About Us

Jim Russo I’m all of three years old, standing on a wooden kitchen chair at the tub-sized white porcelain sink on the second floor of our three-decker in the Field’s Corner section of Dorchester. While Aunt Lena cleans and cuts squid she tosses a medallion of the translucent flesh in her mouth, passes one to me, and of course, one to Major. Only too eager to please his guardian, like all good dogs, Major quickly devours his gift of food. I, having just witnessed this curious ceremonial process twice, immediately followed suit. So forty years later, when sushi became the rage, I’m thinking “What’s the big deal? Doesn’t everyone eat raw fish?”

We lived on the first floor, Dad, Mom, and my older sister Paula. Uncle Jim, Aunt Fran, and their two kids, Janice and Peter were on the second. Aunt Lena and a constantly changing number of family members that my Aunt Fran would bring over from the old country would reside on the third until they could assimilate to the local culture, get work, and find places of their own.

It was all very normal urban living: a tiny swath of manicured lawn bordering an oversized, manured vegetable garden; only fruit trees and grapevines providing shade. Aunt Lena would pick a perfect tomato, wash it with the hose, liberally dose it with salt from the shaker always kept in her apron pocket, and we would eat it like it was the best apple in the world. Uncle Jim and Dad would exhume the fig trees every Jim Russo Spring, only to bury it again each Fall after we had enjoyed the bounty of fruits that it produced. I still don’t know how many things can be created from figs, but fresh, or cooked down with pinoli and Marsala and baked in Aunt Fran’s cookies were my favorite.

Not long after, we all moved. It was only another couple of miles further from the North End of Boston; an Italian ghetto and the first American home for my Sicilian grandparents. I didn’t know why we moved, because now we had to drive to be together. Every Sunday, no matter what, thirty to forty family and compare would gather together. The women cooked. The men played briscola or bocce. And my cousins do what kids do; play, fight, and bother the adults until we all sat for an almost never ending feast. Boy that food was good!

Starting with the soup, then the antipasti, homemade pasta, then the roasts and vegetables, the finally the salad. We couldn’t eat any more. Until dessert, that is. As if my mother was the best cook in the world, she was an even better baker, complete with all of the fancy touches that would just make us all drool. And as the proud son of this incredibly talented pastry chef, I lent my assistance by licking mixing bowls and eating the cut off edges that my mother would never present to our guests.

As things get passed on to generations it is the traditions and recipes that are revered the most. Mom’s sfinge, that my twin cousin Joe and I make every Saint Joseph’s Day, Nonne’s gnocchi, Aunt Jennie’s manicotti, Aunt Mary’s chicken, and all of the heritage from the Russo, Trifiro, Costa, Ciccolo, LaMacchia, Salemi, and Mastrocola clans are respectfully treasured and respected. Messina, Sicily is the ancestral home from which my grandparents emigrated. They carried little on their backs, but much in their hearts and minds. With strong Greek, Arab, and Italian influence in the ports of Messina, a wide spectrum of flavors traveled with them to America. Chef Jim

When Paula got married, Mom taught her, and later my sister Barbara (her birth probably the reason we moved from Fields Corner, and my cousin James for Aunt Fran) to make sauce. Paula (aka “the good sister”) has taken over the annual Christmas Eve dinner, complete with the feast of the seven fishes. A gourmet cook and baker in her own right, she’ll present a finish to the banquet with as much as twenty different confections, cookies, and cakes. Barbara – Queen of the Eggplant – is always willing to deconstruct a recipe to add her own flair. And we never fail to be in awe of her abundance of culinary wizardry. Me, I’m the daredevil; never a recipe; always taking an ingredient and seeing what I can do, and how many ways to do it; and how to make it grand. But the underlying component, carried from that seaport city in Sicily, in all of our cooking is always our sense of pride in the food that we present and share with our family and friends.

In this taverna, I wish to extend these hospitalities to you. Meet me at Messina!