♪ Hey Mama Leone's looks so great ♪ ♪ Hey Mama for your Carnivale Date.

♪ - As I got older and started eating out in restaurants, I was surprised by what Americans considered Italian food.

Big meatballs with lots of sauce, a lot of spaghetti, eggplant parmigiana.

But I was taken aback and curious, what is this cuisine that's called Italian, but in Italy it's not cooked, it's different.

♪ To celebrate ♪ - One of my first dates with Felice my husband to be, was at the legendary Mamma Leone's in Manhattan.

♪ Hey Mama we're comin' ♪ - The New York Public Library has a special collection of hundreds of menus from important Manhattan restaurants, (nostalgic Italian music) including Mama Leone's.

They had a great menu, all sort of Italian-American dishes.

They were a little different for me, but I loved them.

The baked clams, the pasta, the manicotti, eggplant parmigiana, lasagna casalinga, oh my God.

And of course the desserts, the gelato, the fruits, the tortoni, cheesecake.

(nostalgic Italian music) "The best kitchen is when there's a mama in the kitchen," that's what I say.

Wow, look at all these people, Jimmy Durante.

Wow, they signed the menu.

Ed Sullivan, you know, I used to watch Ed Sullivan as a young immigrant, you know?

I first saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and I thought that was fantastic.

It's a lot of popular people and famous people.

And then little Lidia was there.

(festive Italian music) Felice and I were both from Istria.

We married and welcomed our first child, Joe.

The food connected me and Felice.

He always wanted to open his own restaurant.

And in 1971, this little restaurant he had found, and I said, "Okay, let's open it and I will do my part and help."

(festive Italian music) It was a small place, nine tables.

Mamma Leone's was popular, so we were gonna do just about the same thing, or close to it.

Yeah, I remember, I remember making these menus.

Shrimp scampi was a real popular.

Oyster Rockefeller, that's not really Italian, but it was popular, I put it in.

- If you wanted customers, that's what they expected when they went to an Italian restaurant.

So they actually hired a chef and my mother mainly stayed in the kitchen and learned from him.

- We hired a chef because I wasn't a chef, but we both got really involved.

It was my husband's dream to open the restaurant, not mine, but I guess underlying was that element of food and nurturing and feeding and remembering as a child, the growth of products, the harvesting, it all kind of reawakened that it me and I said, "Oh yeah, I can do that, I love it."

And then I really threw myself head in.