It’s the eggs that make the difference, says Nino Germano, chef and owner of La Scala on Eastern Avenue in Little Italy. The eggs of his childhood were laid more than 50 years ago in the old country, uova harvested in the Sicilian backyard of Nenna Fazio, his grandmother.

“The eggs over there are very different,” he said. “We were organic by being poor – chickens, goats, wheat fields, olive groves, grapes. Everything tastes better over there.” As the eggs are better – naturally – from the coops in Debra C. Rahl’s backyard in Union Square than supermarket eggs.