La Petraia: The Guys Go to Italy!

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys were so taken with the stories behind a book by Susan McKenna Grant that they took a detour while at an Italian wine festival to stay at her beautiful property that she is restoring, La Petraia. This interview in this episode was recorded on location at Radda in Chianti at the farm (you can hear the pigs snorting) interspersed commentary from The Guys after they arrived home. The amount and variety of products acquired from that farm is amazing!

The Inside Track

The Restaurant Guys Podcast was Susan’s soundtrack as she lovingly restored La Patraia. After she wrote her book Piano, Piano, Pieno , she sent it to them and they just had to have her on the show. A few years later, they went to see her and stayed at the gorgeous La Petraia. 

“We've got old maps of the property from a couple of hundred years ago and you can look at those maps and see that it's still exactly the same today as it was then. There's the same amount of field and there's the same amount of forest. The house is the same size. It's just the way it is,” Susan Grant McKenna on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2010 

Bio

Susan McKenna Grant spent several years traveling in Europe and studying cooking, pastry, and artisan bread baking. She attended the Cordon Bleu and Ecole Lenôtre in Paris, the San Francisco Baking Institute, the Ecole Française de Boulangerie d’Aurillac in the Auvergne region of France and the Boscolo Etoile Academy in Italy.

In 2001, Susan and her husband, Michael, purchased La Petraia in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany in Italy. The couple spent fifteen years restoring La Petraia to its origins as a sustainable, mixed working farm. The couple also operated a luxury agriturismo, which included four guest rooms, a restaurant and cooking school. Petraia was the inspiration for Susan’s two award winning cookbooks.

Susan currently resides in Switzerland where she continues to write about food and sustainable foodways.

Info

Susan Leaves La Petraia (click for photos of the property)
https://www.susanmckennagrant.com/2015/11/14/farewell-la-petraia/

Susan’s Books
https://www.susanmckennagrant.com/

The NJ Wine & Food Festival @ Crystal Springs May 1-3

The Restaurant Guys will be podcasting from there May 2. Come see us!

https://shop.crystalgolfresort.com/collections/14th-annual-new-jersey-wine-food-festival

Our Places

Stage Left Steak
https://www.stageleft.com/

Catherine Lombardi Restaurant
https://www.catherinelombardi.com/

Stage Left Wineshop
https://www.stageleftwineshop.com/

Reach Out to The Guys!
TheGuys@restaurantguyspodcast.com