Maria Ziccardi says her favourite part of the job is the customers.
A kitchen employee announces “Mama Maria” Ziccardi is going to be a movie star as he sees her picture being taken.
The Italian great-grandmother pauses cooking and gives him a disapproving glance. “Going to be?” she jokes. “I was born a star.”
Everyone at Johnny Farina restaurant on Elgin Street agrees with her joke – Ziccardi is an in-house celebrity, says nephew and co-owner Anthony Iafelice.
She seems to fit as much in a day as most people do in three, and all her energy is focused on her huge family and extended family – and the pasta.
She comes in at 7 a.m. every morning to make the pasta used in the restaurant, staying until 5 or 6 p.m. – short days, compared to what she used to do before they hired someone to help her.
Growing up in Molise, a region in Southern Italy, she didn’t have a long childhood.
Her two-year engagement started at 13-years-old, which she says was common in those days.
At 16, she gave birth to her first child. The family moved to Canada to be with her then-husband’s family three years later, all while she was still a teenager. She went to school until grade nine, but would later take more classes in Ottawa.
She wasn’t a chef and never took cooking lessons, but she always filled the house with home-cooked Italian food.
So, when son Deano and nephew Iafelice opened Johnny Farina, they asked for her help in the kitchen.
“I just cooked from home, from my heart,” she says, matter-of-factly. She scoffs at cookbooks, “I’ve never cooked with a recipe. I just figure it out. You think I’m going to go with a book? Never.”
She says you don’t need recipes to cook, “just your imagination.”
At 67-years-old, she doesn’t seem to show her age. The slim Ziccardi seems to have more energy and hustle than someone half her age.
She has five children – Rosaria, Rick, Deano, Josie and Melissa, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. She spends her free time teaching cooking classes, Italian classes and an Italian folk dance group.
“Sometimes I go home at night, and I say OK, today I did this, I did this, I did this, I did that,” she says. “How did I do that all today? That is impossible to do all these things. But I do it.”
But the best part of her day, she says, is Johnny Farina.
Around the restaurant, she hauls the 20-kg bags of flour herself, says Iafelice. She makes all the pasta for the lunch and dinner menu when she comes in, and will tell the staff exactly how it is to be prepared. She’s the “tough sergeant in the kitchen”, Iafelice says, but affectionately called “Mama” by all.
Customers come in to speak to her, and she always takes time to make the rounds and chat with them. Zaccardi and her nephew both agree – it’s what keeps her young.
Sean Sweeney, a regular customer, brings his family to the restaurant because of Ziccardi. “I come specifically when I know she’s going to be there,” he says.
The kitchen staff bring out the newest dish they are working on, sun-dried tomato pasta in heart shapes stuffed with lobster, a Valentine’s Day special. It has the seal of approval.
But she doesn’t taste it – she says she doesn’t need to, she knows that it’s good.
“What we can do as a family, no one else can do it,” she says.
One of the biggest obstacles and daily challenges in Ziccardi’s life has been when her youngest daughter, Melissa, was born, she says. Her husband abandoned the family, leaving Ziccardi with the new baby, who has Down syndrome and still requires constant care. They didn’t hear from him for ten years, she says.
Ziccardi excuses herself quickly after making pasta to get on her cell phone and call home and check in on Melissa.
Melissa requires a lot of care, but is able to come and help Ziccardi teach dance on Saturdays and occasionally helping the restaurant.
“She has a very good life, she loves life,” she says about Melissa. “I think it’s a treasure. It changed me a lot.”
It’s hard for anyone to imagine how Ziccardi fits everything in around the restaurant. “She doesn’t really have time for herself. She doesn’t stop,” Iafelice says about Ziccardi.
Ziccardi spends a lot of time with Melissa, but her days are often filled with the “children” who extend well beyond her five she gave birth to.
She guesses that she has, “60, 70, I don’t know,” and smiles, a proud mother.
“When they see me . . . Mama Maria! They all go,” she says in a slight singsong, her voice still thick with an Italian accent, refreshed during her yearly visits home.
Six months ago, Johnny Farina’s kitchen manager needed a place to live. Zaccardi set him up with an apartment in her home, says Iafelice.
He is treated like one of her children – she is even his daughter’s godmother.
She’s quick to dart into the kitchen to come back with a stack of photos, showing all her children – both biological and not – at city hall, at the police station, in Little Italy, dancing and performing.
“Don’t they look beautiful?” she says, regardless of whether the picture is of a child she gave birth to, or tiny Italian dancer jumping around in traditional costume.
Just like her ties to the classes she teaches, Ziccardi’s connection at the restaurant can’t be described as just a job. To her, the restaurant is her life.
Her favourite part is the customers. The restaurant thrives on their regulars, who come specifically for Ziccardi’s home-cooked style and presence.
At her age, some might question her eventual retirement, but no such luck.
She doesn’t like to look any further ahead than the current day, and just takes each one as they come.
“I thank God for every day. But it’s hard work,” she says, reflecting.
Long hours in the kitchen combined with caring for a disabled child gets increasingly hard with age, as Melissa will always require constant supervision and care.
“People ask what I’m going to do with Melissa, but I think God has a plan. God will take care of my future,” she says.
Her family can’t ever see her taking a traditional retirement and fully staying away from the restaurant, Iafelice says.
She says herself that she has a hard time picturing any sort of retirement, or even slowing down a notch or two.
“I think the day I cannot come to work, to Johnny Farina, my life is finished,” says Ziccardi. “I could just stay here all day, all night.”