Donna Lennard recently celebrated 25 years of Il Buco, an amazing achievement considering that her restaurants are still some of the hottest eateries in the most competitive culinary city in the country.
She might not be a native Italian, but the savvy restauranteur was a pioneer in showcasing high quality artisanal Italian products in her seasonal menus and led the way in sustainable cuisine with her meticulous research of locally sourced fresh ingredients. The interiors of her restaurants, two in New York and one in Ibiza, were created with a similar obsession for beautiful and pure materials, creating a distinct rustic and chic atmosphere. Her passion for Italian craftsmanship also inspired her homeware line, Il Buco Vita, featuring selected Italian artisans and a New York City flagship store in the Bowery.
Donna Lennard (ph Emanuele Ceramics)
Donna Lennard’s world is now illustrated in her latest project, Il Buco: Stories & Recipes, a book written in collaboration with writer and editor Joshua David Stein, where she shares her travels to Italy visiting the farmers, artisans, and winemakers who collaborated with her through the years, along with 100 of Il Buco’s recipes. It includes signature dishes from successful New York chefs that her restaurants helped launch through the years, such as Jody Williams’ Ravioli di Ricotta, Ignacio Matto’s Black Kale Salad, Justin Smillies’ Bucatini Cacio Pepe and Pan Roasted Gnocchi, and Sara Jenkins’s Porchetta alla Romana. It also features Spanish recipes, from salt cod fritters to gazpacho, reminiscent of Il Buco’s debut as a tapas eatery before gearing to an Italian menu, and a great section on breads, including their scrumptious pizza bianca.
Il Buco: Stories & Recipes
During a late breakfast at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria a week before Covid hit the city, Donna shared with me her fascinating journey from a young filmmaker to a successful entrepreneur and tastemaker who fell in love with Italy and brought the best of it to New York.
You are an ambassador of Italian style, but you are not Italian. What brought you to Italy in the first place? I am Italian by osmosis. I went to Italy when I was 17 years old, and lived with a family in Sardinia, it was an amazing experience. I graduated from college, went to film school, fell in love with a filmmaker who tragically passed away from an aneurysm right before our wedding. Out of this crazy tragedy, my life went into a turnaround and about a year later I met a crazy Italian guy working as a bartender in a restaurant while I was trying to produce a screenplay written by my fiancé. I fell in love with this charismatic man who was a food purist, a world traveler, and an adventurer. At first, we traveled all over Spain, where he was an expat for a while. When we started Il Buco, it was in fact a Tapas Bar. Eventually, we went back to Italy and got in touch with his family in Foligno, in Umbria, and I entered the whole culture that I had experienced when I was a teenager, and that always felt like a part of me. Even my late fiancé was of Italian heritage, his mother was first-generation Italian. She would do the Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas. She would cook for me and cuddle me, that energy was in the family. His family is still a very big part of my life, his brother painted all the walls of Alimentari and Il Buco, where he will do soon a big mural.
What drew you to Italy? I am a Taurus, an earth sign, and I love all that is natural, I don’t wear makeup, that culture appeals to me. I love natural woods, things that are handmade, that’s my world, what I like to surround myself with, what makes me feel good. Alberto was the apprentice of a chef of Foligno when he was in his thirties who was a hunter-gatherer and an ingredient forager of maximum level. He was hunting birds and wild boars that they served in the restaurant and had a wonderful vegetable garden. Even in the nine years I lived with Alberto in our apartment on avenue C, we cooked in a fireplace and it was very much all about sourcing the right stuff. He spent years searching for the right olive oil, vinegar, salt, we would go with my son and visit the producers and taste everything and these people would be part of our lives. Il Buco Alimentari was a way to put all those things together.
How was it being a female in the food industry? For me, it’s fabulous. I don’t have a struggle as a woman in the industry because I didn’t have to struggle with men for what I did. Interestingly I have surrounded myself with more and more women, like my director of operations, my general manager, and new chef de cuisine at Alimentari and the team at Il Buco Vita is mostly women. I don’t feel it’s a disadvantage, I don’t think about it, I think that I am a business woman not a woman in the business. The only time I might have thought about it was when I was working with a chef that didn’t like to be told what to do by a woman. If I change my tone they would react in a way that they wouldn’t if I was a man. But in 25 years it happened once or twice, it wasn’t the rule. And one of my all-time favorite chefs was the worst offender but he was the longest working chef in my restaurant and we are still friends. It’s who he is and you just don’t take it personally. I think women are more and more empowered in the restaurant business, and I hope to be an example for women to say “Donna is doing it why can’t I do it too.”
Where do you shop for food for your home? In the basement of my restaurant! We get the best here. It comes straight from the farmers. I would go to Union Square Market but I get everything here. This is what I feed my son, but of course, he still loves Blue Ribbon fried chicken and Shake Shack.
Your perfect meal? Buckwheat bread, homemade turned butter, and our anchovies. I am also a big fish eater, I love our branzino al sale (branzino baked in a salted crust).
Close to our table, balsamic vinegar started dripping from the suspended wood barrels. She picked some with her fork, offered it, and I obliged. “It is divine,” she said. She wasn’t wrong.