Celebrity chef speaker and Culinary Icon Lidia Bastianich took her family’s history full of restaurant success and turned it to TV success in her late 50’s. Today, Chef Bastianich is a restaurateur, cookbook author, and award winning television personality.

Chef Bastianich’s culinary career really took off when she turned her single restaurant into an entire enterprise in the New York area, with every new restaurant opening to stellar reviews. Lidia currently owns and operates seven restaurants with her daughter and son, celebrity chef Joe Bastianich. Five of the restaurants are located in Manhattan, New York: Felidia, Esca, Becco, Eataly, and Del Posto which received a four star rating by the New York Times. Bastianich also owns Lidia’s Italy Pittsburgh and Lidia’s Italy Kansas City.

Since her first TV appearance twenty years ago alongside legendary celebrity chef, Julia Child, on the PBS show, Julia Child: Cooking with Master Chefs, Chef Lidia has not left the small screen. She has hosted several of her own television shows, including her first show, Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen which aired on PBS, Lidia’s Family Table, Lidia’s Italy, Lidia’s Italy in America, Lidia Celebrates America, and most recently, Lidia’s Kitchen.  Chef Lidia also makes frequent appearances on other programs; such appearances include starring as a celebrity chef judge on Fox Network’s MasterChef alongside the regular judges, Chef Gordon Ramsay, Gordon Elliot Bowles, and her son, Joe Bastianich, as well as a celebrity judge spot on Bravo’s Top Chef. She has also been featured on ABC’s The Chew, The Talk, the Rachael Ray Show, The View, the Martha Stewart Show, and countless others.

Lidia Bastianich continues to share her culinary expertise with the world through her cookbooks. Chef Lidia has written an endless number of books, with one published each year for more than ten years in a row, it seems to have become an annual tradition for the celebrity chef. Some of her bestsellers include Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy: A Feast of 175 Regional Recipes, Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, and Lidia’s Family Table.