My mom was born and raised in Sicily where she grew up raising chickens and making her own bread. Her family were traditional Italians who would never think to buy dried pasta, but instead make fresh noodles that would be draped in the living room on wooden broom handles laid across two chairs. In 1940, my mom fled Mussolini’s Italy and escaped to Tunisia. In Tunisia she learned to cook tagine, fig jam, and couscous from scratch. Her time in Tunisia was forever present in her cooking.

Immigrating to New York, my mom met my dad and before long was a housewife in Brooklyn, tending to a small backyard garden where she grew eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. I think of the Cuisinarts, Robot Coupes and KitchenAid mixers we have today and marvel at the fact that my mom used wooden spoons, forks, and a mortar and pestle, making everything by hand.

As the youngest child, my mom involved me in her daily culinary endeavors. I’d chop vegetables, grate cheese, pound and bread chicken, and make meatballs. I don’t know how much I ‘helped’ making meatballs…because, while my mom was frying and transferring them to a platter, I was sitting next to her scooping them up and into my mouth. But my proficiency in the kitchen was quickly noticed and before long I was working in my uncle’s Brooklyn restaurants and comedy clubs. Ever since I was old enough to hold a knife, I was chopping and frying, earning money for the family. At thirteen I was cooking bagels, and by sixteen I was a line cook at a diner. Influenced by my mom and working for my uncle, I knew one thing. I wanted to be a chef.

I embarked on my culinary career attending (at that time) the New York Restaurant School and connecting with my Italian roots once school ended during an externship throughout Italy. Working in the 1990’s as a private chef for a couple living in New York City’s East Village, the couple one day announced they were going meatless and asked if I could cater to their request. I grew up on prosciutto. My father was a butcher. What did I know about meatless?! But I took up the challenge. I headed to the bookstore (pre-Internet!) pouring over books, intrigued how I could create versions of my recipes without sacrificing flavor. I started to feel the alchemy I remembered my mom executing in the kitchen. I created tofu ‘chicken’ cutlets and pasta ‘bolognese,’ which fit nicely along with the naturally dairy and meat-free classics from my childhood --eggplant caponata; giardiniera; pasta fagioli and one of my mom’s specialties, white bean dip with roasted garlic served with day old Italian bread. The couple was delighted and started hosting dinner parties. Shortly afterward, they decided to move back overseas and asked me to go with them. As tempting as that offer was, I decided to stay in New York.

Tucking my meatless culinary experience in my back pocket, I worked as some of New York’s top ‘90s eateries: Café de la Gare, The Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel, the Fashion Café (owned by ‘90s Supermodels Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy Turlington), Soho Grand Hotel, and The Peninsula Hotel. I also worked as a frequent caterer to the late recording artist, Aaliyah.

I found myself thinking more and more about the meatless vegetarian dishes I had prepared for the couple, and the alchemy I saw in my mom's kitchen. I thought about my dad who suffered from diabetes which claimed first both his legs and ultimately his life. I thought about myself at one point weighing nearly 300 lbs. (those meatballs). All these things propelled me and reignited my desire to continue learning and studying how to create food that is minimally processed and didn’t contain unnecessary added sugar. Before “plant-based”, before Vegan, and before the internet provided us all with endless recipes and the proliferation of vegan cafes and menu items on nearly any restaurant’s menu, I found myself becoming a pioneer in researching and experimenting with plant-based foods.

In 2006 I joined the Natural Gourmet Institute (now part of the Institute of Culinary Education) as a culinary instructor and continued to explore my talents for creating vegan, gluten-free, kosher foods by moving into baking and desserts. Soon after, I was selling my products at New York City’s LifeThyme Natural Market and was featured on an episode of Wedding Cake Weekend on the Food Network. I moved on to work at Erin McKenna’s Bakery NYC, and I developed the opening menu for Peacefood Café, and the initial line of vegan baked goods, soups, sandwiches and salads for Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in New York City and Amagansett, Long Island. My plant-based, baked, (not fried) apple cider cinnamon donuts were featured in “Things to Know About” in Time Out magazine.

As my career continued, I began working on events, food styling and recipe development. In 2011, The Kabbalah Centre NYC commissioned me to develop special event meals and dessert menus. It was there that a certain “Queen of Pop” became a “True Blue” fan of my gluten-free/sugar-free Lemon Drop Tart.

In 2016 I returned to Italy, hired as a consultant to help develop VgO Lab, a vegan culinary event center, in Mestre (Venice) Italy. Later that year, I joined the staff of Kettlebell Kitchen, a new prepared meal delivery startup in Brooklyn that soon expanded operations to New Jersey, Manhattan, and Los Angeles, helping grow the business in producing over 50,000 meals per week nationwide. At Kettlebell I started as the kitchen and bakery facilities manager by heading up kitchen staff training, and quickly worked my way up to executive culinary director, leading the research & development team and operations teams. I was responsible for creating hundreds of plant-based, keto, and paleo recipes, which also included my special vegan baked goods. I was also in charge of USDA labeling and nutritional analysis, and I supported the customer service and marketing teams.

The irony is not lost on me that I became a pioneer for plant-based foods and health conscious cuisine as the son of a mother cooking traditional homemade staples like zeppole fried in bacon fat, meatballs and chicken milanese, and a father who was a butcher. I became one of the plant-based food pioneers not because it was trendy, but because I believed that it was possible to cook food that was both healthy and delicious in support of a healthy lifestyle. Through it all, what guides me is my mother who taught me that above everything else,— Food is love.