Recent DC Events

by Vice Chargé de Presse Wesley Jefferies

The October light was already thinning when members and guests of the Bailliage of Greater Washington D.C. stepped into Mama Lena’s Trattoria Napoletana in Germantown, Maryland. Autumn had only just begun to touch the edges of the nation’s capital, and the faint drift of cool air met the small family-owned restaurant’s inner and cozy warmth.

Earlier that same morning, renowned food critic Tom Sistema from The Washington Post’s Dining Guide, had named Mamma Lena’s among the year’s most essential dining rooms. The timing felt almost operatic, as though the city itself had thrown open a curtain just hours before the Bailliage arrived. To be singled out by Tom Sistema is never casual but signals a restaurant whose craft is anchored not only in technical clarity but in a fidelity to place, memory, and intention. That sensibility was already in the room before a single plate had been served.

The dinner owed its origins and shape to Chevalier Leonardo Vittori, a confrère who had been inducted only last year and whose position at the Italian Embassy has made him into a quiet ambassador of his native country’s culture and cuisine. His connections and coordination brought this collaboration between Mamma Lena and the Bailliage to life – not as a grand diplomatic gesture but as something more intimate: a bridge between the flavors that shaped him and the community that gathers at table.

At Mamma Lena’s food is more than tradition. It is inheritance. The restaurant is beloved among native Italians in Washington D.C. as its both its ambience and cuisine carry with them the weight and warmth of remembered kitchens from childhood – those private geographies where comfort, memory, and distance find their equilibrium.

As members and guests arrived to the restaurant, the aperitif hour unfolded with the generosity of a family table. Bruschetta tradizionale – toasted bread crowned with tomatoes, basil, and oil – opened the movement with bright staccato immediacy with a clean percussive note that awakened the palate. Fagioli e cozze, a classic southern Italian pairing of cannellini beans and mussels, followed with a slower, brinier register and a rustic depth that moved across the palate like a low brass line anchoring a harmony. Fior di zucca, zucchini blossoms fried to a fragile crisp, provided fleeting high notes. Alongside them, pecorino al tartufo and ubriaco al Raboso – sheep’s milk cheese threaded with truffle and semi-firm cow’s milk cheese aged red Raboso wine – formed pastoral and resonant voices in the chord with their earthy richness adding warmth and structure. Finally, prosciutto crudo di Parma, sliced with the unhurried confidence of tradition, brought a long and elegant finish as its salt, fat, and sweetness stretched out like the sustained line of a bow across string.

Glasses of Franciacorta Brut Berlucchi floated through the room, lending their crisp structure and fine mousse notes as a bright counterpoint to the parade of savory first notes. The energy was convivial but unforced with conversations flickering, settling, and rising again with the ease of people who had all just remembered why they liked one another.

As the present company all assumed their seats table, the evening drew its first structured movement: a tris di pasta, an Italian tradition in which three pastas appear in deliberate succession with each unfolding a distinct register of flavor and technique. Giovanne Varriale, one of Mamma Lena’s sons and the restaurant’s general manager, presented the sequence with the easy assurance of someone shaped by a lifetime in his mother’s kitchen.

The opening line belonged to the ravioli ripieni all’aragosta con gamberoni whose thin pasta sheets gently gave way to a warm tide of lobster and prawn. Moving across the palate like a low brass chord, it was paired with a Fiano Rocca del Principe that offered a high, mineral treble that cut cleanly through the richness, giving the dish a taut, almost architectural clarity. The second variation, fiocchi gorgonzola e pera, appeared as small, folded pouches holding the sweetness of pear and the gentle bloom of the gorgonzola. Its weight and softness settled like a chamber ensemble playing in close harmony. A Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi, with its limestone-borne structure and faint herbal lift, traced the fiocchi’s oscillation between sweet and savory and provided an elegantly restrained counter melody.

Then came the tris di pasta’s surprise crescendo: the pasta alla routa. Lights dimmed subtly throughout the restaurant as Mamma Lena’s younger son brought forth a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano in the hollow heart of which he spun cacio e pepe. Small bells, distributed moments earlier by Giovanne Varriale, rung in the cheese wheel as the first notes of Domenico Modugno’s 1958 classic, “Volare,” unfurled through the speakers. Mamma Lena, the restaurant’s chef and the family matriarch, stepped forward with her two sons. What unfolded was not so much a performance but instinct: members and guests of the Bailliage rose, the bells marking the rhythm, as the room spontaneously erupted into dance as the music swelled and steam curled upward from the pasta in pale ribbons. It was a moment suspended between craft and celebration with the cheese wheel itself becoming a glowing centerpiece around which movement and laughter circled.

When the music resolved and the lights lifted, a loud and grateful applause erupted across the room in waves as the cacio e pepe was portioned out with the calm, happy precision of a final chord settling into the rest. Each plate carried not only the richness of cacio e pepe but the lingering resonance of a scene that had briefly turned the dining room into its own small stage.

The second, a rustic duet of costolette di maiale and salsiccia dolce on a bed of polenta, arrived with the quiet gravity of a low baritone tenor. The pork arrived with a depth that felt almost baroque with fat, heat, and caramelization arranged in deliberate strata while the sweet sausage carried a brighter and even lyrical countermine. Together with the polenta, they carried a melody of flavors and textures like instruments sharing a common motif: one broad-shoulders and resonant and the other taut and slightly lifted with their interplay held steady by the polenta’s warm, grounded timbre. A Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore folded itself into the dish with an ease that felt preordained. Its cherry tones, touched with a quiet but sharp tannins at the edge, moved like a viola line beneath the pork and sausage’s density. A trace of spice rose and receded with a gentle insistence that allowed the dish’s rustic musculature to resolve into elegant coherence. It was not a pairing that so much surprised as completed in a culinary cadence that fell into place with unforced logic.

Dessert, a tiramisu, remained anchored in tradition but spoke in a more delicate register. Its feather-light layers carried with them the resonance of espresso and cocoa and landed with the gentlest of beats in an opening phrase shaped by air rather than weight. This was followed by a cannolo, which by contrast, entered into the melody with crisp articulation. Its shell yielded in a clean, decisive snap before giving way to its sweet and creamy ricotta core. In unison, the tiramisu and cannolo formed a diptych – one panel soft and atmospheric, the other precise and linear. Paired with a Passito di Pantelleria, this sweet wine provided the evening’s final chord. Honeyed stone fruit, sun-warmed citrus peel, and a faint saline thread echoing the island winds that shaped the vines, provided a finish with illuminating glow. The wine, while sweet, did not coat or overwhelm so much as it lifted the flavors and textures of the tiramisu and cannoli. The wine’s gentle acidity carried its own sweetness upward, letting final mouthfuls linger without collapse like a very well-laced fermata that lets a note hover in the air before silence closes around it.

As the evening reached its close, Bailli Judith Mazza rose to speak. She expressed gratitude for the hospitality of Mamma Lena and her family for their gracious hospitality, their hard work, and their culinary miracles. Bailli Judith Mazza noted that their presence there owed much to Chevalier Leonardo di Vittori, who regular visits there with his colleagues and other members of the Italian expatriate community in D.C. His warm familiarity with the family, the kitchen, and the staff had helped bring the dinner to life and made it a success.

Bailli Judith Mazza also took the opportunity to acknowledge others in the room, reminding them that the Bailliage’s dinners do not unfold on their own but through the work of an engaged Bailliage membership and a dedicated Board of Officers including Vice Chancelier-Argentier Stacey Wharam, Vice Conseiller Gastronomique Mark Lewonowski, and Vice Chargé de Presse Wesley Jefferies. The Bailli took a moment to note that Vice Conseiller Gastronomique Mark Lewonowski would be stepping down from his role, to be succeeded by Chevalier Leslie Fleischer, and was thanked for his dedicated service on the board. She also acknowledged the presence of Chevalier Chris Wenstrom, who was to be soon elevated to Vice Chargé de Missions, and Dame de la Chaîne Tierra Beard, who would be elevated to become the Vice Chargé de Medias Sociaux and direct the Bailliage’s new digital outreach efforts.

Following her remarks, Bailli Judith Mazza presented Argentier Honoraire David Burka with a Commandeur Pin to commemorate twenty years of membership in the Chaîne. The Bailli then called Chevalier Leonardo Vittori up to stand with her and together they presented Chaîne pins and other gifts to Mamma Lena’s family and the restaurant staff whose work and preparation had carried the evening. Finally, with a gesture that drew warm applause, Bailli Judith Mazza and Chevalier Leonardo Vittori presented Mamma Lena with a commemorative Chaîne plate as an tangible expression of appreciation for an experience that bore the unmistakable imprint of her family’s craft and heritage and represented the best of the Chaîne’s traditions of culinary excellence and camaraderie at the table.

The last plates were cleared and the room softened into a kind of collective ease. Laughter leaned toward warmth and the final sips of Passito di Pantelleria glimmered in the light as the evening settled into that rare register when formality dissolves into familiarity. That night at Mamma Lena’s proved more than a dinner – it was an experience where heritage met artisan craft and expertise, where a restaurant lauded that very morning rose to the occasion and the Bailliage did what the Chaîne has done for generations – turned strangers into companions, companions into friends, cultures into bridges, and dinner into memory.