At the Table of Memory

I didn't grow up with a clear picture of what it meant to be a woman. Raised by my father with two brothers, I had to find pieces of womanhood in the women I worked with, read about, or admired. But slowly, I built a life of intention, crafted with purpose.

As a wife, mother, and business owner, I believe the choices we make, the way we build our homes, the clothes we wear, the meals we prepare, these all shape the lives we lead. It's about creating a space for joy and peace, not by accident, but by design.

We'll explore the stories of people who live life with intention. People who don't wait for life to be perfect, but embrace the beauty and meaning in their everyday choices. Because living a life of faith and beauty isn't something we wait for, it's something we create. And through these stories, we discover new ways to flourish, one intentional step at a time.

Meals have always been more than food. They are family, a story, and a memory. Today, I'm stepping into Na Favola, where two brothers carry on a tradition born in Rome, now alive here in Colorado. I moved to the United States when I was 17 years old. I started working right away in my uncle's restaurant. I started from scratch. I didn't speak English. I never worked as a server. I haven't cleaned any table before. So, I really had to learn everything. In Italy, the restaurant business is part of our culture.

It's so much different than... You know, in the United States, so usually, you know, sometimes you see grandmas in the kitchen, and their husband on the floor, they have three things on the menu, and say, today we got this, this, and this, you know, and maybe there's a little girl washing dishes there.

It's a completely different concept. In Italy, the families stick together. We're like glued to each other. But I feel like the beauty of it, especially in this place, especially for new people that are coming in, is the fact that the first thing you notice is that everybody helps each other.

So, tell me, how did you guys find Favola? She called me, and she was just like, I found the greatest Italian restaurant. It is going to be as close to Italy as you can get. And I was like, oh, come on. Here? Here? In Colorado? And sure enough, we came, and then, I don't know, we came like six times in like three weeks.

Something about it sucked you in. Yeah, what is that? What makes this different? They make you feel welcome. You know, they make you feel like you're sitting in their living room, and enjoying some coffee, and enjoying the water, and then sitting at their dining room table, and enjoying a meal that they've prepared.

This is as close as to Italy as you can get here in the States. It's delicious. And it's just not the food, you know, it's the greeting, it's the hello, it's the how are you, how's your life, you know, there's some great food.

And you feel like more than just a customer? Always. Yeah. Everybody comes in and is greeted the same way by them. It's like one big family in here. They are not anymore customer. They are like a friend, I want to say. They become part of the family. From the small, we used to have a small family. Now we have a huge family. Everybody's part of the family now.

You know, we always do big family dinners here. They serve us family style. You know, my big Italian family comes, and it's like home, you know? It's the best. In their kitchen, food becomes a memory. Each recipe is a story passed down. Each dish is a link across oceans and generations.

Our grandparents had a little piece of land. They still have the trees, fig trees. We had olives, so we grow grapes and everything. So, growing up, you know, you go there, and then you have all the fresh fruit that you pick straight from the tree. You know that your parents, every year, they make olive oil, or they make their own wine and everything. So, it tastes like home when you do that.

We believe a lot in simplicity. We believe that if something has more than three ingredients, you ruin it. It is when you start putting this and this and this and this and this and this, it means that all the ingredients that you use, they are not of good quality because you need to cover that flavor with other things or adjust it with some other things. But if you buy into a tomato and you have a very good tomato, you want the flavor of that tomato that comes out in the dish that you have.

Did you know you were always going to use olive oil, or did you dabble in different oils? We use 100% extra virgin olive oil. It's part of our culture, it's part of the flavor that we want, and a lot of oil that's meant for cars or other machinery.

This machine runs on extra virgin olive oil. That's great. So, you guys always thought, I'm going to do the restaurant business. Oh, absolutely. We really hope it stays in our family for generations. Hopefully, our kids one day will love our restaurant. They're for sure going to grow up in a restaurant. No option. They got no option.

One thing that just struck me was how family-oriented the restaurant feel. It was just like, oh, wow, they care. They're talking to you. They're explaining a little bit of their culture and saying, hey, this is not just, you know, something that we want to serve you food and you're out of the way, but you become part of the family, part of the culture. You get to learn from them everything that's happening in the restaurant, you know, with everything that is in the community.

So, I just love their presence. They invite you to not only eat, but experience the food. This is what makes Nafavala more than a restaurant. It's a family, found and chosen, gathered around a table. What we really focus on, what we are really passionate about, is food and is connecting people together. Especially now in the modern times, everybody is connected digitally, but not extremely connected in a person-to-person kind of way. And we wanted to trace everything back to the origins, back to the beginning of it, back to the simplicity.

The food is simple, the recipes are simple, the tradition is simple, the connection that we establish with people is simple, but they're meaningful. The server is my wife. Then we got Giulia, we met her here at another restaurant, an Italian restaurant where we were working.

She's from Le Marche, so about northern east of Italy. Then there was Rocco, we're like brothers. So, he helped us start in this place. Fabio, he used to work for a restaurant in Italy that was a three-time best restaurant in the world. Michelin-star restaurant owned by Massimo Bottura, which is one of the greatest chefs we have in the world.

Everyone that works here, we really, is our family away from family, you know? Like, we consider everyone family. We treat everyone like family. So, tell me how you choose your ingredients. The more you can eat something that is close to their original form, The better is for yourself. That is what we have been eating for the last thousands of years. So, you are not canning it. You are not getting anything from cans. It is all fresh. If you get like a canned tomato sauce, they already got 55 ingredients in it.

Then if you add olive oil and basil, it is already went a whole different direction. We really build this place around that, around simplicity and genuine food, you know? And you want to give the good ingredients. To your family, right? Exactly. Grandma will never let you hit best of, you know what I mean? Yeah. She can give you candy here and there, but she'll make sure that, you know, you growing up will hit the right things. Can you see the picture of her putting her leg out that way?

To be good at this, you really need to love people. And it's all like an interchange of energy and love and passion and things, and it's amazing. This is the greatest business ever. So, I see the sign, stay al dente. What's the story behind that? Stay al dente is a little bit of our motto, meaning that sometimes even life throws you things at you. So, in the core, you have to stay a little harder, but then inside, like on the outside, you have to be soft enough to enjoy the whole thing.

So, you have to stay al dente. Yeah, make people feel comfortable, but whatever they do, they're not shifting your inner kind of peace, you know? But then if you're too soft, then people take advantage of you. You're overcooked. If you say al dente, you are just… You are just perfect. Perfect, isn't it? Why the name, Na Favola? Yeah, Rome is like a state of mind, you know. It is something that we say like a hundred times a day, you know, Na Favola, Na Favola.

How is your day going? Na Favola. How is the food? Na Favola. You know, so for us, it is super important. You have a great night of sleep, or you find money on the floor, that is the Na Favola moment. I hope that people that come in, that live, feel in the little sense of home and belonging to a piece of a community that can bring them joy, you know, feel like part of something, and to find a place that can connect them to other people, you know, and connect them to the food and the tradition that we bring with ourselves.

Most of the people that live in this place, you know, they can't wait to come back. You know, for us, it's everything. It's people's place, so it belongs to the people, you know. We just try to do the magic, you know. They leave with a connection to the food and to you guys. And they find they're happy. We have a lot of people that call them their happy place, and that's what we want this place to be, you know, that people, they can leave their house and come to their happy place.

We're extremely grateful for every person that walks inside the doors and, you know, it's part of this. You get to live your dream. Exactly. Yeah, this is really like, this is the dream. You know, this is the fairy tale. This is the fable. Yeah. La Favola. Exactly, you know, that's the, you know, it's always been the fable.

At La Favola, food isn't just about feeding the body. It's about feeding the soul. Every dish, every laugh, every story around the table is a reminder that living with intention often begins here, where we simply sit down together. Because as the Italians say, a tavola non si invecchia. At the table, one does not grow old.