Grazie, Mama

By JEFF HOUCK The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 9, 2007

LONGBOAT KEY - There he is in the faded snapshot from 1963.

In the photo, Giuliano Hazan is sitting next to his mother, Marcella, at a dinner table.

Dressed in a dark turtleneck with a necklace dangling around the collar, she is gazing down at her tiny son. With his shirt buttoned to the throat, he stares into the lens of the camera. A fresh linen napkin rests like a teepee at his eye level on the tablecloth in front of him.

The table is in a restaurant in Brooklyn.

His arms are drawn tight to his body. His eyes are a mixture of anxiousness and excitement.

Which all makes sense when you're told the photo was shot during the first meal he ever ate in a restaurant.

He was 5 years old.

To a boy whose Italian-born mother always cooked for the family, eating at a table somewhere other than the dining room was a foreign concept, a new adventure.

Within the next five years, food would propel the family into unforeseen adventures.

Inspired by a Chinese cooking instructor in New York City and urged on by her husband, Victor, Marcella would start The School of Classic Italian Cooking in their home. As her son grew and the school's prominence increased after exposure in The New York Times, he would assist her more and more with the kitchen logistics, learning not by instruction but by absorbing, the way she did from her parents in the Adriatic seaside village of Cesenatico.

She would go on to teach master classes in Venice, write award-winning cookbooks and become the foremost expert on Italian-American cooking as she taught both in America and in her homeland. And, eventually, she would hand over the school to her son, who would go on to write award-winning, best-selling cookbooks of his own, including "How to Cook Italian" (Scribner, $35).

Giuliano and his family now live in Sarasota, while his parents live just west in Longboat Key. His framed photo sits on the counter next to the stove in his mother's custom-designed kitchen. She's 83 now and is writing her memoirs longhand in Italian as her husband translates them into English.

In 2000, Giuliano started his own cooking school in Italy at a lavish restored villa outside Verona. On May 20, he and his wife, Lael, will begin six weeks of teaching classes that are a total immersion into the world of Italian cuisine. In the mornings, there will be field trips, including to a rice mill where risotto is made. In the evenings, there will be five hours of nightly hands-on cooking instruction.

The classes, which cost up to $4,300 per student for six days of instruction, are almost always sold out months in advance.

The demand will likely grow. In April, Giuliano was named Cooking Teacher of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals in Chicago. Accepting the award in front of a crowd of about 2,000 chefs, cookbook authors and restaurant owners, he thanked his family.

Especially his mother.

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 and at jhouck@tampatrib.com.