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The proprietorship of Mosca’s has changed only with the generations, and there has always been a Mosca in the kitchen. When Provino died, in 1962, the cooking was taken over by his daughter, Mary, and, eventually, her husband, a former Louisiana oysterman named Vincent Marconi. His family was originally from the town in Italy where Provino Mosca was born—San Benedetto del Tronto, on the Adriatic. Provino’s widow, Lisa, also known as Mama Mosca, became the proprietor of Mosca’s. (I have always treasured her for having said to a reporter from the New Orleans States-Item, in 1977, “You can write all that you want, it won’t bother me because I cannot read or write.”) By the time Mary retired, John’s wife, the former Mary Jo Angellotti, some of whose forebears had also made the journey from San Benedetto del Tronto to Chicago Heights, had been helping with the cooking for nearly twenty years, and she took over as chef. At Mosca’s, the chef does not oversee the cooking; she cooks. When Mosca’s was given a James Beard award, in 1999, Mary Jo apologized for not being able to come to the ceremony in New York to accept it. She said, “We’d have to close the restaurant.”
Calvin Trillin
