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The Staten Island restaurant known as Enoteca Maria is now called Nonnas of the World Community. Its signature idea is simple: grandmothers cook dishes tied to their own family and cultural traditions, with the featured cuisine changing according to who is in the kitchen. It is a rotating experience, not a promise that a particular country’s food will be served on any given day.
What is the NYC restaurant where grandmothers cook their native cuisine?
The restaurant is Nonnas of the World Community, formerly Enoteca Maria. The official site describes it as a place where grandmothers from around the globe share traditional recipes. The name Enoteca Maria remains useful when looking up older coverage, but the current official identity is Nonnas of the World Community.
Founder Jody Scaravella created the project around the warmth and food of family meals. Bon Appétit reports that it opened in 2007 with Italian women cooking regional dishes. In 2015, the cooking expanded beyond Italy to include grandmothers from other backgrounds. Scaravella has described the restaurant as a cultural exchange whose byproduct is food, rather than simply a conventional restaurant.
How does the rotating menu work?
A different nonna shares her culture’s cooking, so the menu depends on which cook is scheduled. Bon Appétit describes a changing menu alongside a fixed Italian menu. That means a visit may offer a contrast between the featured cook’s dishes and Italian selections, but a particular nationality or dish is not guaranteed for a future date.
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The practical approach is to check the current reservation information and ask what is planned for the specific seating before booking if a particular cuisine matters to you. Travel + Leisure has also reported that ingredient sourcing can be challenging when cooks request specific products or raw ingredients, another reason not to assume a fixed menu from general descriptions.
Where is it, and what does a visit cost?
The restaurant is at 27 Hyatt Street in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, according to Travel + Leisure’s July 6, 2026 update. As checked October 4, 2026, the official reservation notice lists a three-course meal at $87 per person, with tax and a 20% gratuity included. The notice says the restaurant is open Friday through Sunday, limits seatings to two hours, and allows cancellations up to six hours before the seating. These booking terms and prices can change, so verify them in the official reservation flow before making plans.
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- Ideal for Gifting
- Ideal for a bookworm
- Compact for travelling
Travel + Leisure reported four seating times and recommended booking in advance. Because the available times and menu are visit-specific, use the live booking page for current availability rather than relying on a past schedule.
Why is the restaurant called a project?
Scaravella’s motivation was rooted in the memory of his family’s meals and his grandmother’s kitchen. The restaurant’s model gives cooks room to share recipes connected to their own backgrounds, while diners encounter that cooking as a shared meal. This is the project’s stated cultural premise, not a claim that any particular social outcome has been independently measured.
Bon Appétit also reports that cook Melanie Mandel, who makes Ashkenazi food, spoke about the joy of feeding people. The restaurant’s story later reached a wider audience through the film Nonnas, which Bon Appétit reported premiered on Netflix and drew more than 15 million viewers in its first week; that is a reported first-week figure, not a current viewership total.
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Readers interested in the family-recipe side of the story can look for Nonna’s House, a cookbook by Scaravella that Bon Appétit reports was released in 2015. For the restaurant’s present identity and booking details, start with the official Nonnas of the World Community site. For background on its beginnings and cookbook, see Bon Appétit’s feature; for reported location and visit details, see Travel + Leisure’s July 2026 update.
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Best Value
- It can be a gift option
- Comes with secure packaging
- Helpful in various ways
Rank #4
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