Adam Leonti is a Brooklyn-born, Maine-bred chef and baker. He began cooking as a child, preparing meals alongside his Sicilian grandfather and Neapolitan grandmother, and took his first kitchen job at age fourteen. In 2008 he became the chef de cuisine at Vetri, a critically acclaimed Philadelphia institution that won accolades including Philadelphia magazine’s “Best Italian Restaurant,” was a James Beard Foundation Award finalist for “Outstanding Restaurant,” and was included in Travel + Leisure magazine’s “Best Italian Restaurants in the U.S.” In 2012, Adam was named one of Forbes magazine’s prestigious “30 Under 30” professionals in the food and wine industry, as well as an Eater “Young Gun.” In 2015, Adam founded the Brooklyn Bread Lab, a mill and bakery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Outside of the kitchen, Adam finds inspiration studying his voluminous cookbook collection, which comprises more than 1,000 volumes including a favorite, Giuliano Bugialli’s The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. He is a graduate of the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia. His eponymous restaurant, Leonti, opened in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in 2018.
Katie Parla, a New Jersey native, is a Rome-based food and beverage journalist, culinary guide, and educator. She is the author of Food of the Italian South and a Saveur award–winning personal website covering food and travel. Katie has written or contributed to more than twenty-five books about Italy and Turkey. Her travel writing, recipes, and food criticism appear in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Saveur, Australian Gourmet Traveller, The Guardian, Afar, Condé Nast Traveler, Punch, and Eater, and she is the coauthor of the IACP Award–winning cookbook Tasting Rome.
