25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee

PBS WESTERN RESERVE (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):

Monday, Dec. 18, at 8 PM
Tuesday, Dec. 19, at 1 AM
Saturday, Dec. 23, at 2 PM

The much beloved James Beard and Emmy award-winning chef, Lidia Bastianich is celebrating twenty-five years on public television. With one of the longest running cooking shows on PBS, Lidia is also a lifetime restaurateur and a bestselling cookbook author who has a compelling backstory as an immigrant personifying what it means to be living the “American Dream.”

In honor of her 25th anniversary, 25 YEARS WITH LIDIA: A Culinary Jubilee is a primetime PBS documentary special that will– with the help of family and some celebrity friends –roll back the years and take a very intimate look at the trajectory of Lidia’s life both on and off the screen.

Lidia made her foray into the “working world of food,” which included a job at Walken’s bakery where she worked with Christopher Walken doing everything together from sweeping floors to delivering cakes.

While Lidia stepped slowly into the restaurant world, she eventually became the matriarch of a far-reaching restaurant empire. We’ll travel back in time, unpacking memories of this remarkable journey including the opening of her first restaurant in Queens, Buonavia.

It wasn't long after Bastianich opened her third restaurant, Felidia, that she met iconic American chef Julia Child. Child would frequent her restaurant, Felidia, and she eventually went on to invite Bastianich on her PBS cooking show, which catapulted Lidia into the world of television.

The hour ends with an intimate celebratory meal. Included on the guestlist are longtime friends; Jacques Pépin, Christopher and Georgianne Walken, Geoffrey Zakarian.