Heeeello.

I'm Martina, free of ChatGPT here 🤭

I’m originally from Catania, Sicily. I lived 7 years in Milan, 1 in Bruxelles and 6 years ago I moved to Lisbon where I currently live with my girlfriend/wife Paty, and our adopted 4-paws girl, Arizona.

There is one thing I’ve never stopped doing since I’m an adult: I kind of wish it was any type of sport, but actually I’ve always cooked. It relaxes me, it helps me think breath medidate, it allows me to be creative, everyday can be different and it’s rewarding because it’s delicious. It connects me with my roots, and it connects me with new places and cultures I discover. It connects me with many people, indeed if you’re here, you probably have a passion for food as well, ihih.

My mom Anna and my grandma Santina have always cooked delicious homemade dishes, on a daily basis, everyday a different one. My mom is a great friend, generous and lively: she enjoys every meal she prepares, she hosts her friends (also mine, sometimes ahah) on a weekly basis and she’s never tired of preparing food with love. I always joke about her parmigiana tasting the same since forever and say that she froze a huge amount 30 years ago, and since then she serves an unfreezed portion of it. Quite common in Italy, also my father Maurizio loves cooking: he’s the boss of cutting ingredients in small equal pieces, distributing perfectly the amount in the dishes, shaking the salad so the oil is equally spread. My sister Paola is also a great cook, specialised in baking: she is vegetarian, which wasn’t such a challenge since in Sicily there are many traditional vegetarian or vegan dishes. We’re simply a typical modern Italian family.

When my mom started working and my grandma got older, I was super excited with preparing salads, heating the water for the the lunch pasta, even collecting dishes at the end of the meal. When I grew up and moved alone, I started being creative and as I was sick of it, I didn’t eat pasta for around 10 years, experiencing other foods, including international ones. During university years I cooked in all sorts of small minuscule kitchens, the ones of the apartments I lived in and the ones where my friends lived, with few few utensils and also few few ingredients 😆 When Paty and I bought our house in Lisbon, my dream of having a big kitchen with a social peninsula came true as I designed every centimeter of this space.

I have a countless experience of hosting dinners, birthday parties, Easter, Xmas and NY celebrations. I enjoy modern Mediterranean restaurants, I love Middle Eastern cuisine and of course Mexican food (when I go to Mexico one-taco-a-day is my rule), which I also kind of learned cooking thanks to Paty and her family.

I’ve always told my mom she had a talent for cooking and it was a pity she never used it for business. Now, after a small small burnout at the workplace I call home, I realised I am doing the same mistake as my mom 😅 so maybe yeah, this is a good time to try this out, make this unspoken dream come true, and open my house to the public.

My happiness is achieved if I can provide you with a moment of joy, a taste-full experience, and also if any of this can be inspiring for anyone somehow. I’m a little bit scared of failing, but i’m truly more scared of never having in my life the chance to fail this. Sooo I’ll breath, lower my expectations and… andiamo.

If you arrived until here, well thanks a lot! and I hope I’ll get to meet you in person ahah!

One last time, the link to book a dinner here.

GRAZIE!!

Baci, Marti.