Lidia! - 'I Never Felt Pressure to Conform'

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS PUBLIC TELEVISION, LIDIA BASTIANICH HAS BECOME A FIXTURE IN AMERICAN KITCHENS, AND SHE CREDITS IT ALL TO HER ITALIAN ROOTS

-  ANTONIA DEBIANCHI

A sanitation truck passes by Lidia Bastianich’s sprawling home in Queens, and the driver honks the horn to say hello. “They’re nice to me because I feed them,” says Bastianich, 76. Providing comfort through food comes naturally to the celebrity chef and restaurateur, who has been inviting viewers of her public television shows inside her home over the last 25 years. The house, which she has owned since 1985, overlooks Little Neck Bay and is a Mediterranean oasis a mere 20 miles from Manhattan. Boasting a vegetable garden, a rotisserie and a commercial oven that she lovingly calls “my Ferrari,” it has been the setting for the photo shoots for all 14 of her cookbooks as well as her TV shows, including Lidia’s Kitchen, now in its 11th season. “My two kids [MasterChef’s Joe Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali, her cowriter on her new book Lidia’s From Our Table to Yours] were always around when we filmed, and I wanted to share my family with America. The bond was built in this house, and now people feel like they’re part of the family,” says Bastianich. Her mother, Erminia Motika, who died in 2021 at age 100, was even referred to by fans as Grandma. “Now that my mother passed, my daughter says, ‘Mom, the house is big. Are you going to sell it?’” says Bastianich. “Sell it? No! This is our history.”