“To my grandfather, it has always been family first,” says Gabriella Macari, GABELLI ’09, “and it still is.”

A certified sommelier, Macari spent her childhood riding horses and tractors on the farm after her parents left Queens for Mattituck to plant vines and breathe life back into the 500 fallow acres perched above the Long Island Sound.

Thanks to the family’s dedication and an ecological and holistic approach to growing grapes, Macari Vineyards is thriving today.

“My father created a composting program and we have our own herd of longhorn cattle,” Macari explains, adding that the farm is also home to horses, ducks, pigs, chickens, and one peacock. This biodiversity ensures rich soil in which healthy fruit has grown abundantly and yielded bountiful harvests every year since the mid-1990s—with only one exception: In 2009, the results fell short of the family’s expectations.

That August, the family received a visit from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Father McShane came out and blessed our vineyards,” Macari recalls, “and wouldn’t you know, the following year we had the most spectacular harvest ever.”

To carry out his father’s vision of establishing a successful family winery, Joseph Macari Jr. (Gabriella’s dad) studied biodynamic viticulture with the late Alan York from California and Alvaro Espinoza of Chile. Now, he and his wife, Alexandra, along with Gabriella and her younger brothers—Joseph, Thomas, and Edward—operate the business together full time.

Gabriella heads up the vineyard’s marketing and distribution efforts, promotes the Macari brand, assists in the cellar, and hosts tours and tastings for corporate groups.

Recognizing that her industry is vast and ever changing, she continues to expand her education. In September, she was accepted into the Institute of Masters of Wine study program, a highly selective and rigorous program that accepted only 88 candidates this year and inducted just 13 new Masters of Wine. The “MW” distinction, held by 354 professionals across 28 countries, recognizes individuals with the highest knowledge and ability in the art, science, and business of wine, equipping them to excel in all disciplines, from winemaking to viticulture to retailing.

Macari completed the Wine Executive Program at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in 2013 and earned a Level 4 Diploma in Wine and Spirits—a prestigious recognition from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. She also interned abroad in the Champagne and Bordeaux regions of France, where she learned about production and expanded her international network. As an independent consultant, she has lent her expertise to well-known vintners, such as Ribera del Duero, Wines from Spain, and Moët Hennessy.

Broadening Macari Vineyards’ distribution nationwide and sharing her knowledge and love of wine with others are among Macari’s goals.

“I want to help make learning about wine more approachable and less intimidating,” Macari says. She is also pleased that consumers are embracing wines made locally and domestically.

“As long as the quality remains high and producers keep pushing forward, local and domestic wines will be finding more homes on retail shelves and wine lists,” she says.

This trend is noteworthy in a market that for years been dominated by imports. And it’s especially promising for the future of a Long Island vineyard that began with one man’s vision and a family tradition now in its third generation.

—Claire Curry

Indeed, for Trebek, owning a restaurant is about much more than food.

“There was just something about the hospitality industry that I fell in love with,” he says. “It’s great because it’s very free form in that it allows you to venture out into so many different fields: design, food, drinks, music, graphic design, and even just talking to people.”

Trebek had bartended at various Manhattan spots before graduating from Fordham in 2013, but it was a stint serving drinks at the since-shuttered restaurant Willow Road in Chelsea that set into motion his career as a restaurateur. While there, Trebek became enamored not just with mixology but with the architectural design of restaurants. He connected with the designer who had worked on Willow Road’s interior, and began working as a carpenter for his company. Eventually, Trebek and his business partner—the guy who’d shown him the ropes at the first of his bartending gigs in the city—had an idea for a restaurant of their own. And this past May, after three years of planning, the pair opened Oso, a 44-seat restaurant specializing in Mexican street food and craft cocktails.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Trebek—the son of Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek—would go to the local farmer’s market every Sunday to get carne asada tacos and quesadillas. He developed a love for the cuisine, and in talking with the vendors, learned about their recipes and style of cooking. But after moving to New York, he found the options for Mexican food lacking. “You’ll have a chef who will put his own spin on it, which is great, but it kind of loses its authenticity of being Mexican street food,” he says of the cuisine characterized by dishes that are quick to make and eat, and relatively inexpensive.

Trebek made two scouting trips to Mexico City, and Oso’s menu is inspired by the food he encountered. “The idea behind Oso was to take the street fare we loved [in Mexico City] and turn the dining experience into something communal rather than personalized,” he says. Everything in the restaurant is made from scratch, and he says the restaurant works with a family from Puebla to make sure things remain as authentic as possible. (The restaurant even makes two types of mole using recipes handed down by that family.)

Trebek says he doesn’t get his palette from his famous dad. “He would be fine eating chicken, white rice, and broccoli for the rest of his life,” he says. But his father—“a handyman at heart,” according to Matt—helped out in other ways, like following the construction progress and inspecting the space when visiting New York.

The opportunity to open a restaurant in Harlem that could become part of the fabric of the community was a big draw for Trebek. “Early on when we were scoping out spaces, we heard of a bar called Harlem Public,” he says. “We went there and saw such a strong community behind this place. It was seeing that type of vibe and support that really drew us to opening in Hamilton Heights.” There’s a strong sense of community within Oso’s leadership group, as well—both the restaurant’s chef and the project manager who oversaw the build-out live in the Harlem apartment building that Trebek owns and also lives in.

Because Trebek hired the same designer who’d worked on Willow Road, Oso includes some of Trebek’s favorite features from that space, from the open kitchen to the raw aesthetic that here takes the form of unfinished floors, faux-concrete walls, and reclaimed wood. And Trebek’s Mexico City visits helped inform the décor, too, from the graffiti mural to the the faux cow skull hanging opposite the bar to the greenery that helps hide some of the air conditioning ducts.

Trebek says he’d love to open another restaurant someday, and has even thought about what such a place might look like (more of an emphasis on the bar, he says). But for the moment, he’s focused on Oso. “Right now it’s kind of all hands on deck here, just trying to make this as perfect as it can be,” he says.

—Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06, is an associate editor at New York magazine’s website and a frequent contributor this magazine.

The pair often throw spontaneous dinners for large groups. But on this rainy night they were expecting just a few friends. In their off-campus Bronx apartment, Otis Redding and Van Morrison tunes played, candles flickered, and their kitchen radiated warmth and a scent that was just barely sweet. Madsen was prepping the first course.

“I’m just making something to get you guys started,” he says to a guest, straightening up from the oven, where he’d been inspecting his loaf of sourdough. “I got into breadmaking last year. It’s really fun, because sourdough has a science. You have to create lacto-fermentation, you have to harvest your own yeast,” says the son of a chemistry teacher.

After quickly spraying some water into the oven to maintain humidity, he notes, “I’m working on perfecting crust. I remember being a little kid saying I don’t like the crust—now I’m so excited about crust!”

Madsen and Brown lived across the hall from each other freshman year and became fast friends, bonding over, among other things, their love of cooking. They moved in together last year, along with two other Gabelli students. They were excited to find an apartment with a nice kitchen and separate dining space, as well as a sprawling outdoor patio.

“We called this apartment ‘the Dream,’” Madsen says. “Other places were a little closer to campus, but we said, ‘this place has granite countertops!’” They’ve hosted large barbecues with homemade-barbecue-sauce ribs and live bands on their patio, as well as more low-key indoor gatherings. Last year, they had about 40 people over for a “Friendsgiving” feast—which included a 15-pound turkey and 15 pounds of ribs.

While he waits for Brown to come home with the evening’s main ingredients, Madsen gets to work on his spicy carrot soup, which he makes with carrots he picked from St. Rose’s Garden on the Rose Hill campus, where he volunteers. He’s also using some selects from his big batch of red and green peppers—spicy and sweet—which he grew himself. He dices and slices, tossing ingredients into the blender while keeping an eye on his bread. Soon he’ll plate them together—the sourdough ready to soak up the piping hot soup.

Brown arrives laden with packages from Arthur Avenue, where he and Madsen shop “almost exclusively.” He unwraps a thick, bright-red cut of beef from Vincent’s Meat Market (the “best butcher shop in the Bronx,” he says) a large silvery striped bass, and a slippery whole octopus, which he will confidently drop into a pot of boiling water.

Brown says he developed his culinary skills when he was a child. “I’m a really picky eater, so I cooked for myself,” except for when his father made southern food. “I made my own eggs—put stuff in them that I liked.”

Despite being busy college students and gourmet chefs, both young men have significant work responsibilities. Brown’s late father was an artist—a painter known for his portraits of jazz and blues musicians—so Brown works with museums and galleries that show his father’s work. He’s also on the executive board of ASILI—the Black student alliance at Fordham—and is a research assistant with Fordham’s Bronx African American History Project. Madsen works as a bookkeeper in his father’s real estate development firm, which brought him to Australia for the summer to work with a client. Both students are studying entrepreneurship at Gabelli.

With so much going on, one wouldn’t think there’d be time for such epicurean endeavors. But the roommates say that cooking helps them “de-stress.” Also? “We just really love doing it,” says Brown, who, truth be told, is not a total amateur. He worked for a time for a chef in Arizona who’s now working in France. His favorite thing to cook? Coq au vin.

With his creamy peppercorn sauce simmering, the octopus boiling, and the steak in the oven, Brown sits at the dining table with his laptop open. “Sorry, I’m finishing a paper,” he says. It’s midterm time so he must multitask, but he’s not worried that anything will burn or boil over. “At this point, I’ve been cooking so long I have an internal timer.”

Meanwhile, Madsen’s got his mind on his peppers and how they might complement the octopus.

“Can I make the sauce, Bentley? Please, please?”

Brown gives him the OK. “Jake loves sauces,” he tells a guest.

Madsen heads to the stove. “This sauce is new—today,” he declares. He concocts a thick, sweet and spicy sauce using passion fruit juice, pineapple chunks, vinegar, ketchup, and several treasures from St. Rose’s Garden, including tomatillos and cayenne, scorpion, and Tabasco peppers.

Madsen uses his peppers to make batches of hot sauce, which he always keeps on hand. After a friend gave him a Carolina Reaper plant—which yields the hottest pepper in the world—he decided to challenge himself. “I said, ‘I’m gonna make a hot sauce that uses Carolina Reaper that isn’t masochistic.” His finished product uses mango, pineapple, ginger, and lime, and as promised, does not set the mouth on fire. (Though it’s still got plenty of kick.)

Soon friends are trickling into the apartment, and everyone’s sitting down to eat. Eleni Koukoulas, a Gabelli School senior, said she’s been over once or twice before to eat with the Fordham foodies.

“It’s not very conventional college,” she says. “You could just tell it’s something they really love, and that they love to share it with other people.”

As everyone digs in, Brown hears one of his other roommates come in the front door. “Hey, Phil,” he shouts. “Come get you some food!”

What inspired you to change careers?
Baking had always been a passion of mine, but originally I had no intention of turning it into my profession. My first job after graduation was as a publicist. Then the economy crashed in 2008, and when everybody was getting laid off, I lost my job. I looked at my options and decided to take a risk: I made baking my career.

How did you get your first job in a restaurant?
The restaurant industry is fairly easy to enter from the ground up, even without previous experience, as long as you have talent and a strong work ethic. My first pastry job was a combination of my ability to sell my talent, a chef who liked me and had an immediate need for a pastry cook, and being at the right place at the right time.

What made you decide to start your own bakery?
When you’re working in a restaurant, you’re part of a team, and there are so many channels that everything has to go through. It’s not only about creating a menu you like and putting it out there; you have to please your executive chef, your managers, and the owner. Everything has to be cost effective, and that means you can’t always serve the things that you would want to serve. And because I’ve always really liked healthy food, I felt a little bit guilty about that. That’s why I decided that I needed my own space.

What was it like starting your own business?
It’s a long process. When you start, you have all of these ideals and these dreams. And then once you actually begin work, you realize it’s not that easy. You realize that nobody cares about this business more than you do. So it’s a lot of work, but you learn a lot as you go. I’m so grateful because my education has been the greatest gift my parents have given to me. And my time at Marymount prepared me for this challenge.

Did you face any particular challenges as a young female entrepreneur?
There is a perception that people have of me because of my age and because of my gender. So it was hard at first; I had a lot of meetings that didn’t end well. But you do learn a lot from every meeting. It’s not exclusive to the food industry, but there are still a lot of men who think that you just don’t belong. Now I’m seeing more women in managerial positions, and more female chefs and female owners, so that’s definitely a good thing. But it’s still not enough, not yet.

The desserts you create are gluten free, and you use natural, organic, and local ingredients. Why did you make that choice?
I took the plunge into health-conscious baking partly because I knew there was a market for it now—especially here in Brooklyn. There are a lot of people into the gluten-free diet and the vegan diet, but they still want to have cake, and they still want to have cookies and desserts that taste good. But it’s also because that’s how I personally eat, and because of my experience at previous restaurants. I do cheat sometimes, but I try to eat healthy and wheat-free most of the time. So that’s why my bakery has more of a health-conscious vibe. It’s all real food, real ingredients, healthy portions, and healthier sweeteners. I wanted to make my favorite desserts and allow other people to enjoy them too.

What’s next for you?
Well, the store is only five-and-a-half months old, so I’m still here all the time. Once I get to the point where everything is running smoothly and I don’t have to be here as much, and once we have enough financing, I would love to open another location. Maybe in Brooklyn, maybe in Manhattan, but for right now we’re just trying to reach as many people as we can online, through UberEats, and at this store. I wanted to build this bakery—this was my dream—and so for now, I’m living my dream.

—Emily Mendez

“This was a working farm from colonial times all the way down to about 1907 or so,” said Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, professor emeritus of history, who has written about Fordham history in partnership with anthropology professor Allan Gilbert, Ph.D.

The food was produced within sight of the building—today’s Cunniffe House—where the students studied, slept, and ate. On the site of the Rose Hill Gym was an orchard that produced apples, pears, and cherries, according to the professors’ research. Potatoes, corn, and other crops were also grown on campus. A vineyard on the site of today’s college cemetery yielded two or three barrels of wine per year, and the field at present-day Fordham Prep was a pasture populated by 30 to 40 cows.

The farm produced “a good percentage” of the food and milk for the college, according to a new history of Fordham by Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley, GSAS ’66, professor emeritus of theology. Wines and Gilbert said the college also purchased meat and groceries from New York merchants, and Fordham’s first Jesuits, Frenchmen who liked to drink wine with dinner, imported wine from Bordeaux to supplement what was produced on campus.

Dietary staples at Rose Hill included beef and pork; pigs as well as cows were raised at the farm, Wines and Gilbert said. On special occasions, students dined on oysters and other shellfish. Bread was probably baked on campus, and vegetables may have been grown in a greenhouse east of the University Church. Jesuit brothers oversaw food production.

(In recent years, Fordham students have made a modest return to Rose Hill’s farming roots by maintaining St. Rose’s Garden on one edge of campus and organizing a weekly Fordham Farmer’s Market in front of the McGinley Center.)

After a few decades, the students’ dining area was moved from today’s Cunniffe House to a newly completed space in Dealy Hall. Eating was a solemn affair, far removed from the freewheeling atmosphere of today’s campus dining venues. It was strictly regulated by the college’s Rules and Customs Book, according to a chapter by Gilbert and Wines in Fordham: The Early Years (Fordham University Press, 1998), edited by Thomas C. Hennessy, S.J.

A student read aloud from literature or history during meals, and No. 5 in the Rules for the Refectory section of the customs book required students to eat in silence so they could “give an account of what is read, if called upon.” Students stopped eating at the ringing of a bell and then rose to face the prefect, answer a prayer, and make the sign of the cross before turning to silently leave in single file with their arms folded.

Indeed, students were expected to keep quiet during most of their daily routine, which was akin to the rigors of a “medieval monastic regime,” according to Msgr. Shelley’s book, Fordham, A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841-2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016). But they still found moments for food-related levity, he wrote: “God sent food; the devil sent cooks,” the students would gripe, echoing a longstanding complaint of college students everywhere.

“This used to be a neighborhood where everyone did what my grandmother did,” Madonia says. “In the morning she went out and she bought whatever they were eating that night: fish or meat, vegetables, bread, whatever else they needed, and then she came home to prepare the meal. And that went on for years here, up through the ’80s.”

Nowadays, the Italian-American population of Belmont is small, but the community’s old-world flavor remains rich and strong as espresso. People flock here for the quality, variety, and value of the food available. And not least for the authenticity and tradition: Belmont is home to a remarkable number of businesses still run by the families who started them, in some cases more than 90 years ago. “It’s all the pieces of it that make it special,” Madonia says. “It’s the neighborhood, it’s the history, it’s the milieu.”

Although he grew up working in the bakery, Madonia didn’t always appreciate the value of the family business. “I hated it when I was kid,” he says. “I wanted to break out.” So after graduating from Fordham University in 1975 with a B.A. in anthropology and political science, he earned an M.A. in urban studies at the University of Chicago.

When he returned to New York in the late 1970s, he went to work as chief of staff for Deputy Mayor Nat Leventhal and before long advanced to deputy commissioner of the New York City Fire Department. In 1988, however, his older brother, Mario, who had been running the family bakery, was killed in a car accident. Amid the grief, Madonia decided to help his father keep the bakery alive. “It was hard,” he says. “It’s not the way you want to wind up in a business.”

The bakery thrived nonetheless, and by the mid-1990s he had taken in a partner. He also kept in touch with his former colleagues in city government and, in 2001, became a policy adviser to Michael Bloomberg, who was running for mayor. Following Bloomberg’s election, Madonia was named chief of staff, a position he held till late 2005, when he left City Hall to accept a new job, as chief operating officer of the Rockefeller Foundation.

As gratifying as Madonia finds his work these days, the 13 years he spent running the bakery on a daily basis taught him to recognize “the intrinsic value of a family business and an institution that has history.” He especially relished the daily exchanges with customers. “What a positive thing it is for people to say, ‘Thank you, I love your product. I put this on my dinner table.’ That’s their house,” he says. “You go home with them.”

Time is elastic on Arthur Avenue, and it doesn’t take Madonia long to get back into the old-world rhythm of the place. He meets Frank Franz, FCRH ’75, president of the Belmont Small Business Association. They walk and talk with Gil Teitel, third-generation owner of Teitel Brothers, the gourmet grocery that’s been selling imported olive oil, tomatoes, cheeses, and other goods on the corner of Arthur Avenue and 186th Street since 1915.

Two storefronts down is Coseza’s Fish Market, where imported branzino and orata rest on ice among local bluefish and croakers. “He has to be half an economist in order to buy and price,” Madonia says of John Cosenza, son of the store’s current owner. At Biancardi Meats, Madonia looks in on his friend Sal Biancardi, who, like Madonia, has worked both on and off the avenue. He returned to the family-run butcher shop in 1997, after 11 years as a currency trader for Morgan Stanley.

From Biancardi’s it’s on briefly to Madonia Brothers Bakery. The pungent, savory smell of house-cured sausage and sopressata is replaced by the warm aroma of freshly baked bread and cookies—the traditional pane di casa and the onion and olive breads; the biscotti, pignoli, and cannoli “filled while you wait.”

Next stop is the famed Arthur Avenue Retail Market, a landmark in Belmont since 1940, when Mayor Fiorello Laguardia sprearheaded the construction of the building as a shelter for the pushcart vendors who had been selling their goods out in the street. One door down from the market is Mario’s Restaurant, which started as a pizzeria in 1919 but offers a broad range of classic Neapolitan dishes. Chef and owner Joseph Migliucci greets Madonia. “I’ll make a pizza. You want some pizza?” Ten minutes later, the perfectly cooked pie arrives: The crust is pleasantly chewy, the tangy sauce blending with the fresh mozzarella and basil in a remarkable balance of flavor.

Madonia walks off the late-afternoon snack by heading to the Casa di Mozzarella, on 187th Street, just east of Arthur Avenue. His friend Orazio Carciotto is in the back of the store making the house specialty. He forces a hunk of curd through a sieve into a stainless steel bowl. After a little hand-mixing, he adds several small pots full of boiling water and thrusts his hands back in to knead the mixture until the mozzarella begins to form. Using a wooden paddle, he tears and stretches the cheese till it shines and, in a series of deft movements, folds the product into a ball or braids it into knots. “People ask, ‘How much water?’” he says. “I tell them I know when it’s right.”

The last stop of the afternoon is Borgatti’s Ravioli & Egg Noodles, which has been making fresh pasta cut to order for approximately 75 years. There’s a hand-operated pasta machine behind the counter. “When we opened the store in 1935, it was already used,” says Mario Borgatti, 92. He taps the wheel. “Still works. Even in blackouts.”

Madonia says goodbye and walks across 187th Street toward Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, the spiritual and cultural center of the neighborhood since 1907.

“In a city like New York, there are lots of ethnic neighborhoods, but very few that have kept the heritage even after the people moved to the suburbs. We were able to do it both through the church and the commercial venue.

“People might say, ‘You’re stuck in a time warp,’” he says. “Maybe. I don’t know. Somebody likes it.”