Five years ago, when we told our family that we were leaving behind four generations of restaurant business in Staten Island and Brooklyn to open our own shop in Manhattan, Fran’s mother said to us: “They’re gonna chew you up and spit you out.” She told us that we were gonna lose all our money, that we had no idea what we were doing, and that there was a pizzeria on every corner in the city.

But we did it anyway. We borrowed the cash, we built it ourselves, and we stuck to what we knew—pizza and beer. After being open for just a few weeks, there was already a line around the corner. People would ask who our publicist was, and all we’d say was, “What’s a publicist?” We were doing what we did best and what we loved to do: feedin’ people and feedin’ ’em well.

Then we started cooking other food besides pizza. Francis would bring in a couple of heads of cauliflower, mix ’em with some cheese, eggs, and parsley, fry ’em up into little pancakes on an electric griddle, and put ’em out on the counter. People were flippin’ out for them too. They’d sell out as soon as they came outta the fryer. So we started doing the same thing with Aunt Loulou’s Escarole Fritters, Grandma’s Meatballs, Stuffed Artichokes, and Fried Rice Balls.

This wasn’t the food that you see on fancy Italian menus, and it sure wasn’t the stuff they eat in Italy. We might have Italian roots, but we’ve never even been to Italy (except that one time). The only Italian words we know are the bad ones from when our grandfather would yell at us. We’re Italian American, and this was the food we grew up eating in our homes in Staten Island—or as we like to call it, “Staten Italy.”

You know the place—that little island off the boot of Manhattan where you can’t swing a cannoli without hittin’ an Italian. It’s that special part of the world where one side of the street is your motha’s brotha’s sister-in-law and your fourteen cousins and the other is your best friend Joey and his fourteen cousins. It’s where your mother or grandmother is out hollerin’ at six p.m. every night for you to come in for suppa. Dinner is always an event, a production. It’s never about grabbin’ something quick because food is a big deal here, nothin’ but the best. Sitting down to eat all together is like going to church—the most important thing on that particular day. The house smells like sizzling garlic and oil—because Grandma always says she can make anything taste good with garlic and oil—and on the table are things like Broccoli Rabe and Sausage, Lucky Clams with Parsley and Garlic, Pork Cutlets with Vinegar Peppers, Chicken Rollatini, and Broiled Legs and Thighs with Lemon.

Whether you’re Italian or not, this is the kind of food we all grew up eating. It’s the ultimate comfort food. It’s why people line up around the block to eat at our six restaurants, and it’s definitely why two cousins from Staten Island could go from peeling garlic in their mothers’ shop to having a hit show on the Cooking Channel. It’s a hot, steaming bowl of Mussels Marinara with Linguine, served up with a side of nostalgia. Okay, so maybe your mother was doling out peanut butter and jelly and chicken à la king, but when you went out to eat? We’re willing to bet that your favorite meals were the ones you ate at that old-school Italian joint—the one with the heaping plates of pasta smothered with red sauce and topped with fistfuls of grated cheese.

This book is our way of sharing a little slice of Staten Island with the rest of the world. It’s the recipes and traditions that have been handed down through four generations of our family, recipes as full of Italian-American flavor and personality as the kitchens in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens and Staten Island where they were originally made. This is definitely not some kind of wannabe-authentic Red Sauce situation written by a couple of guys who are classically trained in some foo-foo cuisine. For us, this is what was on our table growing up, plain and simple, and it’s what we now serve for a living. It’s the fish suppers that were always on Friday; the beans and macaroni that were on the table two, three days a week; the Sunday gravy that was cooked up with neck bones, short ribs, and braciole that was outta this world. It’s the huge pots of crab sauce our grandpa Dominick cooked down at the docks, the sandshark that everybody else was throwing back in the water but that we grilled up with a red wine gravy, the gigantic icebox cakes Aunt Loulou always made, and the roast beef our grandma drilled a hole through so she could stuff it full of garlic and parsley. It was the meatballs we ate with Italian bread on Sunday, and then ate again on Wonder Bread for lunch on Monday. And it’s definitely the cold eggplant. Because no matter what was being cooked or what we were celebrating—Easter, Christmas, Lent, your birthday, Tuesday—that eggplant was always on the friggin’ table.

Grandma Connie and Grandpa Dominick in their hero shop

Basille’s on Forest Avenue in Staten Island

Dolly with Sal’s father, Vito, and Aunt Loulou

Artichoke Pizza on 14th Street;

Grandma Connie with Sal’s father, Vito, and Uncle Mikey

Diners at Basille’s in Staten Island

These recipes are our childhood memories. Every time we eat these things, it takes us back to when Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett was on the radio, and we kids would be waitin’ in the dining room for the adults to bring out dinner, or hanging around in the kitchen, eating Cauliflower Fritters right outta the pan. Our grandpa Dominick would be manning that macaroni pot, taking it so serious, always asking, “Should I turn the water on yet? Should I put the salt in yet?” He’d be making five, six pounds of spaghetti because everybody in our family cooked for an army. We didn’t know how to cook for two people. When our grandpa made a sandwich, he used the whole loaf of bread. Thing was, he loved feedin’ people. And if there’s one thing that we got from him, it’s that. In the eighties, he owned a hero shop on Clinton Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Every Sunday after cooking us a huge meal, he’d go for a few hours and feed the homeless. Because that’s what he loved to do. Even the pigeons around his shop were too fat to fly—true story. He’d feed them all his leftover bread, and we swear those pigeons got to be the largest birds you’ve ever seen in your life. As he got older and had more time on his hands, he cooked even more. He started jarring tomatoes, pickling eggplant, and makin’ bread crumbs. It got to the point where Sal’s parents’ enormous three-car garage was packed to the fenders with all this stuff. When Grandpa was around, you weren’t leaving his presence without a jar of eggplant or tomatoes or something. And after he was gone, we were still eating his eggplant five, six years later. We’d put some vinegar and oil on it and have it with some Italian bread and cheese and olives. It was his legacy to us.

For us, it’s always been about food. When we were rewarded, it was with food. When we were bad, we got no food. Or sometimes we got even better food because we got a beatin’ and then our parents would feel guilty. It’s in our family’s blood, all this food. After arriving on Ellis Island at the turn of the century, our great-grandfather opened the Mona Lisa pastry shop down on Court Street in Brooklyn. In the fifties, our grandparents opened their first little sandwich shop. Grandpa Dominick ran the place while also working as a longshoreman down at the piers. But he went into the hero business full-time when the shop got so popular that our uncles opened four more within a two-mile radius.

Eventually, our mothers opened a few restaurants on their own with their husbands, and in 1995, came together to run Basille’s down on Forest Avenue in Staten Island. It seated 110 people—160 in the summer—and served New York–style pizza and home-style Italian-American dishes made with good ingredients, fresh sauces, and generations of experience. It was the kinda place where you knew all the customers by name, and they’d be bringing in pictures of their kids and their new babies and whatnot. Our grandparents would open in the daytime, peel the eggplant, roll the meatballs, season the bread crumbs, cook all the sauce; and then Sal’s mom, Bella, would come in at night to work the line. Fran’s mom waitressed, and we would bounce between doing our homework in the apartment upstairs and doing all the jobs the grown-ups didn’t want to do. In the restaurant business you gotta start somewhere—either by peelin’ garlic or openin’ clams. We always got the openin’ clams job, so by the time we were twelve, we could snap open clams so fast, forgettaboutit. We’d help slice onions, grind tomatoes for sauce, and bus tables. When we wanted to start our own shop, the food business was runnin’ through our veins too.

Now we’re sharing these family traditions with you. It’s our way of saying, “Try this, eat that, sample these,” the way our grandpa Dominick was always doin’. There’s nothing fancy about this food. But when you put it all together, these recipes make some of the most delicious things you eva ate. And that just feels like our home. So pull up a chair and pour a glass of Dewar’s, because you don’t know what you’ve been missin’.

—Francis “Fran” Garcia and Sal “Sally” Basille