When kids venture into their grandparents’ basements, they usually find relics of centuries past: boxes of VHS tapes, broken humidifiers. But when chef Chris Cosentino was growing up, he found something completely different in his great-grandmother’s cellar: jar after jar of tomatoes. The entire basement of her three-story tenement in Rhode Island was filled with tomatoes, which the first-generation Italian immigrant canned herself.
Nonna Rosalie, a prolific home cook and pasta-cranker, inspired Cosentino’s entire career, and now he’s getting the chance to honor her by name and spirit with his newest restaurant, Rosalie Italian Soul. It opens next week in Houston.
