Dear friend,
My name is Raffaella. I'm Italian, and I come from one of the most beautiful cities in the world — Naples, where food isn't just tradition, it's the expression of a community, and a family.
On feast days, there was never just one cook in my house — there was everyone. My mum would roll out the pasta on the kitchen table, my aunts and uncles had the ragù going since the day before, one uncle was in charge of the antipasti, my aunt ruled the fryer. And we children helped where we could — or got in the way, which is pretty much the same thing. There were people who talked non-stop, people who tried to sneak off, and people who tasted things on the sly.
It wasn't just lunch. It was a ritual. A way of saying: we're here, we're together, we love each other.
When I moved to the Netherlands, I missed that. Not the food itself — that sometimes arrives in a parcel from home. I missed everything else. The noise of a full kitchen. The laughter, the shouting, the scolding, the teasing. The sense that cooking for someone is an act of love.
With Momo Cooking, I started to find that feeling again. And through the workshops I discovered something even more beautiful: that around a worktop, with your hands in flour, people open up. Different people, from all over the world, who deep down share the same things — the joys and sorrows of love, dreams, the tiredness of everyday life and the small victories. And so many of them, like me, who have come from far away with the same desire: to build, day by day, a place to call home.
That's exactly why I now want a fixed place — my own place — where that magic can happen every day.
With love, Raffaella
