I was sitting with Jody Williams and Rita Sodi on an early-summer afternoon, sipping espresso alfresco at Via Carota, their beloved Italian restaurant in the West Village of New York City, when I asked the two chefs, who are partners in business as well as in life, why their restaurants rise above so many others. Why do people carry such a devotion not just to Via Carota but to their four other spots in the neighborhood: I Sodi, Buvette, Bar Pisellino, and the Commerce Inn? With the news that they will soon be expanding their portfolio uptown, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Flatiron Building, I was eager to know how they’d maintain the magic.
That’s when Williams tells me about the Italian nonna, a figure you might have seen if you’ve ever wandered down a side street in an Italian village and, through the open kitchen door of a small trattoria, caught a glimpse of a gray-haired woman sitting at a marble-topped table, quietly rolling out meatballs or pinching pasta for that day’s lunch, just as she has for decades. “Even if I were to make nonna’s meatballs with her exact recipe,” Williams says, “her meatballs would still taste so much better than mine because she has mani del proprietario.”