A James Beard Award winner and chef/partner of Gianna Restaurant in New Orleans, Rebecca Wilcomb spent her childhood visiting her mother’s family in the Veneto. Gianna, part of the Link Restaurant Group, opened last April, and the James Beard Foundation has just named it a semifinalist for the 2020 Best New Restaurant award nomination.
At Gianna, Wilcomb adds a New Orleans riff to the cuisine of her heritage, fusing an Italian sensibility with local flavors and bounty. Here she chats with us about her restaurant, her favorite cookbooks, her travels in Italy, and the importance of supporting other women.
I know you have family in the Veneto region, but is there anything else that drew you to Italian cuisine?
My mom is from Italy. She always cooked Italian food and we always visited my nonna in the Veneto—she’s the best cook I know! Italian food has always been a part of my life. When I started cooking professionally, all of my food naturally had an Italian sensibility to it. I love Italian food because it’s focused on the quality of the ingredients. I’m lucky enough to work with great farmers and we have a great forager, fishermen, and dairy folk who provide us with the best ingredients. Not doing too much to the ingredient is how I’ve always cooked, but that’s also been the Italian sensibility in me, too.
What are some of the ingredients you get from the local farmers, fishermen, etc. that come into play regularly on your menu?
Definitely radicchio. About three or four years ago, I met with our forager and she asked me what ingredients I wanted and what I would like the farmers to start trying to grow, and radicchio was one of the many on the list. I’m so excited that ingredient is available because we don’t live in a climate that’s ideal for it—it’s hot, humid, and tropical here, but the farmers found a way to grow beautiful delicious varieties without them being too bitter. For me, it’s a miracle vegetable that we get to work with all the time that I never thought that would be possible. The fresh fish, we’re right near the Gulf of Mexico, so we have lots of fish available to us. We work with several local fishermen, and one is a spearfisherman who catches large cobia for us and we have another one who gets amazing grouper, snappers, and jacks, and all the great tuna, shrimp, and oysters in the Gulf—I feel so lucky to have so much fresh seafood available every day. We use a shrimper who I call every night, and he’ll go out, catch the shrimp and bring them right to us. Everything is at our door in about an hour or so after being caught. It’s nice to be so directly involved in the ingredients you’re getting. Water to fisherman to dock to restaurant...there’s no middle man.
Meatballs
How did Gianna come about?
I was the chef at Herbsaint, which is part of the Link Restaurant Group, and ten of us from the company took a trip to Italy together. We got a villa outside of Bologna and spent ten days traveling around. We had an outdoor wood-burning oven, went to the market and got a lot of food and we spoke about opening an Italian restaurant. Obviously, my cooking has always been rooted in my Italian heritage so my food was already leaning towards Italian. After that, we took several research trips together as a group. I try to go back as often as I can because my nonni live there as do my aunts, uncles, and cousins, so I’d see the family then visit the group wherever we went. I spent most of my childhood going to the Veneto and not traveling too far out of there. As an adult, I’m trying to see more of Italy. I’ve been to Rome and Campania, and I’ve spent some time in the Lunigiana a few years ago which was awesome. Next on the list is Piemonte and Sardinia. I want to go all over and also revisit places I’ve already been—there’s so much to explore and so much food to taste
Tell us about the food at Gianna.
People ask me all the time what kind of food I serve at Gianna and I always say that it’s all Italian. It’s not regionally specific. It’s influenced by Creole, the Veneto, Sicily—every place I’ve ever been and had Italian food, whether it’s a restaurant in New York where I had Italian food or in Rome. It’s food that I grew up on, my sous chefs are influenced by or grew up on, its food that intrigues me that I read about in old and new Italian cookbooks. It’s a little bit of everything, firmly rooted in Southern Louisiana as most of our ingredients are local. I would probably describe my food as New Orleans Italian.
Sweet milk tartufo with amarena cherries, walnuts & honey
One special component of Italian food is its versatility. Many people have their own preconceived notions of what it is or what it should be, but it’s able to take on its own shape and form depending on its surroundings.
Exactly. I feel like everyone grew up eating Italian food in America so everyone has their own idea of what it is. People come here and say the food reminds them of something their grandmother made while others say how it’s such a different take on Italian food and how they have never had Italian food like that before. I love getting both of these comments. It’s a pretty special thing to have guests who are both nostalgic and surprised.
What are some of your most popular dishes?
A lasagnetta with spinach pasta sheets and ragù made from beef, veal, guanciale, chicken liver, and lots of bay leaves. It's very old-school Bologna style with large chunks of meat cooked down for four hours, béchamel, and Grana Padano —it’s all kind of folded over itself. It’s very popular—I might cause a riot if I took it off the menu! Right now we have spaghetti with mussels made with white wine and leeks, which we get from the farm, that people are loving. We have a giant wood-burning oven and cook a lot in there. We make an eggplant parmigiana inspired by an Italian restaurant here in New Orleans, Tony Angello’s, which closed after Tony Angello passed away, as well as the one we had in Campania at Antonio Caggiano’s winery. At Tony Angello’s it was called Eggplant Tina and when we tasted the parmigiana at the winery, we were like it’s Eggplant Tina! We also have delicious desserts like candied orange and hazelnut semifreddo.
Gianna's team
Besides travel, what else keeps you inspired?
I cook at home and that inspires me. Cooking at home and cooking in the restaurant are two different things. I dine out a lot and I also read a lot of cookbooks both old and new.
Do you have a favorite cookbook or one that you keep finding yourself returning to?
I have a lot but my top three are ‘Mediterranean Feast’ [by Clifford Wright], which I like for the stories, history, and nostalgia, ‘Cooking by Hand’ [by Paul Rotoli] for technique and simplicity, and ‘My Calabria’ [by Rosetta Costantino]. She uses a lot of the same ingredients that grow well here, like eggplant and chilies, so I’m really inspired by her book and by Calabrian food in general.
The theme of International Women’s Day this year is “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women's Rights.” As a female chef, how does that speak to you?
It’s a pretty profound time that we live in, so a theme like that means I keep doing what I’m doing. That I keep supporting and pushing the women around me, create opportunities for them, push doors open for them, and make sure they stay open. I hold everyone around me and myself accountable for what they say and do because everything we say and do can help change the world around us. I live that and it’s important that the people around me do that, too, but we all need to hold each other accountable. We’re all individuals that make up a whole and we actually do have an influence on the world around us. Even though powers that be might tell us that we don’t, we do and it’s important to keep pushing through all of the murkiness. That being said, as a business owner, I think that maternity and paternity leave for me is at the center of the argument in creating equality among the sexes. It’s very important that we all start viewing it as something that will help drive the idea of equality to happen hopefully for this generation and absolutely for future ones. The fight wasn’t started that long ago and we still have a long way to go.
Homemade tortellini in broth
What advice would you give to aspiring young chefs?
You choose and you decide what happens to you. Every decision you make, every place you decide to work, who you choose to work for, and who you employ, you choose who to surround yourself with. Don’t work for people whose philosophies don’t align with yours, who don’t believe everyone doesn’t have equal opportunity or who won’t support you or who will hold you back based on your gender or what they think you’re capable of not capable of. That’s what I always did. I was always careful about where I worked and I don’t have any of those stories a lot of women do because I tried really hard not to put myself in those positions.
Some people might take a job because they feel something else might not come along, but it’s okay to say no if something about it doesn’t feel right to you.
Yes. Or people like to work at the best restaurant or kitchen around town, but you might not get much out of it and you might not get back what you put in if the philosophies are not in line with yours. Or if you’re in an abusive environment, that’s not good for your career. You can learn so much more from people and better places that are going to inspire and make you better. Seek out those places—don’t ever settle. There's too much on the line and at stake. Life is too short.