Food has been a constant in my life. I started cooking dinner for my family when I was nine years old, often incorporating recipes and tips I learned in my home economics classes. The meatloaf with oatmeal instead of breadcrumbs and a spinach-filled center was not a hit with my father, though I recall it tasting pretty good!
Since then, my love of cooking, eating out and discovering interesting wines has only grown. When my husband, Philip Maggi, and I go on vacation, the first thing we book are restaurant reservations. Doesn�t matter where we are going. In fact, the idea of a Pig & Pinot website was born on a trip to Napa more than a decade ago.
As Italian-Americans who grew up in New York City, food has played a central role in our lives, bringing people together for big meals, big voices and big laughs. (My husband would chide: big clean-up.) Our culinary skills though have expanded from Italian and American-style of food to Indian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese and more. I consider myself a fearless cook, willing to try anything once and learning from the experience.
Discerning restaurant goers, I’ve informally shared our assessments and recommendations for years. Having lived in New York, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Calif., and now Fairfield County, Connecticut, I’ve dined at some of the best restaurants in the world in Italy, Spain, France, London, Quebec, Singapore and more. I’m an avid follower of America�s Test Kitchen, Lidia Bastianich, Ina Garten, Giada De Laurentiis, Chris Kimball and others, regularly trying and adapting their recipes to feed family and friends.
While food is one passion, writing and communications is the other. As a former journalist at the Wall Street Journal, I was on a small team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for National Reporting and also won the Gerald R. Loeb Award for Beat Reporting in 2004. After leaving journalism, I climbed the corporate ladder as a PR and marketing executive at global brands such as Netflix, IBM and Lockheed Martin. I now run my own consulting company, Proof Point Communications, where I advise clients across a myriad of industries on marketing and communications.
Pig & Pinot is the physical manifestation of a deep and abiding love of great food and wine, as well as the desire to share that passion with others.