Come Lunch with Me! | Giada de Laurentiis

So we're headed to Bay Cities, an Italian-American deli. And I've been going there since I was in college, so a really long time. But La La La is their godmother sandwich. That's also what they're famous for. I just love the mix of the meats and the cheese. With sandwiches, they have to be soft enough that you can bite into it and get a bite of everything, right? It's just a really great eating experience and it's super flavorful. I love it. So let's eat. All right, so we're at Bay Cities. Usually, right here at lunchtime, it's packed. Here a little bit later, so it's not in a white-ass pack, usually the line is out to the street. So I'm gonna get one for Shane, spicy, one for me and for Jane, mild. That's the way we like it, mild peppers. This is Hector. It's a god-family-run, Italian-American deli. Hector's the best. Just a lot of times, I'll call him Hector. What are you having today? Well, I'm definitely doing my godmother's. You want two mild, got it. Yeah, for Jane, right? And then one spicy for Shane. Go for fresh bread? No problem, gotcha. They have limited seating here, and I just have to get lucky. This is what it looks like. Lots of meat, lots of cheese, mustard, lettuce, and mild peppers. She forgot her drinks. Thank you, Hector. Let's eat, this is gonna be it. Oh wow, it tastes like real peach, not peach-like flavor. It's actually very, very good. And with a little sparkling water, it's a little messy, but. Some of the folks that I work with, and John Z thought it'd be really fun to do a little mini YouTube series about some of my favorite Italian spots in LA, which is where I live. At every spot, kinda like just tell you guys a little bit about my journey and how I got here. And I started a little bit about growing up in LA. It's sort of a get to know me at 53, in the city that I've lived in for a very long time. I mean, I was born in Rome, but I've lived here a long time, 40 years. Natasha's gonna ask me some questions. Yes. Were you born in Rome proper, like at the hospital, like center of Rome? Yes, I was born in the hospital in the center of Rome, but I did not live in the center of Rome. I lived in a town called Cina Città, which is outside of Rome, the suburbs. And different than the suburbs today, only because it was 1970, so it was a little bit different. The house you grew up in, was it a house? Was it an apartment? I grew up in a house, close to or away from my grandparents, a dog. What was the dog's name? Don't remember. Growing up, did you have to share a room with a sibling? Did you have your own room? What was the dynamic like? Shared a room with my sister, who was three years younger. And for a long time, that was okay. Until I got to like 13, and I was like, wait a second, am I still sharing a room with my sister? So at 14, I got my own room. It took me a while to be comfortable in my room, only because I was so used to having my sister there. So there's a comfort level when you have somebody else sleeping in the video. And my sister used to take my Barbies, which I didn't. Were you closer with your brother? Were you closer with your sister? My sister was a baby when we left Rome, she was like two. And my brother was two years younger, so I was always the oldest. And we left Rome when I was seven. How often, if your grandparents were just like a stone's throw away, like how often were you going to their house? We saw them, we kind of saw them daily, unless, my grandmother was an actress and my grandfather was a movie producer, so unless they were on set somewhere, we saw them daily. What's like your memory of your grandparents as a kid? My grandfather was always wanting us to be in the kitchen with him. He's the one who introduced me to my favorite dish when I was a kid, which was just fresh ricotta cheese, spread out with sugar and cocoa powder. We used to have that together. Nobody else in my family liked it, except me and him. But he always wanted to do something in the kitchen with us. Make pizza, make pizza dough, make pizza toppings, make pasta, he was always like, come in the kitchen and see what I'm doing, come in the kitchen and see what I'm doing. So that was, that's what I remember about my grandfather. My grandmother, not so much, she wasn't working, she was always needle, she did a lot of needlepoint and she had like four cocker spaniels around her who were always mean to us, would have to like fight to be near her. She was a famous actress. Do you remember like going out in Rome with her? Didn't really, as little kittens before we left, we didn't really go out in Rome. Unfortunately, a lot of kidnappings in those days. She had to be really careful like, about that kind of movement. It's different than it is today where I take Jade everywhere with me and I have since she was a baby. When we were little kids, our parents did stuff, we stayed home because we were kids. We ate with them, it was not out in a restaurant, it was more communal at home. You remember like holidays in Rome as a kid? I remember Christmases, always giant affairs. Sometimes we'd do like the family gifts earlier, but the big celebration was always at my grandpa's and it was until he died, which is like 15 years ago now. My family was very, like Christmas, you did not miss, and it was difficult when I was catering because it's the busiest time for me. So Christmas Eve, I would work and that was just not okay with them. Do you remember like as a kid, like any sort of gift that you really wanted that's kind of more Italian? Like, I feel like kids these days are like, we want a Barbie, but was that a thing? Or was, or did you want like wooden, weird Italian? I wanted all sorts of things, but mostly my grandfather would give us money and tell us to go buy our own presents. Parents gave us gifts, like the toys we want. I had a giant chest as a kid of Barbies, Barbie clothes, Ken, I had the Barbie house, the car, and I would beg my, my sister would play with me, but my brother never wanted to because he was like, I'm not playing with Barbies. I would beg him and pay him out of my allowance because my grandfather would give us money at Christmas. So why did you guys move to LA? And do you remember like how you felt when you heard you were moving to LA? Had you been to the U.S. before? Then we moved for a short time to Fort Lauderdale. Then we moved to Los Angeles. It was hard. I had a strange name nobody could pronounce. Mother would give me weird lunches, a bar of chocolate in between a baguette with butter, like things that kids didn't eat, and so I was weird. When everybody else was eating bologna sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, stuff like that, I'd eat by myself a lot, or the teachers would sit with me. Nowadays, it's revered to be weird and different, but it wasn't in those days. I had to repeat the first grade. I did not learn English fast enough because my parents and my family really wanted me to keep up, wanted us to keep our heritage and our culture so at home they would make us speak Italian, right? We'd have to go to school and switch gears and speak only English, and that was really hard for me at the beginning. I think because I was older, it didn't happen so much to my siblings because they were so much younger when they came here, but for me, it was really hard to switch on and off. What's your first memory of the U.S.? Is it Fort Lauderdale? I lived in a high-rise off of, with a view of Central Park. I remember my mom taking me to preschool. I only know what people were saying, so it felt incredibly foreign. So it made me very timid and shy, and I will say that to this day, I'm still, I know I don't seem it, but at home, as a person, I'm very timid in the eye. I ask a lot of people who cook in a kitchen, most of them are introverts. We're not extroverts, because if we were extroverts, we'd be on the other side. We would not be in the kitchen. Where did you go to elementary school? Can you say that? I went to elementary school at Kentra Canyon, which is still there. It's in Brentwood. I would just say I didn't dress like all the other kids. I have really curly hair. Like, really, really curly hair. My mom always used to cut my hair and my sister's hair really short. What did people used to say about your name? Like, what was the, you got made fun of. Oh, because remember, Star Wars was out. So, Jada, Jabba the Hutt, like, those were the jokes. Yes, I had a different style, which I tried to quickly change. I ate different food, and I had short, curly hair, so I looked more like a boy than a girl. Did you do any sports or any, like, extracurricular when you were younger? Believe it or not, basketball. I don't know, because I'm super teen, why was I doing that? But I was very aggressive. My dad loved sports, so he was always like, you gotta do a lot of sports to stay fit by doing the sports. I did gymnastics. I sucked. I would fall from the balance beam all the time and hurt myself. My sister, on the other hand, was like a little ballerina. She was so good at it. I also played softball. I was better at softball and basketball than I ever was at gymnastics. Is that aggression? Yeah. I never did ballet. My sister didn't do ballet. I think the one thing I wish I had done is learn a musical instrument. I did not do that, and that's something that I'm always harping jade about, is to learn a musical instrument, because it uses a part of your brain that's totally different. I would learn piano. If I could play the piano, it would be a form of meditation. All right, well, this is part one. Yeah. Stay tuned for part two. Editor destination. I'm gonna finish my sandwich now. Bye! Thank you, bye!