Carrabba's Italian Grill - Fort Myers
To my Mamma, Grace, the greatest cook I ever knew, who not only taught me the basics of good cooking, but also the importance of having family gather at the table, often. Damian Mandola
Our Gulf Coast experience is about the place where all of our ancestors came to build their lives. They called it America! And they didn’t just mean Ellis Island, or Little Italy in New York, or the North End of Boston or South Philly. They meant the whole damn place, wherever it began and ended, which of course nobody much knew. And it meant an idea too, a big promise in the air during the hard times in Sicily that if you sacrificed just about everything and pretty near worked yourself to death, you could have something a little better. Which, after all, was exactly what you did in the Old Country-without any promise at all.
So they came, ship after ship full of them. Full of us. And all the while, there were other ships filled with other people, speaking different languages. In America, we would come to know them all. And talk with them all. And wrestle with them all.
And, in some cases, cook with them all. We kept on being who we are, sure enough, but after a while we were something different, too. Something entirely new.
So give us a break here. Don’t go picking over our Grandma’s and Mamma’s and Aunt’s and Uncle’s recipes, whining about this not being the way they did it at your house. Great! We’ll go to your house, this is the way the old folks taught the young folks. This is the way we remember things tasting. And this is what it all comes down to-with generous sprinklings of life, love and oregano-for two Sicilian boys from Texas who love to cook and eat.