savor — guide to food & dining on the azalea coast
53
asta has become a frequent feature of the American palate, thanks to the enterprising Italians who
first immigrated to the United States in the early nineteenth century. Yet, within the culinary world
there are certain food items that the general public takes for granted, and pasta is one of them.
Today it is bought from the grocery store without a second thought to the fact that in the past the only
way to acquire pasta was to make it from scratch.
Some like Maria Accettato practice the traditional art of making homemade pasta.
Maria Accettato
and son Vinny
share quality time
together making
pasta by hand.
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Born in Provencia Regionale di
Messina, Sicily, the owner of Terrazzo
Trattoria, Maria lives and breathes the
authentic style of Italian cooking she
grew up with. She lived with her father
and grandparents until she was four years
old. Maria and her father moved to New
York City to be with Maria’s mother, who
immigrated to the United
States two years earlier to
establish a trade.
“My uncle had a really
nice Italian restaurant in New
York City right across from
the Ed Sullivan Theater and
my dad went to work for
him there, so we’ve basically
been in the business forever,”
Maria says. “I actually met
the first Superman there,
George Reeve. Whenever the
actors would finish what they
were doing at the Ed Sullivan
Theater they would come eat
at the restaurant.”
When Maria and her
husband, Michael Accettato,
moved to Wilmington 16
years ago, one of the similarities
between the two coastal
regions was that Messina,
like Wilmington, is a popular
vacation spot for tourists.
The southern hospitality
of Sicily was evident in
Wilmington as well.
Before Terrazzo, the
Accettatos owned Pizza Bistro
on Front Street, but Maria
says the family wanted to open a restaurant
serving dishes that represented the
different regions of Italy, from northern
Italy to the island of Sicily.
Although Maria does not remember
much from the first four years of her life
in Sicily, the many return trips she has
made with her family have heavily influenced
her cooking style.
“When we would go to Sicily every
summer my grandma would make fresh
pasta, fresh bread … they never bought
anything really; they usually made everything
from scratch and bartered for different
foods,” Maria says.
Following in her family’s footsteps, Maria
loves to make homemade pasta,
especially with her own family.
“We make it on the weekends,
usually; we did it a lot when our
kids were young because it’s a
fun thing to do with kids,” Maria
says. “It’s just like when I was a
little kid and we used to go back
to Sicily.”
Maria has passed her family’s
tradition of pasta making to
her own children. Her youngest
son, Vinny, a cook at Terrazzo,
often lends a hand making
pasta at home.
“We do it because it’s fun, it’s
easy and it just tastes better than
store-bought pasta,” Maria says.
The Accettatos go-to pasta
recipe is a simple mixture of
eggs and flour — a foundation
from which a cornucopia of
different pastas can be rendered,
whether it is tagliatelle
or fettuccini, lasagna or ravioli.
No matter what the shape,
homemade pasta adds an element
of creativity and pizzazz
to the otherwise mundane
process of boiling noodles from
a box.
“When we would go to Sicily every summer my grandma would
make fresh pasta, fresh bread … they never bought anything really, they
usually made everything from scratch...”