In the past few days, Long Island’s Italian food industry has suffered from a great loss. Michelina Lombardi, the founder of Mamma Lombardi’s in Holbrook, dead at 92.
The restaurant announced a few-days-long closure through the social media account of the restaurant, remembering Ms. Lombardi’s “generosity, warmth, and love” for her job and her community. “Through her delicious food she has brought joy and togetherness to so many, enriching those special moments for families for decades, from weddings to intimate family dinners,” the post reads.
She was born in Avellino, Italy, on November 12, 1931 and moved to the U.S. when she was 37. Mamma Lombardi’s first restaurant in Holbrook opened in 1976. The idea, as her son Guy Lombardi said to Total Food Service in 2014, was to share her recipes with everyone’s palates because “there’s nothing like mama’s cooking.” “When my family came here, we all got different jobs. But we all had a passion for food. One day, when we were sitting at the table eating dinner, we came up with the idea to open our own restaurant, using my mother’s cooking,” he said.
Mamma Lombardi’s recipe was all about “family, history and farm-to-table ingredients.” And it was a success—they expanded with Lombardi’s Market and Villa Lombardi’s, both in Holbrook, Lombardi’s on the Bay in Patchogue, and Lombardi’s Love Lane Market in Mattituck.
