Lindsay Marie Morris

Set on West Hollywood's hip and colorful Santa Monica Boulevard, Pura Vita is a beacon for foodies, Italians, and Italophiles alike. Its low-lit, cozy, contemporary New York City wine bar vibe is as inviting as the food, which is both innovative and delicious.

Start with arancini or eggplant parmigiana, before digging into cacio e pepe or spinach and mushroom lasagna, paired with wine sourced from organic and biodynamic farms. Then, treat yourself to the tiramisu. It's a Grand Tour of the boot and its stones, influenced by chef and owner Tara Punzone's Italian New Yorker roots.

 

Take one look at the restaurant's arresting logo—a chef's knife pierces through a dripping tomato—and it's suddenly clear: no animals were harmed in the making of your meal. In fact, it was the first 100% plant-based Italian restaurant and wine bar in the United States when it opened its doors in 2018. That doesn't stop Pura Vita's largely omnivorous customer base from coveting reservations for brunch, lunch, aperitivo, and dinner.

 

Drawing from the Costa Rican phrase "pura vida," Tara called her restaurant Pura Vita to reflect an Italian version of the pure life. It's also among her many tattoos. She designed the concept, menu, and interior herself, drawing from her master's degree in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. 

Born in Brooklyn to second-generation Italian American parents, Tara grew up in Long Island, influenced by her grandparents' Neapolitan and Calabrian traditions. But after watching a video about slaughterhouses in her fifth-grade class, she found herself rethinking her culture's foods, especially once she became vegan at age 12.

Mom's lasagna was no longer an option, but Tara took to the kitchen, reinventing her favorite family foods in a way that celebrated their rich history.

She documents that journey from plant-based dinners at Manhattan's Angelica Kitchen to opening Pura Vita and releasing her first cookbook, Vegana Italiana (Rodale Books, October 2025), which she co-wrote with Gene Stone. She was also kind enough to share more about navigating that path, from the spark that ignited her Pura Vita vision to her ultimate goal of serving and sharing beautiful, compassionate Italian food. 

Pura Vita Chef and Owner Tara Punzone
Photo by Heidi Calvert

What led you to embrace veganism?

I write about it in the book because it's part of my whole experience that got me here to where I am today. As a kid, I loved animals. Every little kid does, and I was always very finicky about the things that I would eat. But of course, as a child, you don't make the connection to how the food gets on your plate, what the process is from a beautiful doe-eyed cow standing there to a dish that's in front of you. It doesn't occur to you what goes on from one place to the other. So there was no connection for me.

But then in the fifth grade, when I was 10 years old, I had a teacher who showed the class a video of a slaughterhouse, and it was just appalling. It affected me in a very, very profound way.

That was it for me. I didn't eat my lunch that day. I gave it away to somebody else. And I told my parents when I went home that night that I didn't want to eat meat anymore. And that was the beginning of it.

 

How did your family respond?

They were completely perplexed, and I'm sure they thought it was going to fade out after a couple of weeks. I mean, I was 10 years old, but it didn't because I meant it.

Thankfully, I have really amazing, supportive parents. And what happened was my mom said, "OK, well, there's this place, Angelica Kitchen. Let's eat there. Let's make it a positive experience."

She wanted to understand as well. And in front of Angelica, there used to be a little area where all the pamphlets would be from groups like PETA and information about factory farming for people who were interested enough to take it. And I took all of it, and I just went down the spiral of learning about all of the different segments of that industry, and one by one, how revolting it was. And I didn't want to be a part of any of that.

It took me a couple of years to figure out the whole vegan thing. By the time I was about 12, I had given away my leather motorcycle jacket and my Doc Martens, and I was ready to be vegan to make that full commitment. And it was the best. I have zero regrets.

 

How did that affect the way you participated in Italian traditions?

I'm proud of my heritage. I love my family traditions, and I really wasn't enthusiastic about having to let go of that part. So it became my focus to have both things. I wanted to be able to not eat animals and not hurt animals. But I also wanted to be Italian American and participate in all the things that my family was doing, cooking, and celebrating.

The very first thing that made me realize was that I needed to start learning how to make the foods that my grandma and mom made, particularly for Easter. My mom would always make lasagna on Easter, and I couldn't have it.

My mom made meat-free lasagna because, for many years, I was still eating dairy, and I still was able to participate. But then one day I realized, "No, now I can't have any of it at all."

And so I started trying to figure out how to make the lasagna. That's where my spark started flying. It was terrible at first. It was just a big fail on the first of many times that I made it. But that's what got me excited to figure these things out. That was the first dish.

 

Tara draws inspiration from family recipes and traditions. 

How did that spark lead to Pura Vita?

I always had the dream of having my own restaurant. You never think it's ever going to happen in real life.

I'd been working in restaurants forever, sharpening my skills and learning about business. When I came to L.A., I was the culinary director for a vegan place that had several locations. So I had the opportunity to learn about business, which is the part of being a chef that you don't necessarily learn. That was extremely helpful for me because I learned all the things not to do, which is sometimes more important than what you're supposed to do.

Then, the original owner sold it to new people, and I decided it was time for me to do my own thing. So I started searching for locations. I found a place that was so fitting in my mind for what I wanted. I fixed it completely, but I wanted it to have a certain feel. I got very lucky with the location. And I was also lucky because I wasn't somebody that people knew.

It was just the absolute right moment in time, in the absolute right place. And I'm so grateful for that. It was a success from the very first night, and thank God we're still there.

 

"I have an amazing staff and people I really trust, who helped me make things happen," says Tara.

How did Vegana Italiana come about?

I always had the idea in my mind that I wanted to write a book. As soon as I opened the restaurant and it was successful, every single person asked me if I had a book. But I was running a restaurant and there for 16 hours a day every day. You can't write a book like that. It's not possible.

So many years went by of me wanting to do it, and then I just got to a place with the restaurants where I have an amazing staff and people I really trust who helped me make things happen.

 

It was super difficult because on my one day off, I was just working on this book. If it weren't for Gene Stone, my co-author, I would never have finished it.

Tell us about the writing process.

Luckily, he lives a couple of blocks away from me and from the restaurant. It was very convenient. There was no driving involved. It was pretty great. We would just spend the day together.

 

I wrote the recipes, but I had to write them for smaller servings. But the stories about my life and my childhood—all the recipes have little anecdotes or little stories to go with them—that was me just recording an idea on my phone.

 

I would just tell the story—for example, Easter lasagna—into my phone and then just send it to him, and he would transcribe my words and then make it a little bit more cohesive. That was fun because it felt free. I was just speaking it out, and he was making it readable. We were a really good team.

 

How did you select the recipes you share?

I wanted this book to be accessible. People who live in L.A. come to the restaurant every day and get to eat my food. That's great because that's the whole purpose I want to share with my community. But so many people can't get here, and I want it to be accessible to those people. So you can't have recipes with wild ingredients that no one can find.

 

So I immediately eliminated anything that included ingredients like that. For example, truffles. It's not easy to get truffles; they're extremely expensive. They're delicious, but that's not what this book is about.

 

I want people to be able to make food for their family—really good old school Italian food that happens to be vegan, whether you're fully vegan, you would like to be fully vegan, you haven't figured out a way to do so yet, or you're just trying to add more plant-based food into your life.

A lot of the recipes are things my family has always eaten, and it turns out a lot of those things were already vegan. For example, in Calabria, it's peasant food: Swiss chard, beans, potatoes, and peppers.

 

Cheers to healthy, plant-based Italian food.

With your restaurant and this book, what is your ultimate goal?

It's always been the same. My grandpa and grandma owned an Italian hero shop in Brooklyn. When I was a kid, I wanted to be my grandpa so much. All he did was make simple food for the community, but it was so wildly popular that they needed to hire a security guard. And I thought that was so cool: the impact that he had on his community, and that's always been my goal: to replicate that in a plant-based way.

 

Providing that community feeling and support, and making people happy through clean, healthy food, has always been my goal. It's very simple. I just love the idea of making people happy through food.

 

 

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Giulia Civello pulls a worn hardcover book from her shelf and flips through it, revealing little scraps of paper marking various pages. It's a cookbook, and one of the bookmarks is labeled "Franco" for her father, marking his favorite recipe.

 

"What's amazing about these old Italian cookbooks is that so many of the recipes assume such a high base level of cookery compared to the recipes you see now," Giulia says as she looks down at the book. "It's just 'Cook the fruit; make the pastry.' There's no explanation of what that means. And there's no oven temperatures or anything like that. You just have to know, which I think is totally wonderful."

 

The cookbook belonged to Giulia's great-grandmother and was passed down through generations with Sicilian recipes and food traditions. Today, Giulia shares that knowledge through Gourmet Girls, a series of pop-ups and supper clubs she and her team host in venues and homes across Brighton and Hove, a seaside community in southeastern England.

Giulia's father came to the UK from Catania, Sicily, where her family spent summer holidays. Drawing from that heritage, Italy travels, and her background as an environmental consultant, Giulia serves food stories and sustainably sourced Italian fare with meals celebrating various regions such as the Dolomites, Puglia, and, of course, Sicily. 

Giulia shared more about her business and passion for Italian food, memorable events, favorite dishes, challenges, and what she hopes diners take away.

 

 

How and why did you start Gourmet Girls?

I thought about doing it for a long time before I actually had the guts to launch. I started in ecology and then migrated into the environmental sector. I've always been a foodie and interested in sustainable food and farming. 

I was always getting my grandma to teach me recipes. My grandma grew up with her mother, father, and grandmother in the house, so she wasn't actually the main cook in the house; it was her mother.

 

I worked in London five days a week, commuting up, which was incredibly stressful. I thought, "What am I doing? This isn't what I want to do." Then other things happened in my personal life, and I thought, "If I'm going to do it, I just need to do it now." So, I went for it. 

It started as—and mainly still is—supper clubs, which are a great model for me because I host these pop-ups at venues. I don't have my own catering kitchen, but I go into places, cook in their kitchens, and invite people over for an evening. Everybody sits together, and it's all very much about community. I come out and tell them about the dishes and the heritage of the dishes. But the real thing for me is cooking Italian food that people don't get in an Italian restaurant here. I want to cook regional Italian food, which is what Gourmet Girls is all about—everything from the Dolomites to Sicily to Tuscany to Puglia.

 

Many friends say, "Oh, we don't go out for Italian; we just go out for Asian. You can just cook Italian at home, can't you?" And I say, "No, no, there's so much more than what you get in your High Street pasta/pizza restaurants." And so that's what it's all about, really.

 

Guests enjoy a Gourmet Girls supper.

What makes Brighton and Hove a special place to offer events?

Brighton is a brilliant place. It's very multicultural and open. It has a very big LGBTQ community, and you get a lot of people who come down from London, love it, and stay from all over. You get people interested in trying new stuff and lots of different groups. It's interesting to see the kind of people who attend my events. You get all age groups, people who are learning Italian online, who are really obsessed with Italy, real foodies who just want to try something different, or people who have just heard about it. It's a nice mix of loads of different people coming together, who are joined by their interest in what the food will be like.

 

 

Suppers are served with stories to complement the courses.

 

Share a memorable Gourmet Girls event.

The biggest one I did was a Roman street food pop-up. That was challenging. There were 70 people, and I was churning out the Roman version of arancini (supplì).

 

Every time I do an event, I get anxious in the lead-up—that's just my personality. But then I come away feeling so warm inside because people just love it. They love that you can tell them interesting anecdotes and the heritage of what they're eating. 

I had a job in a cheese shop when I was studying at university. People would love it if you told them how cheese is made and the story about the people making it. It's just that connection with food, isn't it? It's totally different. And that's what the supper clubs and catering are all about, really. It's about sharing my love of the dishes and the heritage of the dishes.

 

Pasta alla Norma

 

What are some favorite regional dishes you introduce?

I always do pasta alla Norma, which people have sometimes heard of, but often the aubergine is so badly cooked. People try to bake it. It's like, "Get a pan of oil and fry it!" That's the way to get the best out of an aubergine. I make a really good pasta alla Norma, with a lovely ricotta salata, which I get from a really amazing Italian cheese guy in London.

 

That recipe comes from Catania, so I'm particularly fond of it. It's named after the famous opera by Bellini. As the story goes, playwright Nino Martoglio said, "Chista è 'na vera Norma!" when he tried it for the first time.

 

I also enjoy serving granita, traditionally a breakfast food, as a dessert. I serve it with a little brioche just as you would have at breakfast time in Sicily. I do an almond granita with a little shot of espresso that the guest can pour on top. When my dad has granita, it's always alla mandorle with caffè on top. It's just the most divine combination of flavors, so that's another favorite as well.

 

Giulia Civello in the kitchen.

 

What were some of the biggest challenges you've faced?

The challenge I find is that Italian dishes are based on the quality of ingredients. The UK climate is so different from that of Italy, especially Sicily. If you try to cook pesto alla Trapanese, which has almonds, tomatoes, and basil, you won't get the same flavor. A lot of British chefs who cook Italian food throw everything at it to compensate. You end up with these pasta dishes with 17 ingredients, which you never get in Italy. I seek out really high-quality ingredients to try and replicate those Italian flavors, which is not all that easy. And so I have to kind of tailor the menus around what I can get. Staying true to the authenticity of the dish is key for me.

 

Another challenge has been marketing and learning to spread the word about the events. Fortunately, I have a good family network and friends in Brighton and Hove. So my events initially were filled with friends and family, but once they've been once or twice, you need to move on to the next set of people. It's like, how do you reach them? That's been a big learning curve.

I attended networking events and posted my event on all sorts of random event websites, trying to get the venues where I was hosting to post it on their socials. That helped a lot. I'm lucky my best friend and her husband have a branding agency. They did all my branding, which was amazing. 

 

Giulia Civello adds the finishing touch to a Gourmet Girls meal course.

What are your future plans?

Probably not immediately, but I would like it to be my full-time job. The supper clubs are great because they allow me to test recipes. It's quite a friendly setting to do it. I haven't had to make huge investments financially in terms of catering equipment and things like that. The venues also have staff that I can rely on. But the plan is to eventually transition to having my own prep kitchen and all my own kit and doing much more private catering—not mass wedding catering though; I'm not interested in doing 250 plates of food for a wedding. I want to do small things, where it's still very much about the food I'm cooking. It's not just the event; it's about food. That's what I'm all about, really.

 

Gourmet Girls guests typically sit at a long table for a communal dining experience.

What experience do you hope to share?

I hope my guests will come away having eaten something new and learning about Italian regional food.

 

This winter, I'm planning a Dolomites menu. After university, I spent a ski season in Italy, where I lived in the Dolomites in Val Gardena for six months. It was a glorious experience.

 

The food there is just wonderful. It is quite Austrian in terms of its influence because where I was, it actually used to be Austrian; the border moved during the war. When you're skiing there, you see these beautiful mountains, and they've got all the holes where the soldiers would be hiding and fighting. It's an amazing place, and it's all dumplings, polenta with sausages, and strudel. It's so different from anywhere else in Italy; really hearty mountain fare. So I think that will be nice around Christmas.

 

I hope people come thinking, "Wow, this is Italian food? I don't associate this food with Italy!" That's the kind of reaction I like. It's just a voyage of discovery.

 

 

 

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