Hello. Nice to meet you.
I still have a hard time believing that my job is writing about delicious food, beautiful places, and interesting people, but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years.
I grew up between the United States and Italy and eventually moved here full-time in 1988. Back then, my path looked very different. I was an academic, working on a dissertation on sixteenth-century garden architecture. But somewhere between the Medici archives and real life, everything shifted. I met my husband, Domenico, and realized I didn’t want to return to the U.S. to teach art history. Instead, I stayed in Italy, got married, had two daughters, and began an entirely new career.
That career started in publishing. I wrote for magazines like Architectural Digest, The World of Interiors, Art & Antiques, and Bon Appétit, and went on to author nine books about Italian food and culture, including Eating Rome, Eating My Way Through Italy, and The Italian Table. Along the way, I even created a best-selling app and a few viral YouTube videos.
In 2009, as publishing began shifting from print to digital, I launched my blog. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what it would become, so I simply started documenting my daily life in Italy, what I was cooking, eating, seeing, and learning. While I initially wrote about design, travel, and shopping, food naturally took center stage. It always has. For me, food is where culture, history, and everyday life intersect, and writing about it has always come easily.
Over the years, I’ve embraced just about every platform. These days, you’ll mostly find me on Instagram and Facebook, TikTok as well, where I’m told I’ve earned a bit of a “queen” status.
In 2012, I took another leap and began leading food tours in Rome. At the time, it was a slightly unusual idea, people hiring someone to tell them what to eat, but it quickly proved to be the right path. What began as small market tours grew into week-long culinary journeys across Italy, from Sicily to Puglia, Umbria, Tuscany, Piedmont, Sardinia and Emilia-Romagna.
Eventually, this evolved into my company, Via Rosa, which I run with my two daughters, Sophie and Emma. “Via” means road in Italian, and Rosa was my mother-in-law’s name. For us, Via Rosa represents a way of traveling that goes beyond the obvious, discovering the roads that lead to the traditions that shape life in Italy, especially through food.
Because food here is never just food. It’s about who grows it, who makes it, who sells it, and who cooks it, and ultimately, who you share it with. Around the table, stories are told, connections are made, and something meaningful happens. That sense of community is at the heart of everything we do.
This newsletter is an extension of that same idea.
I started it in 2015 as a way to share more of my life in Italy, virtually, for those who can’t be here in person. Each month, I write about what I’ve been cooking, eating, discovering, and learning and where I’ve been. You’ll find stories, recipes, travel journals, recommendations on what to eat, read, watch, and listen to, along with plenty of photographs, I’m a photographer too.
If you’d like to experience Italy with me, you can do it in two ways, right here through this newsletter, or in real life on one of my Via Rosa tours.
Either way, you’re invited to the table.
Why Subscribe?
If you decide to upgrade to a paid Premium Newsletter you get SO MUCH MORE! In addition to the regularly scheduled monthly email , you’ll receive access to:
First access to my tours which sell out fast
Detailed Travel Guides
Travel Tips
Special Recipes and Menus for your own Italian Table.
Know someone else who might like this newsletter?
I hope you can join me one day here in Italy!
