Chef Joe Bonaparte has been cooking since he was a little kid.

Growing up in what he called a typical Italian family in New Jersey, he said everybody lived close together and would have big Sunday dinners at his mother’s house.

“My mom is a really good cook, and we would make things like cappelletti or ravioli – stuffed pastas and things like that,” he said. “We had a big pasta board and we’d make pasta.”

His mother made the kids help. “Her thing was – if you didn’t help, you didn’t get any,” he said.

Bonaparte was called on to taste many of the items on the menu at his house, and his mother dubbed him the palate of the family. It seemed he could decipher the nuances in food better than most.