Amanda Cifaldi and her family have not only been on Hilton Head Island since the 1970s, but she is also the engine behind two of the island’s most popular restaurants, Hilton Head’s Pomodori and Bluffton’s Pomodori Too.

She joins Jesse on the Eat It and Like It Podcast this week to talk about how she became a chef, work/life balance and the increasing problem with difficult guests at not only her restaurant, but others across America.

Jesse Blanco: We have a very special guest joining us here this morning to talk about all kinds of things, food and otherwise. Those of you who live on Hilton Head Island probably know this face a little bit, maybe not so much, but that’s what we’re here for today, to talk a little bit to Amanda Cifaldi, owner of Pomodori.  Good morning, sunshine. How are you?

Amanda Cifaldi: I’m well, Jesse, good morning, sweetheart.

JB: You and I have been talking about getting together to have this chat for a couple of two, three years, as they say up in Little Italy. Have we not?

AC: Yeah, since COVID. 

JB: Since COVID, since COVID. Yeah, bizarre. And you know, I wanted to talk to you—I’m going to be making my way around the island, chatting with chefs here and there, but there was no place I was going to start other than with you, because you know, the island… Hilton Head Island evolved so much, you’ve been there forever, which we’ll get to in a second, you know so many people, but so many new people come to the island. They may or may not place the face, know the voice, know who you are. So I guess we’ll start at the beginning. Your family was here for a long long time and then you joined them later. That’s your story, correct? 

AC: That’s it. That’s correct.

JB: How long, when did they move here?

AC: My aunts and uncles moved to Hilton Head in the 70s. So, old school, you know, pretty much as deep—before there were actual buildings. They were just pitching a tent. And then my brother went to Clemson and he moved to the island in the early aughts. My parents followed a little while later. I came in 2010ish, 2011ish. I came later, kicking and screaming, but my family was here. I’m gay, sorry to throw that out there early in the podcast, but I didn’t want to be gay. I didn’t want to be gay in Hilton head and single. I thought that was probably a no-go. So I came kicking and screaming, but man, do I love this place now and they love me and couldn’t be happier. So.

JB: So you, in between, I know you matriculated at the University of Georgia. 

AC: I did, go dogs.

JB: Yes, and we’ll get to football in a second, but then you decided, at what point, that you wanted to be a chef?

AC: So I was actually working in Charleston at the time. I had the very, very esteemed pleasure of working for the Neighborhood Dining Group, which is a fabulous restaurant group in Charleston. And at the time, I was serving at their redheaded stepchild restaurant called, wait for it, The Buccaneer. One of the many partners of Neighborhood Dining Group was a rather large aficionado of pirates and all things pirateeering. So he opened a restaurant on the whim of wanting to house his pirate collection somewhere. So they opened the Buccaneer. I was a server, I worked for an amazing general manager, his name was Rod Ward, still my chief to this day, and he sat me down one day and said, “what do want to do when you grow up?” And mind you, I was 28 years old, so I thought I had arrived. I guess I was wrong. So he asked me what I want to do when I grow up, and I said, “I think I’d like to be a chef.” And he said, “great, you start tomorrow.” And the next day–

JB: You were serving at this point?

AC: I was serving, I had never been in a kitchen commercially. It’s not something I had the pleasure of doing. So, he needed a kitchen manager, and I knew everybody at the restaurant, so he gave me my shot and I took it. And, two weeks later, I’m menu planning with Sean Brock, who, as most people know, has won a James Beard award. He is the mind behind Husk, and all of his fabulous creations in Nashville, Charleston, now LA, all over the place. So Sean and I became, I would say, ‘acquaintance-plus’ type people. So we menu planned every couple of weeks for our very different restaurants. And I was around when he won his James Beard. So I was at his side at the after party and all those good things. And he was a really great inspiration of mine to just kind of let the ingredients speak and go forth, you know, doing your best by them. And yeah, that’s how I started. And I moved to Italy for a culinary school, I lived in Italy for a year in Calabria and I went to the Italian Culinary Institute, and I came back and I opened my restaurant.

JB: So you got the opportunity in the kitchen. Did you love it day one?

AC: It was tough. Back then, this was 2008 or 2009, it was still very much a man’s world. Which is cool, I’m a dude’s chick, I like dudes, so it was okay—they didn’t like that I was their boss and I didn’t know how to cut a tomato. That wasn’t their favorite part. But my boss at the time, Rod, he gave me really good advice. He said, “get to know the dishwasher as well.” He said, “the dishwashers are, they’re the eyes and ears of the whole operation. They know more than any of these guys behind the line will ever know.” And I befriended Patricia, who was the dishwasher at the time and her knife skills were insane. She knew all the recipes by heart. And she and I, you know, we kind of took on the task together of figuring out how to make the restaurant better. And I believe we did, we made it better and we left it better when we both parted ways. Yeah. So dishwashers, man, solid source of information.

JB: Amazing. Yeah. So how long did you do that before you went to Italy?

AC: I worked there for about a year. And at that point, once I really knew that that was my path and that was what I wanted to do, I then moved back home to Hilton Head to save money because it’s not cheap to move to a foreign country. So yeah, I moved back to Hilton head and I worked at Street Meat, which is still in operation over 20 years. And I managed their kitchen, and I helped bartend, I basically worked there day and night for three months to save money. And then I moved, and the rest is very good history.

JB: Wow. And so you came back here to Hilton Head with the intention—I know you landed with Irvine and Eat and all that stuff.

AC: I did. I didn’t come back to Hilton Head with the intention of opening a restaurant. I came back to Hilton Head with the intention of buying a food truck. Again, this is 2011. Food trucks are not prevalent yet. And I wanted to move to Asheville, and I wanted to open a food truck. That was what I was doing. And so I was watching the bureaucratic process in Asheville at the time because they weren’t allowing food trucks yet. There were only a couple of places that food trucks could go and set up, and obviously all of that has changed now, food trucks are ubiquitous everywhere. But I was trying to get in on the ground stages of that. I wanted a food truck called Gotcha Focaccia, where I was just going to sell slabs of focaccia with my sauce and meatballs on the side and a side salad, just very, very simple. But my cousin Moose, who owns the Remax here in Hilton Head, Moose has been here for 50 years, he called me one day and he had asked me a few times, you know, “do you want to start a restaurant? I’ll help you.” And I’m like, “nah, I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready yet.” And then he called one day and he said, “It’s Greek to Me has left and their spot is open and you can get it for a song. Are you ready?” And I said, “you know what? I think I am.” I had been at Robert Irvine’s place for about a year, and I learned a lot of good things there under my chef de cuisine, Jared McElroy, I learned a lot of really good things under him. And I said, “yeah, I think I could do this.” And I had a great support system, I had 50 family members on the island, so I knew at least 50 people would be in my restaurant. So yeah, I went for it. And it was cool.

JB: We buried the lead in the restaurant you opened, so I did not know, It’s Greek to Me used to be where you now have Pomodoro.

AC: Yes. So I assumed their lease. They had a 25 year lease, if you can imagine that. And I assumed the last six years of it. So I bought all of the equipment in it for pennies, and I assumed the last six years of this lease, which was very, very inexpensive. So I couldn’t have gotten in at a better time.

JB: Wow.

AC: It was very cost effective for me and I paid off my restaurant in four months. First four months I was open, I paid off my restaurant.

JB: Now, I’ve asked you this question many, many different times over the years, in public forums and privately, because I still laugh every once in a while. At the time, what year are we talking? What year did you open? 

AC: I opened in 2012.

JB: Okay, 13 years ago. At the time, the big names for Italian food on the island were Michael Anthony’s and Ombra, correct?

AC: Yep, yep, They were there and Antonio’s had just closed, but Antonio’s was a fan favorite also.

JB: Okay. Where was Antonio’s? 

AC: Right across the street in Wexford Village.

Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So, Ombra and Antonios were both in Wexford. Wow.

AC: Within a quarter of a mile of each other.

JB: So—I laugh, because you know those places had huge followings, and they still do to this day. They do a great job, but you said, I’m gonna do Italian food too, and let’s go. My favorite response was that one time at that seminar here in Savannah where you said, “I can cook too, you know!” But was there any kind of hand-wringing like you know, do we need a third within two blocks of each other like they were?

AC: I mean, I was terrified. I’m not sure if anybody else was as nervous as I was, but I called my mother every night and said, “mom, what if they don’t like me? What if they don’t like my food?” And she just said, “it’s okay, honey, you’re gonna be okay. Just stay the course.” You know, I think because I had such a great support system in my family—and we’re Italian, we have big mouths. I mean, we literally, we can talk anybody into anything. So, you know, we were full from the very beginning. And I think because I kept my food very simple, none of my dishes have more than five ingredients in them, they’re all very straightforward, clean, simple food—I think we fit in well, you know, we were the next door restaurant. Michael Anthony’s is higher end, they’re doing food that, is, I think now isn’t above my pay grade, but certainly was then. I mean, you know, I knew how to cook 12-15 things. I think part of my success was that I didn’t try to do too much. I tried to stay very simple. I tried to stay a place where you could come once or twice a week with your family. You could afford it, it was good food, everybody could find something that they wanted to eat. But because I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, I just tried to stay very classic, I think that was accessible to a lot of people. Whereas Michael Anthony’s was an occasion spot, a nice occasion spot. And they still are, and they do a great job. They serve the community in a beautiful way, and so does Ombra. And now so does Nunzio’s. I mean, now Nunzio’s is there, which is literally across the street from me. So we have four powerhouse Italian restaurants within literally an eighth of a mile, I think. But we all do something a little bit different, and we serve a niche a little bit differently. I mean, after that first four days, I knew I would be fine. I knew that it would be okay.

JB: You had, if I recall correctly, an uncle hand-making sausage for you, correct?

AC: Uncle George, RIP, Uncle George, George Capazzello, a man of many talents, one of which was he taught special ed in the public education school system for 30 years. Just the most compassionate, the most kind, funniest guy you’ll ever meet. And yes, so he brought my grandfather’s meat grinder to my restaurant because I didn’t have any money. I bought this restaurant for nothing, I opened it for nothing, and I needed help. And so my uncle and my dad brought that 200 pound iron meat grinder into my restaurant, and it had cobwebs on it. I was like, what are you trying to do to me? Can you clean it before you bring it in? And those men dutifully made the sausage, my grandfather’s hundred year old recipe, two, three times a week for the first couple years of our restaurant. And it’s what–it’s how they came together. It’s how they showed their love and respect for my family’s heritage. And I would go in there at 9 a.m. and they would be drinking wine out of these little glasses, and they would be dancing around the kitchen, these 70 year old men, happy as anything you’ve ever seen. It was beautiful. Making the sausage.

JB: Making the sausage that you guys still do to this day.

AC: Still make it today, recipe has not changed one iota, still grind it, still mix it, make it, and that’s my grandfather, that’s my uncle, that’s my grandmother, all my aunts, that’s their legacy, and I love having that.

JB: You know, you and I are dear friends and so I’m allowed to say nice things about your food. Obviously, I think it’s wonderful. But it makes me smile when I talk to people on the island, in my travels, running around, when I [hear], “Oh, where do you go for Italian?” I like them all, like you just said, but my go-to is Pomodori. And I get–I’ve gotten two or three times over the years, “I love it, I love it, I love it. We go all the time. But it is probably the most consistent restaurant on the island.” I’ve gotten back from Joe Public out there and I’ve texted you, I think a couple of times, when I’ve been told that. What do you attribute that to?

AC: You know, I’ve had this discussion a lot with people lately, and in my opinion, I think owning any restaurant is very difficult, and operating a successful restaurant is very difficult for a multitude of reasons, the margins, the help, all of these things. But I think our secret is, A. we don’t try to do anything too complicated, it’s a recipe driven restaurant. But our staff, we maintain 40% of our original staff. They’ve been with us for 13 years. So, we are a restaurant that not only has consistent food, which I think is the harder goal to accomplish in owning restaurants—I think it’s much easier, personally, to change your menu every week, every two weeks, every month, because you’re not held accountable to make that dish the same way again when somebody comes back for it, you know? Like, I go to restaurants all the time and I have something absolutely delicious, and I want to go back a month later, and I go and it’s not there anymore. And not only am I just slightly heartbroken, but it kind of, in a way, I don’t mean any disrespect, but in a way it lets them off the hook a little bit because they don’t have to repeat that performance for somebody who goes back, which I think is a very difficult thing to accomplish. To make the same chicken piccata, chicken francese every time for 13 years when these people are coming to you twice a month… it’s another level of discipline, I think. And I’m very proud of my staff for being able to achieve that over and over and over again. I think the fact that when you open the door—our original goal was to be the cheers of the Italian restaurant. We wanted to know people who come through our doors, and we want them to feel as though they’re coming to their aunt’s house, or their grandmother’s house, and they’re coming in and having a meal that we prepared for them because we love them. So, I think that that consistency of people saying it’s the most consistent, I think yes, it is the food, but it’s also the staff. They are there. They see the same faces. They know intrinsically this place hasn’t changed, because when I come in I see the same people, and that to me has tremendous value, and it’s why we pay our people really well, it’s why we treat them really well, they’re our family, but it has value that serves dividends, I mean huge dividends time and time again. So, I think we hit it across the board, I guess is what I was ending with.

JB: Yeah, I would have never guessed the number was that high. That’s an outlier in this day and age. Is that fair?

AC: It’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely fair. I was having this discussion about just the culture of restaurants, how much they’ve changed since COVID. The culture of restaurants has shifted tremendously. And I think there are many reasons for that, but that we can stay and create the environment where people want to come to work every day for years, I think is my biggest source of pride. I love my food and I’m proud of my food, but my biggest source of pride is that people feel safe and seen and comfortable, and that they can grow and be accepted in every phase of their life over a decade. I mean, that to me is a beautiful thing, and I’m very proud of that environment, in that every person in our restaurant contributes to that culture. It’s not just one of us, all of us set the tone for acceptance and respect, and I think that’s wonderful.

JB: What are some of the… give me one, I think I know two of them, but give me one of the biggest challenges of operating not one, but two restaurants, in the current climate.

AC: Hmm. I mean, where I see the biggest obstacle is in, this is really a tough thing to say, but in client relations, in the customer service aspect of it. I mean, again, we’ve all been there 13 years. We love our job. We come to work because we love it. We love the place, we believe in the food, we believe in the mission and what we’re trying to accomplish. And I think it’s getting harder for us to be patient with people who don’t want to come and just be a guest. I think that, you know, with the invention of things like Yelp and TripAdvisor—which are wonderful forums for dissemination of information, I mean, I think that we are very lucky to have such ties to people all around the country and restaurants, but with that, I think, comes a falsehood of expertise from our guests. I think that the foodie culture of the world… I mean, how grateful am I that people love food? I love that people see what I do and want to be a part of it and love it. But with that culture comes, I think, a false narrative that there are a lot of experts out there, and that they all have a microphone now and that they have a lot of power to say things that are completely subjective and have no bearing on how a restaurant operates and what it’s trying to accomplish. I think that we just want you to come to our restaurant and we want you to want to enjoy it. We don’t want you to come and want to pick it apart, and see what you know versus what we know, and have this clash. We want you to just come and let us take care of you. Our hospitality—I have been to restaurants all over the world, and our level of hospitality in Pomodori, in both of them, is very high. I mean, we want to take care of you. We care very deeply. And I think that that becomes a challenge when people just wanna come and know more than we do, and wanna criticize and wanna do those things. And that’s not everybody.

I’d say the majority of our people want to come and have a great time, but there are always going to be those people who just want to come and they just want to be negative Nancy’s or they just want to poo poo things.

JB: Yeah. And you’re not the only chef/owner, I’m sure, to wonder why, if someone’s not happy with their experience, can you say something to someone while you’re there? Not wait till you run to your car and blow you up on the internet?

AC: Why can’t you? I don’t understand that, because we would bend over, we do bend over backwards to fix anything. We want you to be as happy as we are in there. And, you know, I think that I’ve actually—going even further, like a step to OpenTable, right? We use OpenTable, there’s Resy out there, there are a lot of different platforms where you can make reservations, I’ve actually reached out to OpenTable many times to ask if I can have a blackball list. I would like to block people’s emails and phone numbers from entering my restaurant, because they’ve been abusive to my staff,  they’ve caused a scene that has ruined other people’s evenings… I mean, things that it wouldn’t even enter your mind that people would do. Like, I didn’t think that we were still in a boardroom where guys could walk by and touch my server’s bottoms. Like this is still happening in the world? So, whatever, just one example, but I would love to be able to blackball people, like go and say, nope, you don’t deserve to take a reservation from somebody who wants to come and enjoy themselves. You don’t deserve that. And we don’t have that power yet, but I’m thinking of launching an app that would allow some intra-activity between restaurants to say, these people are–they want a free meal, or they’re looking for this… And again, these are very, very small amounts of our clientele. We have a wonderful base of people who love us and support us, and they clap when they get their food. Most of our people are very happy to be there, and we’re really grateful for that. But just touching on the challenges, like you asked, they’re big challenges and they mostly come, I think, in the guest relations. It’s not the margins of how much money we can make, or how much we have to pay people. That stuff, we can manage that. We just want people to come and have a good time. We just want you to come have a good time.

JB: Are you enjoying the differences between O.G. Pomodori on the island, where it’s an indoor family type gathering, versus the outdoor under the live oaks type of situation at Pomodori Too?

AC: Yeah. Gosh, they’re so different. It’s like having two children, their genesis is the same, the DNA is the same, but they are completely different restaurants, which I find fascinating. They each have their own challenges. I love them both equally as any mother would love her children. But yeah, I mean, you stated it kind of perfectly. The one on the island is more of a sit down, you make a reservation, it’s definitely a higher level of dining. The one in Bluffton is a fast-casual. So you walk up, you order, you go sit under that 600 year old live oak, the setting is idyllic, it is absolutely beautiful, people motor up in their golf carts, it’s very accessible, kid-friendly. But there are challenges in each one. They’re completely different beasts. We don’t do reservations in Bluffton, so we never know how many people we’re gonna feed. That never entered into my mind of being an obstacle. Like are we gonna feed 120 people tonight or are we gonna feed 60? So, we have data now, we’ve been open almost two years, it’ll be two years in a couple of weeks, so we have a lot of data that points us in the right direction, and thank God for that kind of reporting, thank God for Toast and Open Table and all of these things that allow us to capture so much information so that we can steer our business in the right direction. I mean, people always talk about AI and technology and all of these things, and, you know, I’m sure that there are their downsides, but I have found them to be incredibly helpful in pointing me toward success for my margins, for my business and whatnot. But yeah, they’re completely different. P2–we call it P2, Pomodori 2 in Bluffton–P2 has live music, which I’m a musician, so I love that I get to unite both of those sides of me. P1 is… it’s just a rock. It’s a beautiful restaurant that people come—I mean, I have people who come every week and have been coming every week for 13 years, and they don’t miss a week. And if they do, they’re there on a different day in the week. My dad, who still—my parents make the ravioli for both restaurants, and my dad was sitting at the at the bar the other night with Ellen and Jack Scanlon, you know, Jack Scanlon is 95 years old, and Ellen I gotta think is only a few years behind him, maybe not, but they’ve been coming to us for all 13 years, and you know, they sit there and they tell their stories, and my dad is a chatterbox just like me, and you know… that I have Ellen and Jack, that I’ve had over a decade of their magnificent life is everything to me. So I love both of them equally. Both restaurants are… they serve a beautiful purpose, I think, in our community.

JB: Two restaurants, you’re a mom to a toddler, you’re a spouse, I had to write this stuff down because I’d forget, you are the soccer coach of your kid’s team, you play tennis on the regular, you play guitar, quite well I might add, and you’re a college football fan, a huge college football fan. And I have to say, before I ask the question, I am regularly amused when you’re a huge Bulldogs fan, and I know you’re a big Notre Dame fan, but I could be sitting on my spot, my couch with a glass of wine watching my game–I call it church, nobody called me, leave me alone–and it’s Miami, my Hurricanes, playing Syracuse or playing, you know, Little Sisters of the Poor on the moon. And I’ll get a text from you where I know you’re watching too. How in the hell do you do all of that? How do you do all of that? Cause I would choke on half of that.

AC: I mean, no, you know, I’m very, very fortunate. My wife is an outstanding partner to me and knows that Saturdays are sacred. And my son, Milo, who’s six, he also knows Saturdays are sacred. I was out of town this past Saturday and he FaceTimed me and he said, “mommy, I put my Georgia Bulldog shirt on for you on Saturday.” And I’m like, all right, buddy, that’s my man. You know, I’m very grateful, I have amazing staffs at both of my restaurants, which allows me a lot of freedom. You know, I was listening to the smart list podcast the other day, who I love, I love those boys, and they had Gordon Ramsay on and I felt very, very validated because Gordon basically said, you know, when you own a restaurant, your first goal is to get out of the kitchen. You really don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen. You want to get out as soon as you can. You want to train everybody really well. You want to empower them and you want to get out as quickly as you can, because that’s when the board starts to open up and you start to see the board better, so you can anticipate things and you’re not so reactionary. And I think I’ve been very lucky and fortunate in my life to kind of always lead from that perspective without ever knowing that that’s what I was supposed to do. But I have a great staff, and I empower them to do the job, and they do the job beautifully, and it leaves a lot of time for me to find work-life balance. You know, I go in in the mornings, I make the pasta, I help with the sauce, I do what I’m supposed to do. But by 10-11 a.m., I’m able to move on to other aspects of my life, because I’m just somebody who, I’m always gonna have all the fingers in all the pies. It’s just who I am. I like a very full, rich life. So I’m grateful that my support system is solid around me, that I can be all of the Amanda’s on any given day, because there are a bunch of me.

JB: Do you block out time in your phone or is it kind of, I go with the flow? “I know I have these two stops”, but otherwise you just go with it?

AC: Yeah, I go with it for the most part. I mean, my dance card is full now through the middle of October. So I’d say I book everything within reason about three to four weeks out. And then, you know, I kind of–it’s a loose model. But I mean, I play guitar every day. I play my piano every day. I play tennis three or four days a week. I cook my food. I do all the things that I want to do, you know, and I just, I wake up at 5.30, I’m asleep by 8.45. You know, I find time, and I make time for it. I prioritize my mental health in a big way. And I think that that helps me to have clarity in the moments that are really tough, because the restaurant business is really tough. And if you aren’t refilling your tank, if you aren’t giving yourself the opportunity to feel other parts and to fuel other parts of yourself, then you aren’t set to make the big decisions when you have to. And I feel very fortunate that my parents raised me to always sort of balance who I am and to prioritize all aspects of me. I feel very grateful for that.

JB: And on top of all of that, you are one of my dearest friends, and I wasn’t going to pass up a public opportunity to say so. You know, on the Mount Rushmore of people that have come into my life because of Eat It and Like It, you are right there. Maybe first, I’d have to work pen to paper.

AC: I mean, I hope I’m having a good hair day in the mountain because I just really, I want the sparkle in the eyes, make sure that somebody’s polishing that mountain. No, you’re my man, Jesse. You’ve always been my man. I mean, I say it to you at least once a week. You’re my dude.

JB: Passion, joy, and happiness is your MO, it’s mine as well, and that’s why we’ve clicked, and I’m so glad we got this opportunity to finally chat, and maybe introduce you in a tiny, tiny way to the Amanda Cifaldi I know, and those who haven’t been to Pomodori, A. what’s the problem? and B. go check it out, either one, Hilton Head or Bluffton now that the weather is cooling off. It is quite a treat, just regular… it’s not fancy, like you said, the other places offer that. It’s the picattas, it’s the Marsalas, it’s the, you know, the sausage stuffed peppers, all that stuff, you’ll find it at Pomodori. So Amanda. Thank you

AC: I love you, Jesse. Thank you for having me.

JB: I love you too. And I’m amused, because you and I text like this all the time, but here we are speaking like this in front of the children. Oh my.

AC: I know! What are they gonna say?

JB: All right, you enjoy the rest of your full dance card, and I will holla at you. Go canes, go Irish, go dawgs. We’ll see you soon. Bye

AC: Go dawgs! Love you. Bye Jess.