Chef Laura Frangiosa has been cooking since she was two years old and her mother propped her up on the counter with a bowl of scraps to help with dinner. Instead of watching cartoons, she watched cooking shows on Saturday mornings, and she was serving up dinners and special events to friends and family by her teens. With an Italian lineage and formative years spent up on the Main Line of Philadelphia’s suburbs–a long standing bastion of Jewish delis–cooking is literally in her blood. She brings these years of experience, knowledge, and the joy of feeding people to The Avenue Delicatessen.
Over the years she has experienced all facets of the food service industry. From catering at large and small scale, to fine dining service, to sales in the seafood and bread fields, and time at the acclaimed Bistrot La Minette in South Philadelphia, Laura has a deep and fundamental understanding of how to make people happy with her food. Recently she has served as chef in residence at Audrey Claire’s COOK, a demonstration kitchen in Rittenhouse Square where she cooked her own brand of Italian-Jewish food as well as custom menus for some of the city’s most discriminating diners.
At The Avenue Delicatessen, Laura combines her authentic homestyle Italian food with a Jewish bent, bringing together the two great American deli traditions. Any given day you’ll find her lighting up the dining room with her charm and smile, or working the line churning out favorites like her signature Jewish Wedding Soup, Reuben Arancini, cheesecake, and more.