Rosa Ferretti was born in 1931 in a small town outside Naples. She cooked the way people cooked in southern Italy in the middle of the 20th century: with what was available, without waste, and with a patience that modern kitchens have largely abandoned.
She emigrated to the United States in 1962 with her husband Enzo and their two children, eventually settling in a suburb outside Chicago where there was already an Italian community. She kept cooking Italian food -- not because she was trying to preserve a heritage, but because it was the only food she knew how to make. It never occurred to her to cook anything else.
Anthony in the Kitchen
Anthony Ferretti, Rosa's grandson, grew up spending summers in that house. His earliest cooking memories are standing on a step stool next to Nonna Rosa while she made pasta. She would narrate what she was doing, but not in any instructional way -- just talking through the process the way you would explain something to someone standing next to you. "See how the dough comes together? Not too wet. You can tell by how it feels." That kind of instruction. He absorbed it more than he learned it.
By the time he was in his early twenties and working in professional kitchens in Chicago, he realized that most of what he knew about pasta -- the feel of proper dough, the timing, the texture you were aiming for -- came from those summers in Nonna Rosa's kitchen. Formal culinary training gave him technique and precision. Nonna Rosa gave him the instincts.
The Recipes That Are Still on the Menu
When Anthony opened Nonna's Kitchen in 2018, he made a deliberate choice about which dishes to put on the menu. The pappardelle al cinghiale was Nonna Rosa's recipe, translated from her version with hare to wild boar because that is what was available in Texas. The lasagna is her recipe, exactly as she made it -- eight layers, meat ragu, scratch bechamel, the specific ratio of parmigiano on top that gets those crispy edges. The tiramisu is hers. The arancini are hers.
He has not changed any of them. Not because he thinks he could not improve them, but because the point is not to improve them. The point is to make them exactly the way she made them, in a restaurant that carries her name, so that people eating in East Austin in 2026 can taste something that was being made in a kitchen outside Naples in the 1950s.
What Rosa Would Think
Anthony has been asked this question in interviews. His answer is usually some version of: she would not have understood the fuss. She made this food every day of her adult life. It was not special to her -- it was just what dinner looked like.
She passed away in 2019, the year after the restaurant opened. She came to Austin once, in September 2018, a few months after they opened. Anthony made her the lasagna. She ate it quietly, and when she was done, she said the bechamel was slightly thick. He agreed. He adjusted the recipe after she left.
Rosa Ferretti never wrote down her recipes. Everything she knew, she taught by standing in the kitchen with someone who was paying attention. Anthony paid attention. The restaurant is the result.
"She said the bechamel was slightly thick. She was right. I adjusted it the following week."
-- Anthony Ferretti, on Nonna Rosa's one visit to the restaurant