The New York restaurant where all the chefs are grannies

Just like Granny used to bake! Older female chefs are proving a huge hit. (Getty Images)

EVERYONE knows that the only thing to rival Mum’s cooking is Gran’s — and they definitely live by that rule at this place!

Welcome to Enoteca Maria, a restaurant with a difference at Staten Island, New York, where the chefs are all grannies.

Jody Scaravella, the owner, came up with this idea for his special “backroom team” in the early 2000s, after a personally tragic time.

He lost his gran, mother and sister in the space of just a few years, and the thought of having a typical Italian grandmother running his kitchen just felt comforting to him.

Having posted adverts in a local paper appealing for Italian housewives to cook regional dishes, Jody was thrilled when a few sets of grandparents, complete with grandkids they looked after during the day, showed up!

It grew into something far from just Italian cooks, and today he has a rotating staff of older ladies from more than 30 different countries, all bringing their own unique style and recipes to the table.

Grannies from Argentina to Nigeria, Algeria to the Czech Republic prepare, cook, bake and serve up tasty grub at Enoteca Maria and, if Jody loves it, he knows his many satisifed customers will be pretty pleased, too.

Far from failing to keep up with the modern age’s many wild and wacky chefs (mostly younger, and mostly male), Jody’s senior females produce stunning new dishes on a regular basis, love the job and adore the satisfaction of seeing customers tucking in.

As Jody points out, though, some of the women also use recipes that have been around for centuries, not just decades, and such talent is attracting discerning diners from far and wide.

They have even had calls from Australia and the UK, from folks intending to visit the Big Apple on business or pleasure who are keen to book a table at this remarkable place.

Perhaps the cooking will remind them of their loved ones at home many miles away, or maybe they just reckon Granny knows best when it comes to great grub?

The ladies themselves aren’t just coming to work from the local area, with some travelling all the way from the Bronx, Brooklyn and New Jersey, so clearly there is plenty of interest.

Nobody would be too surprised to see other restaurants, and not just in the United States, copy Jody’s idea before long.

And it would be no shock to find loads of grandmothers only too keen to take on a cooking job and remind themselves of the joys of work and of feeding hungry people.

Almost as important, however, as Jody points out, is that many of the recipes his ladies rely on have never been written down and are only rarely used anywhere else.

They are keeping such delights alive, and teaching each other as they work together, thus ensuring recipes from hundreds of years back will remain on the menu in one very special restaurant at least.

And that, we reckon, is simply grantastic.