Laura in the Kitchen star Laura Vitale has been carving out a niche in the YouTube cooking
universe ever since the launch of her first video in 2010. Whether you're a longtime fan
or a new one, here's what all foodies need to know about Laura in the Kitchen.
In the mid '90s, Laura's father emigrated from Italy to the U.S., ultimately settling
in New Jersey, where he opened Italian pizzerias in the town of Deptford and the city of Camden.
By 1998, an already fearless and ambitious 12-year-old Laura left her mother, brother,
grandparents, and extended family in Naples and flew across the Atlantic to join her father.
Adapting to Jersey life was initially tough - Vitale deeply missed her family in Italy.
Her antidote to homesickness was learning how to make her nonna's favorite Neapolitan
dishes, while receiving instruction from her grandmother, long-distance, over the phone.
She confessed on her YouTube channel that the very first thing she made on her own was
what she called "Sunday sauce", a painstakingly slow-cooked, thick-as-gravy ragú featuring
tomatoes and meat, and served with pasta. She admitted,
"It brought me back home in a way and made me feel better."
"Every italian household has their own Sunday sauce, or gravy, whichever way you call it,
I call it sauce but hey."
Another antidote for her homesickness was her nonna's potato gnocchi, which Vitale called
her "favorite dish of all time." That said, Vitale admitted she won't touch the stuff
unless she knows it's been cooked to perfection for at least six hours. She once sassily warned
celebrity chef Eric Ripert,
"If you cook it for two hours, I'm not going to eat it."
"You're not going to eat it?"
"No, it needs to cook for about five to six hours."
When Vitale first came to the U.S., she spoke no English. On the Hilah Cooking podcast,
Laura admitted to being in shock upon her arrival. However, she also knew that America
was where she wanted to be.
While living in Philadelphia with her father and his English-speaking wife, she was homeschooled,
which enabled her to learn English. Determined to overcome her shyness and perfect the new
language, Vitale took her stepmother's suggestion to binge-watch the news. Her stepmom made
the case that newscasters were taught to enunciate properly, which would help Vitale in her goal
to speak accentless English.
Following her stepmom's advice, Laura ended up binge-watching a lot of Nancy Grace, a
primetime news and current affairs show on CNN. Grace, the host of the show, was born
and raised in Georgia, and sports an undeniable Southern accent.
"You know sometimes it is the smallest of details that crack a case wide open."
Interestingly, Laura applied herself so well to her TV-watching that she not only ended
up speaking fluent English, but doing so with a noted Southern twang that lasted for years.
Upon finishing high school, Vitale joined the family business, working with her dad
at his Italian bistro in Camden, New Jersey. The restaurant occupied the ground floor of
a residential apartment building - and a strapping young engineer by the name of Joe Vitale lived
upstairs. Joe became a regular customer, as well as good friends with Laura's father.
In her interview with Hilah Cooking, she recalled,
"Dad was very, very strict. Nobody was good enough for his little girl."
However, he happened to adore Joe and even suggested Laura date a guy like him. But Laura
told her father,
"I will never date a guy you like."
Unbeknownst to both dad and daughter, Joe had been plotting to ask Laura out for some
time - making inroads with her pops was all a part of the plan. Although Laura and Joe
started out as casual friends, she began to like him, but didn't know how to confess her
feelings. Doing what she did best, she whipped up his favorite pizza - which was veggie - in
the shape of a heart and hand-delivered it to him. When he opened the door, Laura handed
it to him, and immediately bolted.
The next thing she knew, Joe strolled over to the restaurant, munching a slice of her
pizza, and asked her out on their first date. These days, the two are married and Joe is
the co-creator of Laura in the Kitchen.
Working for her husband's desert plant business, ArizonaEast, paid the bills, but Vitale soon
realized that succulents didn't exactly scratch her culinary itch. According to StyleCaster,
Vitale's husband decided to renovate the couple's basement and create a "studio" kitchen where
his wife could channel her passion for cooking into a career as a video chef. Although she
admitted she was originally, quote, "very, very against" the idea, she eventually came
around. She explained to Tube Filter,
"I wanted to share recipes with anyone who was willing to watch."
However, the chef didn't become an overnight success.
According to the Daily Dot, the kitchen sat unused for close to a year until, after a
few glasses of wine, she finally dove in. Vitale told Tube Filter,
"I never thought it could have turned into what it has. It went from me creating and
sharing recipes to this amazing community of people with similar interests and passions."
Vitale's ragú to riches rise to YouTube fame is the stuff of digital legend. In January
2010, Vitale posted her debut Laura in the Kitchen video. Filmed by her husband with
a $49 camera, Episode 1 is only 9 minutes and 38 seconds of a slightly awkward and poorly
lit - but nonetheless charming - Laura making a simple tomato and basil bruschetta.
"If you want to impress your date, if you want to impress your friends, I suggest you
make this right now."
Why bruschetta? As Vitale confessed to The Philadelphia Inquirer, it was the one of the
first dishes that Google suggested when she typed the words "how to make" in the search
engine.
As Laura adjusted to life in front of the camera and her husband invested in better
quality equipment, Laura in the Kitchen videos improved and the audience mushroomed. When
reviewing the analytics of the show, the couple realized that the bulk of viewers were teenage
girls between the ages of 13 and 17, which Joe told the Inquirer was the YouTube demographic
of the time.
Initially, the couple's strategy focused on growing their viewership with daily videos.
Seeking to build up a library of content, the pair filmed an episode every day while
working full-time jobs over a nine-month period - but it surely paid off. By August 2020,
Laura in the Kitchen subscribers had skyrocketed to over 3.7 million, placing Vitale's estimated
yearly earnings in the very rough ballpark of between nearly $12,000 to about $193,000,
according to Social Blade.
YouTube fame aside, Vitale always dreamed about having her own cooking show on network
TV. But as she told The Press of Atlantic City, her husband sensibly pointed out,
"You're not just going to walk up to the Food Network and say 'Here I am.'"
In the end, Laura got the last laugh. She didn't even have to leave the basement kitchen
of her home because the Food Network came to her. In 2012, Entertainment Weekly published
Vitale's name on its "Must List." Vitale recalled,
"At the very bottom, it said, 'Hey Food Network: I think we found your next star.'"
And, apparently, the Food Network took notice. Vitale first thought that the message was
just spam or maybe a joke. But the request for a meeting was the real deal - as was the
offer to helm a show of her own, called Simply Laura, on the Cooking Channel, which is owned
by Food Network. Airing for two seasons, between 2014 to 2016, the program included family-centric
episodes and tributes to specific members of her own family.
In an interview with SheKnows, Vitale called the freezer her "best friend." Such a frank
admission is hardly surprising, considering Vitale has been juggling cooking and filming
duties with mothering after the birth of her daughter, Mia, in early 2017. Since becoming
a mom, Vitale started depending on both her fridge and freezer like never before. She
needed to slash prep and cooking times while still churning out the kind of awesome meals
that an unhurried, childless couple might enjoy - albeit in less than 30 minutes and,
ideally, in a single pan.
Laura's fridge is chock full of both foods she can cook quickly and ingredients that
add flavor to those foods. In terms of the latter, the more pickled and marinated the
better. Downright essential is her homemade marinara sauce, which she riffs upon as the
spirit moves her.
The freezer is where Laura stocks her favorite fish, like cod and salmon, along with specialty
meats from her local butcher. Considering the Vitale pizza pedigree, perhaps the most
shocking presence are the boxes of industrially-made frozen pizza. According to her, Virtuoso pepperoni
pesto pies are a family fave that she keeps stashed away for rainy days.
Vitale's star had already risen pretty high in the culinary world by 2013 when she collided
with famed French chef Eric Ripert. Vitale welcomed Ripert to Laura in the Kitchen and
even filmed an episode from his kitchen. In the episode, Vitale followed in the footsteps
of previous culinary luminaries such as Ripert's then-pal, Anthony Bourdain.
To her credit, Vitale was undaunted to find herself amid this big boys' club. She proceeded
to teach the legendary executive chef how to make pizza, effortlessly whipping up a
rustic yet rarefied potato and onion pizza. She also had Ripert prepping for her, commanding
him to oil the bowls and dough balls as well as sprinkle salt and pepper.
For his part, Ripert seemed as impressed with Vitale's millions of daily YouTube viewers
as he was with the deliciousness of the deceptively light "starch on starch" pizza. He also commended
his fellow chef, telling her that she "[demystifies] pizza really well."
"Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me about pizza because you really, really
taught me something interesting today."
Never a fame monger, Vitale vowed to stay discreetly earthbound as Laura in the Kitchen
took off into the stratosphere. As she confessed in an episode of Recipes for Your Best Life,
Vitale avoided any digital blunders that might incite the online wrath of trolls and haters.
Or, at least she did for the first several years of her YouTube reign. She admitted,
"I was so concerned about being picked apart and [being compared] to somebody else. And
then a lightbulb [...] went off in my head."
The going off of that lightbulb coincided with an interview Rachael Ray gave that resonated
with her. The notoriously dissed celebrity chef revealed that there were hate sites dedicated
to her, but she made peace with those opinions. Vitale gushed about Ray, saying that she'd
"loved and admired her for years" - and she was inspired to react similarly to any criticism
that comes her way.
Although Vitale may have developed a thicker skin and a more devil-may-care attitude, she
carefully steers clear of being a provocateur. She told the podcast host,
"There are things that I keep private [...] and a line in the road that I don't cross."
Specifically, there's a holy quartet of inflammatory topics - finances, child rearing, religion,
and politics - that Vitale makes a point of never addressing online or in interviews.
In a Food & Wine feature about her "essential kitchen tools," Vitale touted her beloved
Global chef knife, before offhandedly adding,
"It's chopped my finger off - that's how sharp it is - but that was my own fault."
However, a more permanent and perilous mishap with sharp objects occurred further back in
Vitale's past. Vitale was only one and a half years old when, asleep on her grandparents'
bed, she rolled over. She would have tumbled right onto the floor if not for a nightstand
that got in the way of her free fall. While it ultimately prevented further injury, the
pointed edge of the nightstand cut her face.
Although it just missed gouging her eye, Vitale was left with a large scar where no hair will
grow. As a result, to this day, her eyebrows aren't even - she has to pencil in part of
her left brow.
"I'm okay with that, because a slightly different eyebrow is better than no eye at all."
She confessed in a vlog,
"If I had a dollar for anybody who mentioned that my eyebrows are not even, I'd be a millionaire
and I could retire in the Bahamas somewhere."
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