By Paul Leighton
BEVERLY — As a young girl growing up in Maine, Angela Dominick learned the food business by working in restaurants owned by her family. Whenever she complained, her father ordered her to stand in front of a mirror and practice speaking in a more civilized tone.
Those childhood lessons, both culinary and oratory, are now paying off. Dominick is not only the chef and owner of her own restaurant. She's also the host of her own local cable TV cooking show.
"La Cucina Famiglia" (The Family Kitchen) is produced by Beverly Community Access Media and is shown in about 40 communities on the North Shore. Dominick has taped seven shows, using the home kitchens of some of her customers as the setting.
Yesterday, she co-hosted the show along with Rob Worsley, the sous chef at Dom's Trattoria, the Beverly Farms restaurant co-owned by Dominick and her husband, Ralph. Inside the kitchen of local architect John Margolis, the pair whipped up Sicilian and Thai versions of Dominick's homemade fish stew.
The show's producer, Don Berman, said Dominick is a natural in front of the camera.
"What you're looking for is a personality, and Angela has that charisma," Berman said. "You need somebody who can talk while they're working. Angela has those qualities."
To Dominick, the cooking show is a natural outgrowth of her desire to share her love and knowledge of food. She has invited kids into her restaurant for make-your-own pizza parties and is allowing a former waitress the use of her kitchen to develop her own granola business.
"I grew up in Maine, and I try to bring as much community and small-town-ness to everything I do," Dominick said. "If you do something and you're passionate about it, it's important to share."
Dominick opened her own restaurant in Kennebunk in 1994 and ran it with her late father, whom she called her "best friend and business partner." In 2003, she married Beverly Farms native Ralph Dominick, and three years later they opened Dom's Trattoria on West Street in Beverly Farms square.
Dominick said her ingredients are all locally grown and all her dishes are homemade. "If we don't make it," she said, "we don't sell it."
She said she strives to create a family atmosphere, with an emphasis on children. (She has no children herself, but "lots of nieces and nephews.") She has volunteered to create lunches at local nursery schools and is in the running to develop the lunch program at two local private schools.
"It's important to teach children that meals don't come out of a box on a shelf," she said.
Dominick acknowledges that her cable cooking show is good marketing for her restaurant. But she also wants to make the wider point that food should be an experience shared by the entire family.
"It's all about wanting to get people back around the dinner table," she said.
Staff writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2675 or by e-mail at pleighton@salemnews.com.
