The cooking career of Mamma Agata started at the young age of thirteen. She went to work in order to help her family and was employed in the kitchen of a wealthy American lady who owned a summer villa in Ravello, overlooking the Amalfi Coast. Mamma Agata’s first experience in the kitchen proved her to be a natural, and in just a few months the meals shifted from American food to the regional specialties of the Amalfi. They called her “Baby Agata” since she was so young but dedicated to her craft.
Either cooking for a large gathering or an impromptu poolside lunch, the approach was always the same. Traditional dishes with regional ingredients replaced formal ones and Mamma Agata always remembered her guest’s favorites. When Fred Astaire came to call, after a lunch of spaghetti alla puttanesca, he would waltz the hostess’s elderly mother around the courtyard. Humphrey Bogart was more reserved, and quietly ate his alici fritti while taking in the view. The pasta e fagioli was a dish exclusively reserved for Anita Eckberg, a gloriously tall woman with skin like milk. But, the favorite memory that Mamma Agata shares is that of Jacqueline Kennedy, who impressed her with “un eleganza molto simplice” an elegant simplicity that was unique only to her, enjoying mozzarella and tomato salad by the pool.
She worked until her middle twenties, when she married and had children. When her children became adults, she was sought after to prepare private dinners for politicians and writers such as Agnelli and Gore Vidal. In 1997, the idea of the cooking school was born, in order to share her many talents.
“Mamma Agata” has been the chef for many major Hollywood actors and actress, Humphrey Bogart, Anita Eckberg, Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, Fred Astaire, Charles Cubbon, Van Hefflin, Federico Fellini (big pasta e fagioli eater), Jacqueline Kennedy (1962 in Ravello), Marcello Mastroianni, and for important international journalists, writers and politicians such as Susanna Agnelli.
Mamma Agata Interview »
