Primo Levi.
29:56And he was a survivor of Auschwitz.
29:58And he said all the time that was made him survive.
30:03It was, the first one was luck.
30:05And the second was, just remember how it was to spend the celebration and the festivity with his family, with his beautiful spread of food.
30:17For example, when they, you know, when he was, at the end, when they were, you know, when they were free.
30:22And the first thing was always this obsession with food.
30:27So, there is always, I've been always a relationship for me in everything I did.
30:32It's the filerousion of my life.
30:34This is everything that brings me to cook now.
30:39It's interesting, isn't it?
30:40Because we eat every day and we don't think about it.
30:42But that relationship with food, it transcends families and politics and boundaries and borders.
30:49And, you know, you don't think about it when you're eating, but it can bring people together and keep people going.
30:54No, absolutely.
30:55For example, there is a famous, I think the name is Claudia Roden.
30:59That is one author.
31:01She's a fantastic cook writer.
31:03Always she said, she's from Egypt, you know, but she moved to London.
31:06She travelled a lot.
31:08And she said, even if I am in London, if I close my eyes and here it's raining, if I have my tea and I cook something, if I close my eyes, I am in the terrace of my family.
31:19Because food and memory are so connected.
31:23It is the way in which we eat with our family, what we cook is something that always belongs to our past and to our memory.
31:34For this reason, I think that also the presentation is also very important, you know, because I think that it's a form of art.
31:44It's a beauty in everything else.
31:47For example, this is another memory I have about my mum.
31:51Because when you travel, of course, and we don't leave you with your family for a long time,
31:57then you have this sort of malignity, you know, for everything is from your country, from your family.
32:03I'm happy to be here.
32:05I love to stay abroad.
32:07But of course, I miss a lot my friends, my family, everything.
32:12And it was very nice because every time I come back, my mum, not just this spring, whatever,
32:18she was doing exactly my favourite thing, my favourite food.
32:23So there was always the same things that I really loved since I was young.
32:27And she was doing the same with my daughters.
32:31And this man, you know, you're just back, you are back to your childhood, to your happiness.
32:38And I'm very happy this is the same for my daughters.
32:41And they are completely useless to cook.
32:45They are not really interested in it.
32:47They really, they told me that they don't need.
32:50They are able to do a nice table, for sure they are able.
32:54They will survive, I think.
32:56Every time I prepare a table, I organise the candles and I finish when I just lit up the candle.
33:04For me, it's like, I don't know how to say in English, I need to translate that.
33:08But it's come andare al teatro.
33:10Come in, you know, it's like the actors start to, you can go and everything can start, you know.
33:17It's my favourite moment.
33:19And then I disappear.
33:21And I can do this every single day because I really, really love.
33:25I love to see people enjoying what I do.
33:28I love to change all the time.
33:31So it's really what I am.
33:33I really love it.
33:35Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about the events you do and how people can get in touch if they want to?
33:39They contact me by WhatsApp with my phone number.
33:43The website is updating.
33:45I'm very active on Instagram, for example, and there is my phone number there or even in my website.
33:52So they contact me there.
33:54I did a lot of events in the last few years.
33:56There are two that are my, that for me are very important.
34:01The first one, but I did more than once.
34:04I had the honour and it was a privilege for me because I was contacted to prepare.
34:12This was before and also after the lockdown.
34:16They contact me to prepare some afternoon tea boxes for them.
34:21At the time it was the Duchess of Cornwall that now is the Queen Camilla.
34:25So I organised three or four times some afternoon tea boxes for her.
34:30Apparently they really enjoyed it.
34:32Hopefully I didn't poison them.
34:35They are still alive.
34:36And this was a really big honour for me.
34:40Another event that was organised by Hood Magazine was the Chanel pop-up.
34:48And this was also very nice because I had to organise the whole food, the whole canopies and sweet nipples and everything.
34:59According to, they gave me the palette of the lipstick.
35:04There was the launch of this lipstick in the world.
35:07So there were eight different red.
35:09So they asked me if I can prepare something with these different colours.
35:14So it was nice because I had to prepare canopies and macaroons and desserts with these colours.
35:21And it was quite nice.
35:23These are the most challenging and the most important, of course.
35:28Now, of course, for example, now we have a lot of weddings at the moment.
35:33So as well as the private dining and catering, you also do classes.
35:36So can you tell us a bit about them?
35:37Yes, I do cooking class.
35:39Usually, yes, Italian cooking class because this is what people want really to learn.
35:45I also sometimes organise.
35:48This I did last year.
35:49I didn't repeat this year, but I'm going to do again.
35:52I did a course about cooking with flowers.
35:54This was very nice because we did like an art focaccia and some nice cookies using edible flowers.
36:02This was very nice too.
36:03I prefer to have just six or eight people when I do the cooking class at home because I think it's the perfect number.
36:10I organise a lot of cooking class during Christmas time for canopies, appetis, you know, and how to set.
36:18A lot of people now ask me how to set the table, how to set a proper nice table.
36:24We have a lot of fun.
36:25Usually it's so nice, really, because then I just remember the last two ones were so funny because there were just six women.
36:34And this is like a sort of therapy, so everyone speak about everything.
36:39And we had such a lot of fun.
36:41We had a really lovely, lovely, lovely day.
36:44So I'm going to do it again.
36:46It's like, you know, really, it's a therapy.
36:49Cooking is very relaxing, so people is very open to speak about everything.
36:53They didn't want to go because we had such a lovely time.
36:56Thank you very much.
36:56Honestly, I've not seen anything that looks this good, I don't think, ever, especially during the podcast.
37:01So, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking in.
37:03And I feel like this looks so nice for Instagram, but you're not doing it for that.
37:08And that's a really nice reason.
37:09You're doing it because this is your, you've always done this.
37:11So I love to make photos.
37:14This is my other passion.
37:15So this is the best for me because I cook and then I also do my photos.
37:20No, I don't do for Instagram.
37:21Of course, I use Instagram.
37:22I use it for my job.
37:24I love to organise something like that.
37:26And I love to make photos, yeah.
37:27Well, thank you very much.
37:28And thank you so much for this lovely food.
37:30Thank you so much for coming.
37:32Just a pleasure.
37:38Thanks to Giovanna and Sabrina for being my guests on this episode.
37:41And thanks to you too for listening.
37:43Please remember to rate, review and subscribe so you never miss an episode of Scran.
37:47Scran is co-produced and hosted by me, Roslyn Derskin, and co-produced, edited and mixed by Kelly Crichton.
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