New York like Naples, Donna Margherita like “mom’s” cuisine: the miracle of chef Salvatore Lima
NEW YORK – Salvatore’s eyes are full of scarsthe gaze of someone who has been wounded to death several times by life. Yet he laughs with everyone, because every time he fell, Salvatore took and got up. And everyone loves him here, but really. For his story, for his big heart. And, of course, for what he is capable of doing in his kitchen, that of “Donna Margherita”.
To the registry office Salvatore Lima: 48 years old, originally from San Giorgio a Cremano, in America since 1997.
When he arrived in New Yorkthe boy who would become the beloved Chef “Sal” was just 18 years old.
(Appetizer of green peppers from Vesuvius)
“I owe everything to Mrs. Anna from Caffè Napoli”she starts almost moved, she is a living legend in these parts.
“I worked there as a waiter for about 6 months. In short, the first opportunity, the first impact. Then his family opened a restaurant in Brooklyn called “La Tarantella”. That’s where I cook thanks to a very dear person started, a woman I would learn to call “Aunt” Tina. It is from her that I made all the tricks of Neapolitan cuisine my own. An incredible story about him, in turn: he had learned to cook in convents, among the nuns in the 1950s, in an incredible, authentic and authentic Naples. After I cut my teeth, I went back to Caffè Napoli, in the arms of my best friend – “Friend” write it with a capital letter, please! – step brother ever, my marriage confrontation Enzo Auriuso. So, I go, I travel and I come back: it was there in Little Italy that it all started“.
Enzo is here, but he is a step a little further: “Salvatore is the star, the TV star!”smiles while shows off a video from Food Network, America’s most popular food channel, in which Sal wins hands down “Chopped a well-known cooking show thanks to a seafood and mountain pasta,” The absolute best I’ve ever eaten in my life ! ”Screams the hugely popular and stern host Scott Conantauthentic guru with millions of followers who knows just a little bit about pasta (he is at the head of a million dollar empire, ed).
The pride and joy of the truest friendship. Enzo also originated at Caffè Napoli and Enzo also boasts Neapolitan roots: 50 years old, originally from San Giovanni a Teduccio, in the United States since 1989, a time when he was just 17 years old. Pure Enzo has done literally everything, from the dishwasher, to the bartender, to the manager of the restaurant, now manager of Donna Margherita, but already with a thousand other projects in his hands.
(Octopus fresella and sea squid)
“Luca, do you know I told Scott Conant?” Salvatore bursts in againanticipated by a breath of perfume of all the good in the world, with a steaming pot of Genoese in his hands.
“He asked me if I was afraid of his judgment, if I was afraid of losing. And I told him that “I’m from Naples!”that “We Neapolitans are not afraid of anything!”“
He laughs heartily and I, an equally Neapolitan person, am only afraid of… putting on a few pounds, even several.
Explain that the meat cooks strictly for 7 hours, not a minute less. He says that the elegance of Upper East Side, perhaps the most chic neighborhood in New York by farwhen tasting, he rolls up his sleeves, forgets about the shape and focuses on the dish, on the happiness of the substance.
And eat, eat.
“The Genoese does not fight. From the first tests, from the first menu drafts, total success, the most ordered dish. Small variant: meat of first quality rib-eye steak – US beef tips of the highest quality – American yes, but unattainable. Cooked over a very low heat for 7 hours, customers go crazy, even at the idea of such a prolonged, simple, but refined cooking. One day we will do it in every way, we will even make a place for it ad hocHe jokes about it, but up to a certain point.
“Do you know how Donna Margherita was born?”suddenly takes up the history of this place.
“With Enzo and his brother Mario we went out to eat for a lifetime and we have never found a restaurant where we ate as” mama “cooked at home”He pronounces it just like that, with a strong and proud accent, like a true Neapolitan.
«Honest: judging by our taste, and above all by the enthusiasm you breathe in here, well: with all the humility in the world, I would say that in our very little one we succeeded. You sit down, you relax, you let yourself be pampered. And you are as it was in Italy, in the salons of our mothers, in the kitchens of our grandmothers. Just the thought: what a nostalgia, what a wonder! “
Eyes again, the eyes of the scars. The eyes, however, of those who have made it.
Neither went to put it too much in the foreground, but Salvatore had an adventurous life to say the least, full of complex family episodes, of very serious time wasters.
Even business, almost on the verge of unlikely, has had to row against everything and everyone.
Indeed, Donna Margheritaincredible in the incredible, opened its doors a week exactly… before the outbreak of the pandemic.
Reductive, that is to speak of starting uphill.
An almost adverse fate that nevertheless highlights even more the courage, strength and pride of those who never wanted to give up, even in the face of the imponderable, the unpredictable, as well as all the restrictions that have chained New York.
A sort of gigantic “despite everything”.
Between these walls, with a perfect old Vespa suspended at the top of the entrancein reality, in addition to the scents of the kitchen, you can breathe an extraordinary air of energy and rebirth.
“Doctor Marfé, no one has ever given us anything. “Only” decades of battles, hard and sweaty work, and fraternal friendship!“
Another tear escapes him, this time to both of them. While two of the faces of the best Napoli that can exist in these parts meet their eyes.
A Naples full of dreams, but which one above all?
“To make known the Neapolitan cuisine, the poor and popular one, the best one. In New York, but also in America, but also around the world. Everywhere, always at the top of the ingredients, but above all with all the history inside, with all the history of our city inside, of the most beautiful in the world“.
Thanks, Salvatore.
Thank you for coming back.