Sora Lella's immortal recipes

A new book to learn about the story and the recipes of the legendary Roman cook

Elena Fabrizi, also known as Sora Lella is one of the most beloved characters of Italian cinema. She was the sister of the great actor Aldo Fabrizi but before being an actress, she was a successful cook and restaurant owner. The traditional restaurant that bears her name on the Tiber Island in the heart of Rome is still very popular and today is run by her four grandchildren: Renato, Mauro, Simone and Elena.

a potrait of sora lella

It was thanks to their idea, with the help of Francesca Romana Barberini, that the first book on the immortal recipes of Sora Lella was published. Annamo bene. La cucina romana di Sora Lella published by Giunti narrates the history of her legendary restaurant intertwined with the lives of her family, especially Sora Lella herself. Loved by everyone, she achieved national popularity playing the part of the outspoken but good natured grandmother of Carlo Verdone - who also signed the preface of this book - in two of his most successful films: Bianco Rosso e Verdone and Acqua e Sapone. The book by Francesca Romana Barberini includes stories from Sora Lella’s grandchildren and the story told by Aldo Trabalza – their father, son of Sora Lella and renowned chef of the restaurant – in his book Il mio amico albero di fico, as well as a list of the most famous recipes that still contribute to the enormous success of the restaurant.

Annamo bene, il libro racconta la storia e le ricette della leggendaria cuoca romana

Here, we will analyse the legendary figure of Sora Lella with the inclusion of an extract from the book, while for the recipes - divided into chapters and relating to five typical products of Roman cuisine (lamb, artichoke, offal, pecorino romano and pork cheek) - we recommend referring to the source.

Pomodoro al riso

“Elena was born in Rome on 17 June 1915. Her father Giuseppe Fabbrizzi – the family name used to be written with two Bs and two Zs – was a carter, with his own horse and cart. […] Her mother, Angela Petrucci, ran a stall in Campo de’ Fiori. Mum was the youngest of six children, one boy who was the eldest and five girls. There was a difference of ten years between my uncle Aldo and my mother. Growing up in poverty, Sora Lella did not have an easy childhood: she became an orphan at the age of two when her father fell ill with pneumonia after falling into a ditch with his cart and died a few days later. [..] Her brother Aldo quit school to stay at home and help his mother take care of his sisters, especially the youngest, becoming like a second father for her. […] During the 1940s, Aldo Fabrizi eventually became one of the greatest Italian actors and was finally able to take care of his mother and sister, keeping them away from the entertainment business, or at least trying in every possible way. Meanwhile, Sora Lella and her husband Renato had started their own restaurant. Lella in particular was fascinated with that world and would have loved to be an actress herself, but even after getting several roles in her brother’s films, in the end she continued to work in the restaurant’s kitchen. […] My parents opened their restaurant in 1940. My father Renato worked as a courier for the “Cooperativa trasporto carni”, a meat cooperative of the Municipality of Rome […]. My mum […] was very good at cooking all the things that my father brought back from work. All couriers at that time were able to “come by” meat cuts, intestines, sweetbread, tripe, tail and so on. […] The restaurant was doing well even if the war was raging. They had many customers, including many of my father’s oldest friends; they had all grown up together in the Trastevere district.

foto fratelli trabalza

There are not many records of the first restaurant. It closed down in 1946 when Elena and Renato started having some relationship issues [...] until they solved their problems and [...] in 1959 they took over the Trattoria dell’Isola on the Tiber Island. […] I chose the name “Trattoria Sora Lella”. […] The restaurant continued to dwindle though. The Tiber Island was not a popular location among the locals and only a few tourists visited it. […] Renato and Elena […] held on and kept working hard [...] One evening they saw four gentlemen come in who seemed to be curious about the restaurant. […] My mother walked up to their table, greeted them and told them that she had prepared a sauce with minced meat, dried porcini mushrooms and some chicken giblets. One of them was Giorgio Bini, a professor of ichthyology, journalist and gourmet food critic and connoisseur. […] The professor said that if our cuisine was always that good, our problems were going to end soon. He started referring a lot of people to us and all of them, after eating at our place, would in turn send other people to us. We started to feel hope. One night, there was a journalist from the “Oggi” weekly magazine along with a group of people. After eating, he called my mum and told her that he wanted to write a piece about her and the restaurant for his magazine.

carciofo alla giudia

A photographer came a couple of days later and took a nice picture of my mother in front of the blackboard where we wrote the dishes of the day in chalk – we still keep it in the dining room. As soon as the article came out, it was a success, so much so that for a couple of evenings, we were extremely busy: we did not know how to serve so many people at the same time!”.So, the real great protagonist of this story is her, Sora Lella. And, as Carlo Verdone says in the preface: “We will always love her for showing us real humanity and the great dignity of a simple common woman whose face was and will always be one of the most authentic expressions of Rome in one of the best periods of the history of this city”.