I was going to tell you that I don’t have an idol. I’m too old to have idols.
But actually, no, it’s half true…
I have a idol.
Her name is Elena Faita, but everyone just calls her “Elena.”
Elena, mother of chef and restaurateur Stefano Faita, “mother” of several Montreal restaurant chefs (like Martin Picard, to whom she taught how to make potted tomatoes and whom she helped financially to launch Au pied de cochon).
But Elena is also the spiritual gastronomic mother of tens of thousands of Quebecers to whom she has taught for decades how to cook in this tiny kitchen in Little Italy, six days a week…
Elena is my idol because she is an outstanding businesswoman, a luminous woman with an absolutely phenomenal work ethic.
That’s what I vaguely wanted to talk to her about, on that Saturday morning in early June, after her class. I arrived in the middle of the lesson. Elena, in a white blouse, yellow apron, and red-rimmed glasses, colorful in both the literal and figurative sense, was teaching the basics of fresh pasta to about twenty participants who were visibly salivating…
“Go to our website, there are a lot of recipes, I have very good ravioli recipes… I also teach a ravioli course.”
Elena is there, hands in the dough, on the island, as you see her on TV, as you hear her on the radio, as in the aisles of the Quincaillerie Dante, this unclassifiable family store founded by her father and her uncle in 1956, a store that sells hunting rifles and kitchen items (more details on the Quincaillerie in a moment)…
Onions are cooking in the pan and it smells like life.
The students drink in his words, but they are starting to get hungry:
“Is it normal that we’re starting to get hungry?” asks a man, which triggers general hilarity.
That’s good, the time for tasting is approaching, but Elena still has two very important pieces of advice… One: “It’s always the pasta IN the sauce, and not the sauce ON the pasta, understand?”
Two: “Always add cooking water to make the sauce creamier, you have to work a lot with the cooking water!”
The structure of this sentence, Always add cooking water to make the sauce creamieris a legacy of his English schooling in 1950s Montreal (more on that in a moment).
The fact remains that in English, French, Italian or Swahili, it is THE secret to making a pasta sauce that respects itself…
I told you that Elena is my idol. I didn’t tell you that those Saturday classes she still gives are free. First come, first served.
“I used to teach six classes a week, Patrick! Five evenings, plus Saturday mornings! For 35 years!”
– And you only teach Saturday classes now?
– Yes. I slowed down!
(I emphasize: as far as punctuation goes, Elena does not know the period that ends a sentence: she only uses the exclamation mark.)
– Why are you giving these lessons for free?
– This is my gift to Quebecers, they have always encouraged me! 99% of my customers are Quebecers. They came from far away, too! Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Sherbrooke… Same thing with the customers of the store…”
In 1954, little Elena disembarked from Italy after a two-week boat trip with her mother Teresa, her brothers Antonio and Giuseppe and her sister Maria. She was 7 years old. She never saw her grandparents again. “I hated the boat, I was sick for 14 days! We weren’t in first class… Today, I tell you: I don’t go on cruises!”
It was after the war, Italy was devastated. The Italians took the road to exile. France, the United States, Canada…
“My father, he had been here for two years, Patrick. And my mother came to join him. That’s how immigrants were!” His brothers Rudy and Mauro were born here, in Montreal.
Elena takes down a frame and shows me the photo. Her parents, at the Jean-Talon market, in 1972: Teresa Masecchia and Luigi Vendittelli.
“They worked for a producer, Ferme Joly. My mother gave Mr. Joly the idea of going to get the seeds that the Italian immigrants appreciated: certain tomatoes, eggplants, long beans…”
She remembers that the Jean-Talon market was a magnet for immigrants in the 1960s. Italians, Poles, Portuguese, Greeks…
“It was mainly at the end of the 1970s that Quebecers began to arrive on the market…”
The Masecchia-Vendittelli family lived not far away, on rue Drolet. It was a different time, Elena remembers.
My mother, at the market, bought live chickens. She killed them in the bath, with her bare hands, in our apartment on the 2nd floor.e floor! All the immigrants did that, in the 1960s, chickens, rabbits… It was cheaper!
Elena Faita
She gives a half-smile: “We children were almost embarrassed! Today, having these chickens was so healthy…” She addresses the question of language, apologizing (without reason) for her French (which is nevertheless excellent, but not to Elena’s taste): “At the time, we were refused entry into French schools, Patrick! That’s why most of my generation is better at English than French…”
It was a different time, when chickens were killed in the bathtub. And when women, in families, were subordinate to men.
“When my brothers came home, my mother would say, ‘What do you want to eat?’ She didn’t ask that of my sister and me! I got married at 23. They would tell me: “Elena, you have to cook for your husband.” I would say: “It will be like a vacation, I’m cooking for seven, at home!”
It was a different time, when school was more or less encouraged in the underprivileged classes. Elena left school at 14 before finishing her evening schooling, for seven years, including two years of classes at the Sir George William campus, the forerunner of Concordia University…
The business courses were useful: she took over the Quincaillerie Dante, launched this cooking school, bought buildings…
I wanted to be an independent woman. You work, you pay for your things. My husband always supported me in that. If I had married an authoritarian Italian, Patrick… I would have killed him!
Elena Faita
But her husband, Mattia Faita, was born in northern Italy: “They have a different mentality…”
A shadow passes through Elena’s laughing eyes when she talks about her husband, who died two years ago of cancer: “He was a good man, we thought the same. He was my best friend, Patrick. And then, my friend is gone… You feel the emptiness.”
She tells me that she is working hard these days: she is preparing a book, Elena’s Kitchenwhich will be released in September, she hopes to close Dante Street for the occasion. “If we can get the permit!”
I notice the name, on the cover: Elena Vendittelli-Faitawhich she never uses in public.
“Why, Elena?”
– I chose to also put my maiden name…”
There will be recipes in this book by Elena Vendittelli-Faita, of course. But she will tell in detail the story of her life, of her family. Elena’s Kitchen will give pride of place to women, she told me.
I’m going to dedicate it to the women who didn’t get compliments. To my mother Teresa, my mother-in-law Angela, my aunts Rosina, Rosaria, Rachela… The women of the past, Patrick, they didn’t get any compliments…
Elena Faita
“And Mattia, did he compliment you, Elena?
– Yes all the time… “
There remains the question of Quincaillerie Dante, this family store that I said was unclassifiable. Spatulas, saucepans, rifles, all in an organized chaos in the middle of which Elena reigns most of the time, not far from her cooking school.
Although Quincaillerie Dante is a Montreal institution visited and loved by Quebecers from all over, perhaps the store is living its last years, says Elena.
She would like to pass the baton, but it is not easy…
“The problem is that it’s a family business, Patrick! People come to see us. They want to see me. When I’m not there, they’re disappointed! They say: “Where’s Elena?” My children, Cristina and Stefano, told me: “Mom, you need a coach for the future, to make a decision…”
The dilemma: sell or close.
Selling a business so closely linked to a personality like Elena Faita, is it feasible? Without killing the soul of the Hardware Store, I mean?
The Faita-Vendittelli clan is not sure…
Rather than sell to the wrong person, I figure I could liquidate everything and close. We have offers. But you need the right person, otherwise I’d rather close…
Elena Faita
“You sell all the stock, and… it’s over! Yes, you lose money, but that’s okay. Money is not an issue.”
I tell Elena that I wanted to write a column about the joy of working, by interviewing her. She tells me that she likes to work, that she is not afraid to get her hands dirty.
“I don’t need to work: what I like is to be busy…”
I don’t tell him that’s what I want, too: to always be busy, to never really stop, even at…
“You’re 75, aren’t you, Elena, right?
– No! 77, Patrick, 77! she said, bursting into that laughter as bright as the sun of the Italian countryside in July.
You’re my idol, Elena.
I would even say more: you are my idol, Elena!
What do you think? Express your opinion
Who is Elena Faita?
- Born in San Vittore del Lazio, near Rome, she arrived in Montreal at the age of 7.
- Her family settled on rue Drolet, in Little Italy. Her father and uncle opened Quincaillerie Dante in 1956, where she got involved from the age of 16.
- She has been teaching cooking classes since the 1990s, after a stint at a home show where she offered homemade pastas that were hugely popular. Her school, Mezza Luna, has hosted many successful chefs, including Frédéric Morin, Marc-André Cyr, Marie-Fleur St-Pierre and Martin Picard.