Enoteca Maria Menu & How It Works (2026)

Enoteca Maria is Nonnas of the World Community — one Staten Island restaurant, two kitchens, and a menu that starts with a person: a different grandmother from a different country cooks each day. The restaurant founded as Enoteca Maria now operates as Nonnas of the World Community, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its own site states the model in one line: grandmas from around the globe cook their traditional recipes, and every day a different nonna shares her culture’s culinary secrets. The standing half of the menu is the Italian Menu della Casa, printed in full below. The rotating half is the Nonna of the Day menu, printed below as a dated October 2026 snapshot — the featured nonna changes daily, and no dated snapshot is a standing menu. The structured menu on this page carries 5 categories and 21 items. Enoteca Maria publishes no per-dish prices and no nutrition figures: the meal runs on a single per-person prix fixe, stated once in Prices below, and every calorie field on this page is blank by design. Status: open — the restaurant is trading now, Friday through Sunday only, verified October 2026; the full timetable is in Hours below.

The Nonnas — Who Cooks at Enoteca Maria

The cooks are the entity. Enoteca Maria has no single executive-chef menu and no fixed kitchen brigade behind the rotating half of the service: the Nonna of the Day is the chef of her menu. Each featured nonna cooks the traditional recipes of her own country and culture, in her own name, on her assigned day. The Italian kitchen is the constant — the Menu della Casa runs at every service — and the second kitchen rotates through the nonnas.

The roster is a rotation, not a cast list. The Nonnas Calendar published in October 2026 names, among others, Nonna Anjum (Pakistan), Nonna Dolly (Sri Lanka), Nonna Kathy (Uzbekistan), Nonna Sabbia (Italy), Nonna Pauline (Trinidad and Tobago), Nonna Melanie (Jewish cuisine), Nonna Amy (Malaysia), Nonna Claudia (Mexico), Nonna Mary (Korea), Nonna Fardaus (Bangladesh) and Nonna Julia (Russia). That list is a dated calendar sample, not a staff roster: the calendar assigns each nonna her days, the assignments change, and the restaurant updates the calendar every Monday. Questions about the original nonnas, the first nonnas, and individual nonnas resolve to the same structure — the platform is a standing rotation of grandmothers, and the calendar on the restaurant’s own site is the only current roster.

The restaurant’s framing of its cooks is exact, and this guide keeps it: grandmothers are, in the organisation’s words, “the world’s most undervalued educators,” and its kitchens are classrooms. The program celebrates every culture at the table and combats elder isolation. That mission is the reason the menu rotates — the rotation is the concept, not a scheduling quirk.

Featured Nonna & Rotation — How the Two Menus Run

Every service day runs two menus on a fixed seating split:

• The Menu della Casa — the standing Italian house menu — is served from the 12:30 PM seating.
• The Nonna of the Day menu — the featured grandmother’s dishes from her country — begins at the 2:30 PM seating.
• The Nonnas Calendar is updated every Monday and is marked by the restaurant as subject to change. The calendar, not any printed guide, assigns the featured nonna to a given date.

Snapshot — October 2026: Nonna Dolly from Sri Lanka

The Today’s Menu page as published in October 2026 featured Nonna Dolly from Sri Lanka. Her three dishes, exactly as that page lists them, are the snapshot below. The snapshot dates itself: on another day the featured nonna, her country and her dishes are different, and the three dishes here belong to this date and this nonna only.

• Sri Lankan Cutlet — vegetable croquettes filled with a blend of seasonal vegetables and traditional spices.
• Hoppers with Chicken Curry — crepe-like bowls made from rice flour and coconut milk — three plain hoppers and one egg hopper — served with traditional chicken curry.
• Sri Lankan Noodles — a Sri Lankan noodle dish with mixed vegetables.

All three items sit in the structured menu on this page under the Featured Nonna of the Day category, labelled with this same date. The standing menu below is the other half of the model, and the two halves never merge: a dish from a featured nonna’s snapshot is not a house dish, and a house dish is not a featured dish.

Menu della Casa — The Standing House Menu

The Menu della Casa is the standing Italian menu of Enoteca Maria: salads and starters, seven entrees, desserts and the two wines the Today’s Menu page lists. These dishes are the house’s own, published by the restaurant as its standing menu, and this section prints them at exactly that level — names and the restaurant’s own descriptions, with no prices and no calories, because the restaurant publishes neither for any dish.

Salads & Starters

Harvest Salad is a roasted beet salad with strawberries and crumbled feta cheese on bedded mixed greens, drizzled with a red wine vinaigrette and topped with candied walnuts, oranges and fresh parsley. Insalata del Giardino is mixed greens with cucumbers, radish, tomatoes and onions in a light vinaigrette. Peperoni Ripieni Piccanti are long hot peppers stuffed with seasoned pork, cheese and breadcrumbs, served with roasted potatoes — the menu itself flags this dish “very spicy,” and it carries the structured menu’s only Spicy tag, earned from that wording. Polpette are the house meatballs: ground beef and fresh herbs, four meatballs served in the classic ragu with a side of ricotta.

Entrees

Coniglio della Casa is herb-roasted tender rabbit baked with potatoes and carrots. Lasagna Della Nonna layers pasta with a flavorful beef ragu, ricotta and mozzarella in a classic Italian tomato sauce — the lasagna of this house is a beef-ragu lasagna, defined by that build. Spinach Lasagna layers pasta with spinach, ricotta and the house-made marinara sauce: the vegetarian lasagna build on the same menu, distinct from the beef Lasagna Della Nonna in filling and sauce. Pollo alla Cacciatora is a stewed chicken cacciatore served with a side salad.

Char-grilled Zucchini is char-grilled scored zucchini topped with a ratatouille of eggplant, tomato, olives and capers — the menu itself flags this dish gluten-free and vegan, and its dietary home is Nutrition & Dietary below. Branzino al Cartoccio is Mediterranean sea bass baked in parchment paper with a lemon-herb sauce, served with vegetables. Capuzzelle is the house signature traditional dish: lamb’s head roasted with fresh herbs and vegetables and baked with white wine, served with side vegetables. The lamb’s-head and sheep’s-head searches for this restaurant resolve to this one dish, under its menu name, Capuzzelle. The published menu lists no pizza — the pizza searches for this restaurant resolve to that absence.

Desserts

The dessert list is five items. Gelato is house-made, and the Today’s Menu page lists coffee and vanilla, a choice of one flavor. Gluten-Free Basque Cheesecake has a creamy center and a deeply caramelized “burnt” top from a high-temperature bake — a Spanish-origin cake, flagged gluten-free in its name on the menu itself. Gluten-Free Gateau au Chocolat is a dark gluten-free chocolate cake with house-made whipped cream and a mixed berry sauce. Banana Pudding layers sweet vanilla pudding with home-made cookies, dark chocolate chips and a fresh sliced crème brûlée banana. Chia Coconut Pudding with Mixed Berries is chia coconut pudding served with mixed berries.

Wines

The Today’s Menu page lists two wines. Brachetto is described on the menu as a sparkling, slightly sweet sparkling red wine. Prosecco is described as a chilled, sparkling white wine. Those two entries are the complete wine list as the restaurant publishes it on that page; drinks beyond the prix fixe are sold separately at the restaurant, under the payment rules in Prices below.

Concept, Story & Founder

Enoteca Maria opened in 2007 on Staten Island, New York, founded by Jody Scaravella — the “Joe” of the founder and owner searches — and named for his mother, Maria. The name is Italian (pronounced eh-noh-TEH-kah mah-REE-ah): an enoteca is a wine shop, and Maria is the founder’s mother. Scaravella staffed the kitchen with Italian grandmothers first; from 2015 the kitchen went international as Nonnas of the World, and the nonnas have since come from more than 50 regions around the globe. The restaurant now operates as Nonnas of the World Community, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the two names are one entity: Enoteca Maria is the founding name, Nonnas of the World Community is the current operating name, and the founding domain, enotecamaria.com, resolves to the organisation’s site at nonnasoftheworld.org. Every fact in this guide comes from that site.

The restaurant is open. Enoteca Maria trades Friday through Sunday at the seatings in Hours below; the closed and still-open searches resolve to that timetable, printed once in its own section. The story behind the restaurant is a true story at concept level: a Staten Island enoteca that put grandmothers from around the world in its kitchen, one culture per day, and grew into a nonprofit community built around those cooks. The restaurant’s story is dramatized in Netflix’s feature film Nonnas (2025), directed by Stephen Chbosky with Vince Vaughn as Joe Scaravella — that is the one film fact that belongs in a menu guide; cast, trailer and plot belong to the film.

The community’s work runs past the dining room in two published programs. Its recipes are preserved in print in the cookbook Nonna’s House — this guide prints no recipe from it and no recipe of any dish on the menu. And through Nonnas in Training — Level 2 of the official Nonnas Empowerment program — apprentices cook beside the Nonna of the Day, which is where the cooking-class demand for this restaurant lands.

Prices — One Prix Fixe, No Per-Dish Prices

Enoteca Maria publishes no per-dish prices. The Today’s Menu page lists no price for any dish, and no dish in the structured menu on this page carries a price. Per-dish figures on fan and aggregator menu sites are frozen snapshots from before the current model and appear nowhere in this guide.

The meal’s price is a single official figure, published on the restaurant’s own Reservations page: $87 per person, including a three-course meal, tax and a 20% gratuity, charged to the credit card at the time of reservation. The restaurant’s instruction on tipping is printed in its own capitals: “PLEASE DO NOT TIP.” The $87 is the price of the meal — it is not a per-dish range, and this page prints it only as the prix fixe it is.

Payment in the restaurant runs on a separate rule from payment at booking. Drinks and extras are sold separately at the restaurant and are paid in cash or Venmo; Venmo carries a small surcharge. The restaurant accepts no credit cards in-house — the card charge belongs to the reservation, and an ATM stands a few doors down for in-house spending. No owner net-worth figure is published by the restaurant, and none is printed here.

Nutrition, Allergens & Dietary

Enoteca Maria publishes no nutrition data, no calorie figures and no allergen chart anywhere on its official site — checked across its homepage, menu, reservations and information pages in October 2026. Every calories field in the structured menu is therefore blank, and no figure from any third-party nutrition site fills a blank. A calorie count for a dish at this restaurant has no official source, and this guide prints none.

The dietary information the restaurant does publish sits on the menu itself, at exactly the level the menu states it:

• Char-grilled Zucchini is flagged “Gluten Free and Vegan” on the house menu — the menu’s one vegan flag and one entree-level gluten-free flag.
• Two desserts are named Gluten-Free on the menu itself: the Gluten-Free Basque Cheesecake and the Gluten-Free Gateau au Chocolat.
• Peperoni Ripieni Piccanti is flagged “very spicy” by the menu — the heat flag on that starter is the restaurant’s own wording.

That is the complete published position. There is no published gluten-free menu beyond those flags, no published allergen list beyond them, and no halal claim is published by the restaurant — none is asserted in this guide. The restaurant likewise publishes no BYOB position; that question is answered at exactly that level too.

Hours, Days & Seatings

Enoteca Maria opens Friday, Saturday and Sunday only, and is closed Monday through Thursday. Service runs in four two-hour seatings:

The seating split carries the menu split: the Menu della Casa runs from the first seating and the Nonna of the Day menu begins at the second. No per-day hours exist beyond these seatings — Friday, Saturday and Sunday share the same four seatings — and none are invented here. Parties must arrive on time for their two-hour seating.

Reservations — How Booking Works

Seating at Enoteca Maria is by reservation only, and the booking mechanics are published on the restaurant’s own Reservations page; they are stated here in full because booking is how every reader reaches this menu. Reservations open one month in advance and are made through that Reservations page. The $87-per-person prix fixe is charged to the credit card at booking — the charge covers the three-course meal with tax and the 20% gratuity included, which is why the restaurant’s own instruction reads “PLEASE DO NOT TIP.” The waitlist is free: when a seating cancels, it is offered to matching waitlisted parties by text or email, first come, first served. There are no walk-in seatings in the published model — the four seatings in Hours above are filled by reservation. Drinks and extras beyond the prix fixe are ordered in-house and paid in cash or Venmo, under the payment split in Prices above.

Gift Cards

Enoteca Maria publishes no gift-card program. No gift-card page, denominations, expiry terms or balance route exist on the restaurant’s official site, checked October 2026. The site’s Gift Shop is merchandise — aprons, a tote, mugs, hats, shirts and whole-bean espresso — and merchandise is retail, not a gift card. The answer to every gift-card form of the question is the same: no gift cards.

Visit — One Location, Staten Island

Enoteca Maria is a single-location restaurant: 27 Hyatt Street, Staten Island, New York 10301, in St. George, next to the St. George Theatre. There is no second location — no Brooklyn, London, Long Island or Boston branch exists — and every place-suffixed form of the restaurant’s name, and every near-me search for it, resolves to this one address. A one-location restaurant has no directory to bridge to, so the visit facts live here: phone (718) 447-2777, WhatsApp 917-803-1394.

The restaurant’s own Info & Directions page routes the trip: take the 1, R or W train to Whitehall St / South Ferry, ride the free 25-minute Staten Island Ferry, and walk five minutes from the terminal. Drivers are routed over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Goethals Bridge and the Staten Island Expressway. The restaurant publishes no official dress code — that question is answered at exactly that level.

Reviews & Reputation

The restaurant’s documented reception is a matter of record on its own About page, which lists its television coverage — the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Fox & Friends and CNN — and its press, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and international outlets. Television-appearance questions about this restaurant are answered from that list, and no other appearance is asserted. Review-platform demand resolves to that documented reception: this guide carries no rating aggregate and no invented stars. Whether the meal is worth it is answered by the model itself — $87 covers three courses, tax and gratuity, cooked by a grandmother from a different country each day. One absence is stated plainly because the demand is heavy: Enoteca Maria holds no Michelin star and has no Michelin Guide listing — a documented absence, not an award.

Quick Answers

Everything a menu reader needs for this one restaurant — the dishes, the price model, the seatings, the booking mechanics and the visit facts — is on this page. The one thing that changes daily, the featured nonna for a specific date, lives on the restaurant’s own Nonnas Calendar, updated every Monday.