Calabrian Girl Tours allows Americans to live — and eat — like Italians

For several years, Ladles restaurant in Springdale has offered fine Italian food along with other homemade dishes.

But now, Ladles owner Kathy Marsico is offering connoisseurs of all things Italian an opportunity to take a deep dive into the Italian way of life.

Marsico is sharing aspects of her Italian heritage and her passion for Italian food, wine and culture with anyone interesting in traveling to a place with one of the oldest records of human presence in Italy.

Marsico has created Calabrian Girl Tours — a nod to her Italian heritage — a venture that takes people to Italy, specifically Calabria in the southwestern part of the country, which is the region her family is from. Human life in Calabria dates to around 700,000 B.C., and it is known for its mountains, Old World villages and picturesque beaches.

Marsico stresses that her excursions should not be classified as tourist trips as much as immersive experiences in the ancient mountaintop village of Miglierina.

“It’s a trip where you are living like the locals. You become part of this community,” Marsico said in December, a day before embarking on another tour of the region.

“It’s the village of both my parents and all my ancestors that I discovered a few years back. Since I went there the first time, I was bitten with the love for it. And something just kept calling me back. And then we started this venture.”

Marsico took her first group of 25 people to Calabria for 10 days in 2019 and said she had no idea whether people would like it as much as she did.

“I was a nervous wreck,” she said. “I had never done this before. It ended up being one of the best things I have done in my life because every single person told me it was the best trip of their lifetime.”

But then the pandemic hit and Marsico was forced to shut down the venture for about a year and a half.

Meanwhile, the pandemic created similar challenges when it came to running her restaurant in Springdale. Unable to afford to operate at the state-mandated limit of 50% capacity, Marsico had to close Ladles in September 2020.

It was sad news for Alle-Kiski Valley residents who made Ladles a destination for club gatherings, retirement parties or a night out with family and friends.

But nearly a year later, in August 2021, Marsico took a “leap of faith” and reopened Ladles at its location on Pittsburgh Street. And with her Calabrian Girl Tours up and running again, both ventures are feeding off one another.

“It’s become a pretty nice little business for me, and it’s helped with the Ladles business because they both go hand-in-hand,” Marisco said.

People from across the U.S. are signing up for Calabrian Girl Tours — which are selling out, according to Marsico, whose business even has received exposure on Italian television news shows.

“We have a lot of repeat business, and we have people looking for homes there. So it’s been a great thing, not only for us on this side but for that community, not only (Miglierina), but all the surrounding towns,” Marsico said.

“Every day, we go to the beach, we go to the mountains, we go to wineries, we experience as much of Calabria as we can.”

And the tours have received rave reviews from people in the Alle-Kiski Valley.

“The southern part of Italy is gorgeous — the mountains, the water. If you don’t get enough to eat while you’re there, that’s your fault,” said former city council member Joe Grillo, 63, of Lower Burrell. “I plan on going back.”

Grillo wasn’t the only one who raved about the food.

“The different foods we got to try were out of this world,” said Jennifer Pallone, 35, of New Kensington. “We had traditional pastas and things like that, but also the different seafoods and things like swordfish and tuna. I ate octopus — I didn’t turn down one thing. It was amazing.”

“Lunch was the big meal, and I’m talking six-course lunches and unbelievable dinners (with carafes of wine),” said Patty Walker, 73, of Gibsonia. “I’ll tell you, (when it was time to leave) I was ready to come home because I just couldn’t eat any more.”

Few people in Miglierina speak English, but Marsico and her friend, Enzo Celli, speak fluent Italian and are on hand to translate.

“I really wanted to be out with the people. So, this was so perfect,” Walker said. “You really lived with these people in this little town. When we would get back from dinner at 9 o’clock at night, they would be waiting in the piazza with the music playing. They were up late waiting for us to hear about our day, to dance. I don’t think it was just for our group. It was for every group Kathy has taken.”

Calabria’s location, near the toe of Italy’s boot-shaped land mass flanked by the Ionian Sea to the east and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, provided memorable swimming opportunities.

“You could float in the water without even knowing how to swim because there was so much salt in the water,” said Karen Henrich, 64, of Gibsonia. “It was crystal clear, and you could see the fish. It was really beautiful.”

“Words can’t describe how beautiful it was, the gorgeous mountain towns, the gorgeous beach towns. The beauty was unmatched, I think, by anything that any of us had ever seen,” Pallone said.

For more information about Marsico’s tours of Italy, visit calabriangirltours.com.