90 Year Old Nonna Working in Pizza Joint

Story from Stuff

Maria “Nonna” Esposito is polite but firm when asked about her lasagne recipe.

“No, no, no. No. I have kept it for 70 years, I’m going to take it with me when I go.”

On Wednesdays, the 90-year-old spends a few hours in her son’s Nelson eatery, Salvito’s Pizza Bar, making trays of cannelloni and lasagne.

She works for love – and companionship.

Making Italian food requires fresh, quality ingredients, says Nonna.

MARTIN DE RUYTER/STUFF

“I’m not on the payroll, I get lonely at home, so I’m here for company. I’m very old – I do bits, and then I sit down.”

Nonna grew up in Grumento Nova, in central southern Italy. The area was impoverished, with little work. When Nonna was four, her father died from pneumonia, and her mother rolled up her sleeves, working “like a man” to support the family with subsistence farming.

When Nonna’s uncle, who had emigrated to New Zealand, urged the 20-year-old to follow suit, she took a chance, embarking on a month-long sea voyage to Sydney (“I was sick, sick, sick”) and then a flight to Auckland.

“I’d never travelled before and I never seen​ the sea before. I wrote to my uncle saying, ‘if I knew it was so far away, I would never come!’”

On her second day in the country, Nonna met her future husband, Kiwi-Italian Salvatore Esposito, in Wellington. She was on her way to Nelson, he was on holiday. In Nelson, Salvatore sought her out at church and the couple began spending time together.

Nonna remembers attending Salvatore’s brother’s wedding, where he was best man.

“[Salvatore] had a lovely Napoli accent, and a tailor-made suit with a carnation. He had beautiful wavy hair.”

“I’m not on the payroll, I get lonely at home, so I’m here for company. I’m very old – I do bits, and then I sit down."

They danced, and he sang a love song. “Between being homesick and that song, it went straight to my heart, I loved him straight away.”

After they were married – a union that lasted until Salvatore’s death in 2000 – Nonna began to cook, perfecting the Neapolitan dishes her husband liked, and growing the vegetables that weren’t typically found locally: oregano, eggplant, peppers.

“Nobody used to like peppers or the smell of garlic,” she said.

Nonna's son John Esposito, and her grandsons Salvi and Vito, are continuing her tradition of Italian cooking .

In fact, New Zealand food in those days was “terribly boring ... overcooked vegetables, plain food.”

Tea, which Nonna disliked, was the drink of choice – chicory or roast barley stood in for coffee.

Cooking daily for her three sons, her husband, her uncle and her mother (who eventually followed her to Nelson), Nonna got plenty of practice in the kitchen.

When her children left home, Nonna further honed her skills with a job at a restaurant, where she made lasagne and dishes like beef stroganoff.