Who is the Italian-American celebrity chef best known for her Everyday Italian cooking show and cookbooks, giving an exciting twist to her country’s traditional cuisine?
Born in Rome, she grew up in a large Italian family where the culture of food was a staple in and of itself. As the granddaughter of iconic film producer Dino De Laurentiis, she consistently found herself in the family’s kitchen and spent a great deal of her time at her grandfather’s restaurant, DDL Foodshow.
While she graduated with a degree in Anthropology from the University of California in Los Angeles, her passion for cooking remained. She began her professional training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, specializing in both cuisine and pastry. She then returned to Los Angels and worked in the prestigious Ritz Carlton Fine Dining Room and Wolfgang Puck’s Spago in Beverly Hills. She later founded GDL Foods, a catering company in Los Angeles.
She began her career with the Food Network in 2002, after an executive read an article about her and her family in Food & Wine magazine. Since then, she has become one of Food Network’s most recognizable faces with her half-hour daytime cooking show Everyday Italian, which features quick, healthy, and satisfying Italian dishes. Her primetime show, Weekend Getaways, debuted in 2007 and follows her to popular destinations around the US, exploring its most popular restaurants and activities.
A new series, At Home, gives viewers a glimpse of her Italian roots while also offering a more realistic taste of her California lifestyle.
Her books Family Dinners and Everyday Pasta became No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. A fourth book, Kitchen, hit the shelves late last year.
She is the spokesperson for Barilla, the world’s largest producer and manufacturer of pasta. She has since entrusted the Italian arm of the brand, Academia Barilla, to license and produce four products with her name — extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Tuscan herb mix, and sea salt with fresh lemon zest — which debuted in January 2008 and are sold at various gourmet and specialty stores in the US.
She is also a contributing correspondent on the Today Show where she highlights current trends in travel, cuisine, and lifestyle.
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