All in the Family: Keeping Food Traditions Alive
The best compliment you could give Domenica Baroncini at Terrazza Italiana is: I feel like I’m in my grandmother’s kitchen. “My memories of cooking mainly go back to my family,” Baroncini says. “My earliest memory of food is my grandmother making dough.” In Baroncini’s grandmother’s kitchen in Imola, Italy, the pasta was home-made every day.
— By Kylee Ross
— Photography Kenneth Theysen
From an early age, Baroncini watched her grandmother make traditional Italian recipes from scratch and would follow along. “The best restaurant is always your grandma or mom’s house.
And that’s actually the concept I want to share with my customers,” Baroncini says.
Domenica Baroncini
Chef / Owner – Terrazza Italiana
At Terrazza Italiana the dishes are inspired by Baroncini’s deep roots in Italian home cooking—most are true to the way Baroncini learned from the home cooks in her life. The dishes closest to Baroncini’s heart have a place on her menu. Spaghetti alla amatriciana: onion, guanciale, and tomato sauce because guests regularly compliment the dish. Penne alla vodka: pasta in pink vodka sauce because it was such a popular dish in the 80s, and it reminds Baroncini of that time in her life. Filetto di pesce alla Mediterranea: grouper fillet in a creamy caper-lemon sauce served with shrimp risotto or linguine Alfredo because it’s a dish Baroncini made for her son Lorenzo in an attempt to get him to eat more fish as a child. Gamberi all’aglio: shrimp in a creamy garlic sauce served with shrimp risotto or spaghetti aglio e olio for the same reason. Petto di pollo ai funghi: chicken breast in a mushroom-Alfredo sauce served with asparagus risotto or linguine Alfredo, because it reminds Baroncini of cooking for her friends. With each meal, Baroncini welcomes you into the richness of her life—into her home—and it all begins when she insists you call her “Mimma.”
Baroncini refined her touch for warm, personalized hospitality through a lifetime of cooking and appreciating good food. She traveled the world as a tour guide and in her role she was constantly focused on food. But whenever she went home to Imola during a break from her job, she’d get together with a big group of friends to cook for them. “I loved to cook and they knew that,” Baroncini says. “Maybe I gave them the impression that I was bringing back new ideas and new flavors. But in a sense, I think it pushed me to keep my traditional kind of cooking.” One of Baroncini’s fondest memories is cooking a pot of pasta e fagioli for her friends “the way my grandmother taught me,” she says.
Baroncini stays close to her Italian heritage with her food. “I’m very vintage. I’m very simple,” she says. When she and her family moved to Aruba, they opened an authentic Italian pizzeria in Oranjestad—Pizza and More Pizzeria Trattoria Italiana. The pizza oven was imported directly from Italy along with the tables and chairs and key traditional ingredients. Baroncini got to know the Aruban community intimately and was able to share the cuisine that brings her so much pride.
Since Pizza and More Pizzeria was such a success, Baroncini and her business partner opened Terrazza Italiana on the third floor of Paradise Beach Villas with a rooftop view of Eagle Beach. “We just opened with a soft opening menu,” Baroncini says. Pasta and a couple of chicken dishes. Over the years—and with the closing of the pizzeria—the menu expanded to the robust list of Italian specialties it offers today.
Everything on the menu at Terrazza Italiana is fresh and made to order, meaning cooking only begins when you make your menu choices. Baroncini also chooses fresh ingredients daily. “I want the best for my customers. And that’s why I actually go and shop myself every day,” Baroncini says. She shops for fish locally—barracuda, wahoo, mahi. Baroncini and her business partner bought a mozzarella business established on the island and began to produce their own fresh mozzarella and burrata. “It’s another tradition that we’re preserving and it’s something made fresh in Aruba,” Baroncini says. “And I’m very proud to be part of it.”
In the evening, you’ll find Baroncini and her daughter Matilde taking orders at Terrazza Italiana. They personally accommodate each of their guests and make their rounds of the restaurant to ensure everyone is well taken care of. Before working with her daughter, Baroncini worked with her son doing the same thing. “I put myself in this restaurant. In a sense I missed the nicest time when my kids were smaller—when they needed me more,” Baroncini says. “But I’m happy now because this thing that divided us brought us together again. I had the joy of working with my son. I now have the joy of working with my daughter.”
Baroncini enjoys her job from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to sleep. “Creativity is already a part of myself. And the customers are already a part of myself,” Baroncini says. “I have more friends and family than customers. And this is a wonderful thing because you don’t need to impress anybody. You just have to keep the consistency, to keep everybody coming back to the restaurant.”
Terrazza Italiana
Paradise Beach VillasJuan E. Irausquin Blvd. 64
3rd Floor Terrace (Elevator access available)
Eagle Beach
(297) 561-1699
