Born into a Southern Italian family that had already been making pasta and wine for many generations, Nadia Caterina Munno has used her love for authentic Italian cooking to create a multimedia empire.
Among the many wonderful and beautiful things that define Italy is its food — specifically, pasta. Its origins in the country date back to when traders from the Arab world brought dried noodles to Sicily in the 8th and 9th centuries. By the 18th century, pasta was a staple in Southern Italy thanks to the widespread availability of affordable wheat.
Pasta is authentically Italian, it presents many layers of possibilities, and it’s fun to cook with. The same can be said about The Pasta Queen, Nadia Caterina Munno, culinary virtuoso, New York Times bestselling author, social-media sensation and star of The Pasta Queen, an original television series now on Amazon Prime.
While Munno now travels the world with her culinary-travel television series, Italy is never far from her heart and exists throughout every fibre of her being. Nadia’s family is known as the “Macaronis” in the region of Campania, in a village called Santa Maria Capua Vetere, where she lived between the ages of two and six with her grandparents (her dad’s side of the family) on their estate. She then moved back to Rome and would visit for three to four months each year. This is where she developed her love for cooking! Though she is now a global media star, it is the simple times with family, surrounded by loved ones and learning the joys of using simple, fresh, organic ingredients to prepare authentic Italian food that are among her strongest and most cherished memories.
“I think I got inspired right away — I was a child who preferred to be in the kitchen with my nonna, cooking, than being outside in the courtyard playing with bikes and roller skates like my cousins and siblings,” recalls Munno in a recent interview with Dolce Magazine. “I would be found from the tender age of five making fresh pasta and bubbling tomato sauce with my nonna Caterina, after whom I was named. So I’ve always had this inclination and love for the idea. I remember being really tiny — and my grandma was a giant compared to me — and I had this little stool, but the feeling I had with the bubbling sauce and the atmosphere of my grand-aunties and uncles and all the other kids coming in and out of the kitchen with these great, incredible smells of delicious foods, all of that became my stable feeling that I’m home.”
Who wouldn’t want to experience the comfort of that safe and secure environment and upbringing — or better yet, recreate it later in life? “I think it only came to me after I became a mother to want to recreate that family feel,” says Munno, now a mother of four. “Before, as a teenager, I was going in a completely difference direction. I did theatre, did some acting, some commercials, and I studied abroad in the United Kingdom. I wanted to see what the world was like outside of my comfort zone, which was always being around a lot of family and cooking. But as a teenager, you want to experience something entirely different, so I also started to sing opera as I loved the idea of performing.”
“I Would Be Found From The Tender Age Of Five Making Fresh Pasta And Bubbling Tomato Sauce With My Nonna Caterina, After Whom I Was Named.”
Her love of performing and her love of cooking, combined with her genuine and infectious personality, made Munno a natural for the screen — any screen. She became known as “The Pasta Queen” in her thirties and seemed to be a natural for the new and emerging wave of connecting through social media.
“It was a combination of everything I loved at once,” Munno says about her foray into the world of digital media and the possibilities it presented. “For me, social media was perfect as it really did feel like I was onstage, performing live. It seemed like live musical theatre to me, where you can meet people from all over the world and your audience varies, and it can be big or small. When I started social media, it was 2020, especially with Tik Tok, so it was an incredible push of content to a very international audience. Some of my videos went to one type of audience, some to a completely different type of audience.”
Munno expanded her digital-media reach through Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, which gave her an instant connection with her audiences, just the same as would happen in a live theatre. She loved and still loves the instant comments and engagement with her audiences, knowing and learning what they are thinking and what is touching them and embedding her love for cooking and pasta in the cooking space. Viewers are drawn to her social-media cooking videos because of her vibrant personality and the fact that while she might be making complex dishes, she does it with warmth, humour and honesty.
The Pasta Queen moniker was a natural for Munno, given her upbringing in Italy. “I come from pasta — I come from the land, from a family of farmers, so I became The Pasta Queen,” says Munno. “I looked it up and nobody had claimed that throne, so to speak, so I trademarked it internationally instantly, because I thought it was such a clever name. There is almost a character associated with it that could be developed into so many things.” One of those things was the printed word.
Munno’s natural love of storytelling led her to author her first book in 2022, The Pasta Queen: A Just Gorgeous Cookbook. It focused mainly on pasta and traditional recipes.
“It was my love letter to Italy and my love letter to pasta as it was very much about where I came from,” recalls Munno about her first venture into publishing. “The recipes are from my personal repertoire of recipes, plus my grandmother’s recipes and even my great-grandmother, which she got from her grandmother, so some of the recipes are hundreds of years old. It was just about pasta, so I was proud to show the world all the different things you could do with pasta.”
It was an instant bestseller on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal lists and also a bestseller in Canada. It was followed in 2024 by her second book, The Pasta Queen Cookbook, more than 100 recipes that expanded beyond just pasta to include cooking techniques and tricks and tips behind authentic Italian cooking with traditional ingredients.
Munno now has her own line of five authentically Italian sauces at Walmarts across the United States. She has also worked with best-in-class brands and platforms and has been featured in prestigious publications and popular programs including The Hollywood Reporter, Forbes, CNN, ABC News, The Today Show, People Magazine, Good Morning America and The Drew Barrymore Show.
The success Munno enjoyed by being a regular on bestsellers’ lists and a commanding social media presence, with more than 10 million followers on various platforms, soon had Hollywood heavyweights calling. American media company Hello Sunshine, which Reese Witherspoon co-founded in 2016, approached Munno to begin a culinary-travel series for Amazon Prime. When it débuted on Prime Video in 2024 it immediately found a home among its Top 10.
For fans of Italian food and Italian cooking (we’re looking at you, Planet Earth), The Pasta Queen television series is an incredibly joyous and educational journey through the wide variety that is Italian food. Munno explores four regions of Italy, highlighting their cuisine and ingredients. She then returns to her kitchen to give step-by-step instructions on how to make Italian dishes.
For example, the first two episodes see Munno explore the region of Puglia, where she makes two classic Pugliese dishes, orecchiette con pomodoro e cacioricotta and cozze alla tarantina, using for the recipes two key ingredients from Bari’s “pasta ladies” and Taranto’s mussel fishermen. She then explores the town of Altamura, where she learns to make their world-famous chewy sourdough bread.
In further episodes she and her father explore an olive-oil mill to learn about extra virgin olive oil and she even returns to Rome, her hometown. There, she shares three classic dishes she calls the “Holy Trinity of Pasta”: cacio e pepe, spaghetti alla carbonara and spaghetti all’Amatriciana. All three dishes use the Lazio region’s legendary pecorino Romano cheese, and Munno takes a deep dive into this glorious ingredient.
In one memorable episode, titled “Once Upon an Italian Sunday,” she explores the Lazio region and makes some traditional Sunday supper dishes, including a decadent fettuccine Alfredo, sautéed dandelion greens and roasted chicken with potatoes and sautéed mushrooms. It is no wonder Munno’s deep knowledge, captivating and engaging style and her willingness to explore the roots and traditions of Italian cooking and ingredients have made her show such an instant success.
Among the many things that jump out when speaking to Munno is her strength of character — and who better to ask about that than someone who has known her all her life, her daughter Eleonora, or Ellie, who happened to pop by to visit her mom during Dolce’s recent visit.
“La dolce vita is those life Moments that go beyond working or running around, but spending quality time with family and friends over Gatherings Of foods and amazing flavours.”
“I really love how determined she is and how she strives for what she loves and puts in a lot of passion, creativity and her own flair for things,” says Ellie. “I’ve been really influenced by that because I believe you should be your own person and you should have your own personality. My mom is diverse — and, in the biggest sense of the word, beautiful.”
Munno has come a long way from that tiny stool as a five-year-old cooking with her grandmother in her kitchen, but despite her global superstardom, those simple times remain her definition of the sweet life.
“To me, la dolce vita is creating those magical, pleasurable moments through food or wine or through incredible storytelling, or even life advice when you are sitting with your grandmother,” says Munno. “La dolce vitais those life moments that go beyond working or running around, but spending quality time with family and friends over gatherings of foods and amazing flavours.”
It is both beautiful and comforting to spend time in the court of The Pasta Queen.
INTERVIEW BY MICHELLE ZERILLO-SOSA
www.thepastaqueen.cooking
@the_pastaqueen
RAPID-FIRE
Favourite pasta dish?
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
Favourite bottle of red wine?
2021 Ferrari-Carano PreVail Back Forty, Alexander Valley
Sweet or sour?
Sour
Favourite perfume?
Baccarat Rouge 540 Perfume Extract
Favourite pet names?
Cacio & Pepe and Carbonara
What do you like to do on your day off?
Interior design and decorating
Beach or mountain?
Beach
Favourite car brand?
Rolls-Royce
Favourite fashion brand?
Dolce & Gabbana
Favourite saying?
“Just gorgeous!”
Favourite Book?
“Alice in Wonderland”
Favourite romantic movie?
The rebellious love in Dirty Dancing and Titanic
Most iconic architectural landmark?
The Pantheon in Rome — this is where my inspiration came from for the “Tears of the Pasta Gods”
Cashmere or linen?
Cashmere
Must-have candle scent?
The Fifth Avenue Hotel candle in NYC
Champagne or Amaro?
Champagne
Best meal you’ve had at a restaurant?
Café Carmellini at The Fifth Avenue Hotel, NYC
Favourite colour?
Bright red
Favourite love song?
“Oro” by Mango — its fiery passion beyond love.
