The true story that inspired 'Nonnas'

NBC News

13-05-2025

This ain't your parent's cooking. But it might be your grandma's.
'Nonnas,' a new film that released on Netflix on May 9, stars Vince Vaughn as Joe Scaravella, a real-life figure who founded an Italian restaurant on Staten Island called Enoteca Maria to honor his late mother, sister and his own nonna.
But the restaurant has a unique twist — to honor his family, Scaravella hires a staff of rotating grandmothers to cook.
Now, Scaravella's original vision, which debuted nearly 20 years ago, will be seen on a silver screen.
'Eight years ago, they bought the rights to my life, which is a little bizarre,' Scaravella tells TODAY.com. 'I'm a little taken aback by it all; it's a little difficult to digest.'
Scaravella calls the director, Stephen Chbosky, 'amazing,' the actors 'incredible,' and says he 'loves' the writer Liz Maccie.
In the film, Vaughn plays Scaravella, who appeared on Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist on May 4 to discuss his connection with the film.
'I really got moved when I read this script and the way that it was really focusing on the grandmothers,' Vaughn said on TODAY. 'These matriarchs of a family that did so much and loved people, and that they get to continue that process, this craft that they're great at, which is cooking, and still loving to feed people and create that atmosphere.'
The film adaptation follows Scaravella's journey to create his restaurant. Manganiello plays opposite Vaughn as Bruno Tropeano, Scaravella's real-life best friend and champion.
The four nonnas featured in the film are portrayed by Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire and Susan Sarandon. The Italian grandmothers rediscover themselves through cooking at Enoteca Maria.
The movie-making process has been a lot to process for Scaravella. He got another shock when he found out Vaughn would star as Scaravella in the film.
'It's too unreal to think that Vince (Vaughn) would play me,' Scaravella said on Sunday Sitdown. 'I still don't believe it, really.'
During the movie premiere at the Paris Theater in New York on April 30, Scaravella got to see what was once a grief-driven vision that turned into a movie-worthy script. Scaravella said on Sunday Sitdown that he 'cried through the whole movie.'
'The audience, you can hear them crying and laughing and gasping, and it was just received so well that it's really, it's going to be an amazing hit,' Scaravella said.
While Scaravella initially started the restaurant to honor his Italian heritage, hiring exclusively Sicilian grandmothers, Enoteca Maria has been featuring grandmothers from international backgrounds since 2015.
The kitchen has welcomed in grandmothers from Bangladesh, Algeria, Trinidad, Syria, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Belarus, Poland and France.
The restaurant features a fixed Italian menu along with food from whichever grandmothers are cooking that night to represent their culture. There's even a 'nonna's calendar' that details which grandmothers are in house on a given night.
'The Greek lady, you know, that's her food. She grew up with that. She knows exactly what that's supposed to taste like,' Scaravella tells TODAY.com. 'And the Italian lady, and so on and so forth. I think that these ladies are the source and so they really are able to represent the culture, and that's what we do.'
With the big release, Scaravella says there are plans to do a sequel called 'Nonnas of the World.' Scaravella has even started developing an idea to do a television series.