Lindsay Marie Morris

From a young age, Brooklynite Paige Lipari yearned for a space where she could bring together her passions for food, books, and the arts. As she grew older, she realized she also wanted to share what she loved with her community.

 

Following a trip to her family's home in Alcamo, Sicily, Paige decided that the space would be a bookstore catering to gourmands by selling Sicilian and Italian specialty goods alongside cookbooks and serving as an event space for foodies and neighbors in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And so began Archestratus Books + Foods in 2015.

 

I recently sat down with Paige, who shared more about Archestratus's start, her deep connection to Sicily, the challenges and rewards of running a niche business, how she has engaged the community, and more.

 

Tell us about your connection to Sicily.

I'm Sicilian on both sides. My father was born in Sicily, and my mother is second-generation American. I have a very strong connection with my Sicilian heritage. We go to Sicily every few years and visit my family in Alcamo.

 

My family has a city house and a country house because it was four hours to Trapani by donkey, but now it's seven minutes. They're in the city house in the winter, and then they go to the country house for the warmer months, where they have vineyards. They grow grapes, and they sell mosto to winemakers. 

I actually didn't go to Sicily until I was 19, which felt very late. And then we started going more and more, but my nonna always brought the Old World Italian. I never really related to this sort of gold chain/ white shirt Italian American—that just wasn't in my family. I grew up with a nonna who always had some wine on the table with some fruit and cheese. We always ate raw fennel after every meal.

 

She was very much into agriculture and would grow things all year long. The food was unique compared to other Italian American restaurants we visited. And she was my first anchor in that culture.

 

Archestratus specializes in vintage and new cookbooks.

What inspired you to open Archestratus, and what led to the naming of the bookstore?

When I was really young, I loved books, and there was this closet where I would sit and read by myself. And I was a latchkey kid with two working parents, so I started cooking for myself really early.

 

I kind of knew in the back of my mind that I wanted a bookstore. I also love design and making spaces feel warm and cozy. And then I love the arts, so the idea of having people perform in this space, doing conversations and talks, and keeping that intellectual stimulation.

 

It wasn't until I went to Sicily for the first time, when I was 19, and met my family, that I completely broke open this obsession with Sicilian food and, of course, Sicilian cookbooks. I fell in love with them, and it changed my life. 

When I came back, it was kind of my way of connecting with them and also preserving my heritage because my nonna was starting to have dementia. The recipes were all in her head.

 

When I learned about Sicilian cuisine, my creative juices just flowed so hard in that direction. I could never really put my finger on why it was different or what it was about until I went there.

 

Sicily's so beautiful and unique, and it's amazing to me that now it's getting its flowers as far as how it is its own place. But 20 years ago, when I started out making this food and getting really passionate about it, nobody knew. No one was talking about how it's influenced by Spain and North Africa, and there are a lot of Middle Eastern flavors, and there's the Couscous Festival and all that stuff.

 

I was passionate about spreading the word.

 

Where did the name Archestratus come from?

I read Pomp and Sustenance by Mary Taylor Simeti and read about Archestratus, and I immediately felt a connection with him. He was kind of wild in what he wrote, and he was deeply mysterious; we don't know much about him.

 

I named the store first, and then all these answers revealed themselves later. He was a poet who was more interested in places and simplicity, enjoying himself and having a good time. Food was all about that and gathering.

 

Cookbooks are documents of places, times, and people. I'm interested in how food is a way of seeing the world and bringing people together.

 

How do you select the books for your collection, and do you have any personal favorites?

I go to book sales. I love books where it feels like there's a real voice. I know there's a place for more prescriptive things that fill a niche. I just make sure that they're really of good quality and were done with intention. 

Some of my favorite books are Pomp and Sustenance and Honey from a Weed by Patience Gray.

 

Patience Gray's husband was a sculptor, and they would travel around the Greek and Italian islands in the Mediterranean, chasing marble for him. So she would spend time in these places. While he was doing the work, she would go out and sniff the windows of the homes, figure out what the women were making, and write about them in a strange, esoteric, funny way.
 

Can you share some highlights of the community spirit at your bookstore?

We started the Archestratus Cookbook Club in 2015, and it has always been successful. We pick a book every month, and then everyone shows up with one portion of a dish. Then we all just have this feast, take a little bit of everything, and try other dishes from the book to see if you want to buy it.

 

Our bake sales are probably the most incredible. We held a bake sale for the L.A. fires and raised $9,000 in three hours, which was matched by a corporate sponsor. We also held a bake sale for Joe Biden, one for Planned Parenthood, one for Ukraine, and one for Palestine. 

We usually have around 80 bakers, and then it gets people to come. It's such a great model. You spend $20, but then if it's a big sale, that $20 can turn into $200.

 

What's been your biggest business challenge?

The pandemic was a challenge, but it wasn't my biggest challenge. In a bizarre way, I almost felt like I was ready. I already wanted to expand and had been researching more food vendors.

 

During the pandemic, we were a bookstore cafe, and I was already starting to think we were outgrowing this space. So, I was already researching vendors for fresh milk and eggs and trying different things. And so I had set up all these connections, and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, well, I could do a grocery pickup.

 

On March 19, 2020, we did a grocery pickup, which was one of the first weekends. By April, we had one day when we had to pick up for 220 people. They would come up on the street with their order, and then I would fulfill it. So I had this bizarre flow happen with the pandemic, and we were O.K.

 

My biggest challenge after the pandemic was when we expanded, and then I realized, "I don't like this. I don't want to do this. I don't like having a bigger staff, and I don't like dealing with this landlord."

 

I thought I would love it, that this was what we needed. But then I realized we needed to be smaller, more flexible, and lighter on our feet.

 

I did this big thing, saying, "We're doing this." Then, I had to pull back and make that hard decision to contract.

 

Every decision I make is pretty public, but I was not doing the thing that I know I love. I love making food, and I love cooking, but it was not making me happy anymore at that level. Facing that and just financially getting through that and out of it has been extremely challenging, and I'm still dealing with the effects. 

 

What are your upcoming plans?

I know that people want recipes, and I want to share them. And so, figuring that out is going to be 2025, and starting to do that. I know there will be a newsletter, so I'm going to start writing one and sharing some of these recipes.

 

Another more community-driven thing I want to do this year is create a community zine and start making a cookbook with everybody, especially coming out of these bake sales. We have such a network of people who love to develop recipes, cook, and have family recipes. We started doing that before the pandemic, but it never got off the ground. And this is the year I want to make time.

 

What do you hope people take away from a visit to Archestratus?

I hope that they get inspired to be more of themselves. I hope that they see that we're operating on a frequency of not giving a shit, and I hope that they go off and they do whatever they want to do. 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!

2024 was a busy year for Rita Prisco, and for once, it wasn't just because of family life for the Queens, New York-based mom of 22-year-old triplets. Somehow, between serving up regular (and frequently viral) TikTok videos to her nearly 500,000 @cucinapalermo fans, she managed to publish not one but two cookbooks—Cucina Palermo: My Homemade Cookbook and Cucina Palermo: Savoring Sicily—and Piccola Francesca, which she envisions as the start of a children's book series.

It all began with a simple spaghetti recipe and a desire to present Sicilian cuisine authentically. She never imagined she'd be competing with professional chefs and cookbook authors. And that homemade approach has proved to be a winning formula. 

Rita shared with me her connection to Sicily, how her incredible journey started, what makes a viral recipe, her future plans, what's been most rewarding, and more. 

  

 

What is your connection to Sicily?

Both my parents are from Sicily. My father grew up in the city of Palermo. He passed away, but I have family in Balestrate, which is more of a beach area, so we would go there when I would go to Sicily. My mother's from a small town called Bisacquino, which is a couple of hours from Palermo. I also have family there still. 

Can you share more about your journey?

Like any other kids, my kids were obsessed with TikTok, but it was more of them doing the dances and all that stuff. And I saw that they were obsessed with it, and it annoyed me that every time I looked for my kids or needed them for anything, what were they doing? They were on TikTok. So I would be upset about it a bit, like, "What the hell? What's going on? You just got to get off of TikTok."

 

And they were like, "Ma, you should watch it. It's not just dancing." They were like, "There's so many other things on TikTok. There are cleaning hacks, and there's cooking."

 

So I started watching the cooking because I am obsessed with cooking, and I noticed that there was no Sicilian food. It was all the food you would see at restaurants on the Italian American menu.

 

I was telling my kids, "Girls, this is not how I ate growing up." And they're like, "Well, why don't you post a video?" I was like, "No. Mommy doesn't do that."

 

It took them months and months of encouraging me that I could do it. So, I just did one to see what would happen and make my kids happy. Literally overnight, it went viral, and it was the foundation recipe, like a staple in my house that I cooked.

 

In a week, I had a hundred thousand followers, and I said, "You know what? Obviously, there's a want for this."

 

People enjoyed it. It was a refreshing thing to them, something that is easy, we could all make, and it looks delicious. It was like people were thirsty for food that actually was real.

So I did another one, and that went viral. Then, another one went viral, and from then on, most of my videos went viral.

 

Rita Prisco with her first cookbook

 

You're now also a published author. Tell us about that experience.

It took a year of people telling me, "You should have a cookbook." And that was another thing that was out of my league mentally. Never in a million years did I think that I would be able to do that! 

I spoke to publishers who were reaching out to me, and it was very intimidating. I didn't want the whole process of writing the cookbook with a publisher. I didn't want any part of it. It was too professional. That's not me. I'm not a chef. I'm not a writer. I'm just a wife and a mom who learned how to cook from her mom and her grandmother. I'm just doing those recipes and having a professional cookbook with professional photos and writers and bloggers, and all that was not a representation of who I am. 

So I said to myself, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it my way. I called my first cookbook My Homemade Cookbook because I didn't want to compete with professionals and be criticized. So, I just laid it out there from the beginning.

 

I did it at home with my daughter, and I warned everybody that that's what they were going to get. So if they were looking for anything different, look someplace else, not in my book. And that's another thing that people enjoyed and were drawn to. They were like, "Wow, that's what we want. We don't want a professional cookbook."

 

How many cookbooks do we have in our house that we never use? Because the minute you open them, they're so intimidating, like, "Oh my God, is this the Bible? What are we doing here?" It's like too much. 

I did my second cookbook because there are so many recipes. I do 50 at a time; it's what I can handle.

 

Then, when I saw the response that I had from people, the connection… I always dreamed of writing a children's book about my childhood and growing up with Sicilian parents in America. But obviously, that couldn't have been done because without a following, without people knowing who you are, it's hard to start writing a book, and then who will buy it if you don't have the exposure.

 

Once I had the exposure, I saw I could do it. So that's where Piccola Francesca came in, and I'm so proud. I feel like I'm more proud of it than I am of my cookbooks because Piccola Francesca is a story of my life. And it's going to continue. That was the first of many to come.

 

It's been amazing with that book because so many people also related to it. And you don't only have to be Italian or Sicilian to relate to it. It's something that other cultures could relate to. 

So many schools are calling me; they want me to come read. And I've been doing that.  

 

How has your Sicilian heritage influenced your cooking and the recipes you share?

They're the recipes that my mom made growing up: peasant food. My mom grew up during the Depression, when there was no steak. It had to be a holiday to have meat. So there was a lot of pasta and potatoes; everything was made with homemade flour. They would turn a piece of old bread into a dessert. (I have one recipe in my cookbook where you take stale bread and turn it into a cookie.)

 

When I was growing up, my parents weren't poor the way they were when they grew up. They had money, but it didn't matter because even though it was peasant food, per se, it was food that we loved that was delicious, like beans, lentils, and split peas.

 

And the same thing with my kids. If you introduce these foods to your children from when they're born, they grow accustomed to them. So that's what happened to me. 

 

Which of your recipes has received the most attention, and why?

There are a few recipes that have exploded. My first one has over 5 million views. That's my spagetata. People were shocked that you can make delicious pasta like that with just a few ingredients. It costs almost nothing to make. Every region makes it its own way. They put a little twist to it, and it's theirs. So, that is a staple in all of Italy.

 

Another one of my recipes that just blew up with millions and millions of views was my chicken cutlets. I think that those weren't as traditional. What happened is that I have a different way of cutting a chicken cutlet, which is fork tender because you're cutting against the grain. And nobody ever saw that in their life. 

You would think a butcher would know this. I actually now have a butcher in my town who takes orders of chicken cutlets "Rita's way," cut the way I cut them because when you cut a chicken cutlet my way, it becomes so tender, and it's so much better. And now they know and say, "We would never cut chicken cutlets the way we used to."

 

People also love my pasta dishes. My pasta dishes all go viral because there are only three or four ingredients. And people like simplicity. They're tired. They work very hard. And if you can make their life easier, they could feed their family without the extra work. That's what they're looking for. 

That's what I focus on every day. When I know I'm going to show somebody a recipe, I ask, "Is this going to make their life better and easier?" And that's all I'm going to do. Can I make complicated stuff? Of course. But I don't even show that to people.

 

My mom's fig cookies for Christmas take hours and hours of work, but I made a recipe that tastes just like my mom's fig cookies, and it's done in a half hour. That's what I look for when I'm looking for a recipe. I'm looking for something simple with a few ingredients that's going to taste good. It has to have those three components. And I feel like once you have those three components, you have a winner. 

 

What are your plans for future projects?

I'm going to continue putting out a new children's book, always with the same character. I'm going to focus on Francesca. I want to introduce other stories of growing up with immigrant Sicilian parents and the differences between that and being an American child with American parents and grandparents. So many things make us different, including our traditions. And I have a lot of stories from my childhood. 

 

What has been the most rewarding part of your journey?

I think the most rewarding part for me is the people who reach out to me. I try my best to read as many comments and emails as I possibly can. I have people who are in hospice. I have people fighting fourth-stage cancer that I communicate with often who tell me that while they're doing their chemo, they watch me, and it brings a smile to their faces. The fact that I could distract somebody a little from their suffering, even for those few minutes, is all worth it to me.

 

So many people lost their moms or their grandparents at a younger age. They miss their grandmothers or their moms who used to cook for them like this, but they never thought of writing things down. I'm giving them recipes for food they never thought they would make, and they're so happy because I remind them; I bring them memories of their childhood. That is the most rewarding thing in the world.

 

@cucinapalermo Make spagetata with me!🇮🇹 #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #cooking #italiancooking #pasta #goodeats ♬ original sound - Rita

 

 

 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!