Inducted in 2017
Officer-at-Large, Prep Mothers' Club (1983-1985)
Restauranteur; Television Personality; Media Executive; Author
Mother of a Prep Graduate

Whether overseeing operations at one of her restaurants, managing her media career, composing one of her cookbooks, emceeing a Mothers’ Club event back in the day, or simply making meatballs for Sunday dinner with her children and grandchildren, Lidia Bastianich has always approached any undertaking in the same way: with great focus, great conviction, and above all, great passion. And yes, of course, un po’ di sale, del prezzemolo, and un pizzico di peperoncino usually come into play, too.

The daughter of Vittorio Matticchio, a mechanic, and Erminia Pavichievaz Matticchio, a schoolteacher, Lidia Giuliana Matticchio was born in 1947 in the city of Pola in Istria, an ethnically mixed region of Italians, Serbians, and Croatians along the Adriatic Sea. Just weeks before she was born, the Istrian peninsula had been ceded from Italy to Communist Yugoslavia in accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, and so, Lidia would spend her early years behind the Iron Curtain. 

Despite the political turmoil of those years, Lidia’s early life in Istria would leave her with many warm and lasting memories, particularly of life on the small farm and osteria, or local inn, of her resourceful and hard-working grandparents, Giovanni and Rosa. They raised their own pigs and chickens; grew their own olives, fruit, vegetables and herbs; and harvested, butchered, cooked, and cured all the food for both their family and their tavern patrons. Lidia has often said that much of what she has come to understand about food was born in the henhouse, garden, and kitchen of her nonno and nonna.

Nonetheless, life under the Communist regime was oppressive. Under Yugoslavian rule, for instance, to speak Italian was forbidden in public, and, in fact, Lidia, her parents, and her brother Franco were made to go by Motika, the Croatian version of their family name. By 1958, the family had fled to Italy where they lived for a time in a refugee camp before crossing the Atlantic to seek a new life in the United States, eventually settling in Astoria, Queens.

Lidia Matticchio attended William Cullen Bryant High School on 31st Avenue in Long Island City. A driven student, she also worked part-time throughout her teenage years — in bakeries, pizzerias, and also in her family home, taking on cooking responsibilities for her parents who were putting in long hours to build their new life in this country.  After high school, Lidia went to Hunter College on scholarship with the thought of going into the sciences, but she changed her plans in 1966, leaving school to marry Felice Bastianich, a fellow Istrian immigrant who had been working as a maître d' since his arrival in New York. From the start, the newlyweds had two goals in mind: to start a family and to open a restaurant of their own. Lidia and her husband would certainly achieve both. 

The Bastianiches would raise two children in their Queens home, Joseph, Class of 1985, and Tanya — both of whom would go on to make names for themselves in the food world.

With her husband as her business partner, Lidia opened her first restaurant, Buonavia, in 1971, in Forest Hills, Queens.  A second, Villa Seconda, would follow a year later. By the early 1980s, her third, Felidia, was fast gaining a reputation as standout among Manhattan’s East Side dining scene. From that East 58th Street establishment, Bastianich would launch what would grow into an international culinary empire.

Never content to rest on her laurels — or perhaps we should call them bay leaves in this case — during those first busy years at Felidia’s, Lidia somehow found enough hours in a week to continue her education at Queens College, taking courses in anthropology, Italian literature, and food chemistry. She also made the time to be involved in her children’s educations. So, when her son, Joseph, made his way across the Whitestone Bridge to begin his years at Rose Hill in September 1981, it was only natural that Mrs. Bastianich would serve as a member and eventually an officer-at-large on the Fordham Prep Mothers’ Club, lending her time, talent, recipes, and personality to many an event in the early and mid-1980s and beyond.

Since then, Lidia Bastianich has become an internationally renowned restauranteur, an Emmy-winning public television host, a best‐selling cookbook author, and the matriarch of a flourishing food and entertainment enterprise.

At the time of her Prep Hall of Honor induction, Lidia was the owner of four acclaimed New York City restaurants: Felidia, Becco, Esca, and Del Posto, as well as Lidia’s Pittsburgh and Lidia’s Kansas City. She was also part of the team behind Eataly, the artisanal New York Italian food and wine marketplace.

Grateful for the many blessings that have been bestowed upon her — the blessings of family, culture, and success — Lidia Bastianich is well aware of the extraordinary things that are possible when a person is given an opportunity to succeed and is willing to respond to that opportunity with hard work and dedication. To this end, along with her son, Joe and daughter-in-law, Deanna, she established the Bastianich & Friends Scholarship at the Prep in 2014, a fund that provides tuition assistance for deserving young men from families who could not otherwise afford a Fordham Prep education.

This is only one of the ways, alongside her work with UNICEF, UNIFEM, and the Lidia Matticchio Bastianich Foundation, that she shares with others the many extraordinary opportunities she has been given since her days as a refugee decades ago.

While Lidia Bastianich has always been proud to be counted among the ranks of Prep parents, there is perhaps one more title that has given her just as much joy: Prep grandparent.  Her two grandsons, Miles and Ethan Bastianich, are members of the Classes of 2018 and 2020 respectively. Throughout their Shea Hall years. they honorably continued the Bastianich legacy at Fordham Prep, bringing with them their great-great-grandparents’ hardworking spirit, their great-grandparents’ respect for freedom and education, their parents’ entrepreneurial outlook, and of course, all they learned in the garden and kitchen of their beloved nonna.