- When Maddy DeVita’s beloved grandmother died, the family had to decide who would get her prized sauce pot
- Maddy and her Nonna spent many hours cooking together, with the younger woman learning secret family recipes from her family’s matriarch
- Maddy’s uncle ultimately chose her to receive the pot, in a moment that was captured on video and has since gone viral on TikTok
Between stirs at her stove, Maddy DeVita pauses to chat. “I’m making my Nonna’s risotto for my cousins who are coming over for dinner,” the 26-year-old food influencer and private chef tells PEOPLE. “I wanted that to be the first thing I made for them in the sauce pot.”
This is the second dish DeVita has prepared in her grandmother’s beloved sauce pot since inheriting it after her Nonna’s death in late December. “I made meatballs earlier this week, and I swear they smelled just like her kitchen,” DeVita says. Coming from a large American-Italian family — her father is one of seven, and she is one of 25 grandchildren — DeVita shares that the pot was a wedding gift for her Nonna, who spent more than 70 years using it to cook for her family.
“Nonna was the true matriarch of my dad’s side of the family,” DeVita shares. “She and my grandfather divorced when my dad was young, and it has taken me some time to wrap my head around the fact that she was a single mother of seven kids, worked throughout medical school and went on to have a career as a physician for over 60 years. She was a trailblazer in so many ways,” she says.
When DeVita’s grandmother wasn’t running her practice out of her basement in Paramus, N.J., or taking care of her children, she was in the kitchen cooking. “My dad and his siblings have such distinct memories of their mom cooking over the stove, always with the sauce pot,” DeVita shares. “Part of the reason I got so emotional when my eldest uncle gave it to me is because I knew how much it meant to all of the siblings. It’s just such a special family heirloom.”
That emotional moment, which went viral on TikTok with more than 1 million views, shows DeVita being chosen as the keeper of the sauce pot thanks to her longstanding cooking relationship with Nonna. “The recipes she grew up making for her kids weren’t written down anywhere; these were just recipes she knew,” she tells PEOPLE. “During the pandemic, I realized it would be amazing to have her teach me these recipes, to go through all the DeVita classics and make them together.”
DeVita began posting videos of the pair cooking together on her Instagram account, which has since amassed more than 500,000 followers. “It kind of became a monthly tradition — I would go down to Paramus, we’d pick a new recipe and I would come ready with all the ingredients,” she says. “It was so special to just have this kind of one-on-one time with her and bond over this shared interest in food.”
Throughout the “Cooking with Nonna” series, DeVita says you can see their relationship develop in a way that is “so special.” “If you look back at the videos, at first she’s up and moving around the kitchen a lot. As time went on, she was more chair-bound and it turned into her instructing me from across the kitchen. Eventually, it was me cooking for her, so it really was this full-circle moment,” DeVita explains.
She adds, “Now that she actually is gone, it’s so surreal to look back and see all of it documented. Yes, of course for the memories, but also because of all of her instructions on how to make these dishes that now everyone in my family can use and make themselves.”
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DeVita went on to build a career in the food industry, and she credits her grandmother for instilling that passion in her. “She has played a part in informing my love of food just by the nature of growing up in an Italian-American family and having that be my roots when it comes to food,” she says. “When I shared my cooking with Nonna on a whim, that was the first time where I felt like people were really excited about what I was sharing on my Instagram account.”
Looking ahead, DeVita is focused on honoring Nonna by continuing to make the recipes they cooked together in the sauce pot, along with her own new creations. “There will be lots of family dinners at my apartment, all the aunts and uncles. It’ll have to go in stages because it’s too many people,” she says with a laugh. “It means a lot that they all felt that it needed to go to the next generation, which lucky for me was myself as someone who cooks for a living and gets so much joy out of it.”
DeVita adds about her grandmother: “She led by example, always putting her family first. I think everyone feels that so much now that she’s gone. I’m happy to say I definitely feel closer than ever to my family, and I think that’s largely because of Nonna.”
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