Grandma’s recipes stolen when restaurant safe is ripped from the ground, CA owner says

Someone stole $2,000 in cash from an Italian restaurant in California, but the most treasured item they took was a grandmother’s diary with “recipes, life tips and memories,” the family said.

Now the Pasta Sisters restaurant in Culver City is offering a $5,000 reward for the return of the handwritten diary.

Someone broke into Pasta Sisters around 4 a.m. on Nov. 20 and stole their safe, according to an Instagram post from the Los Angeles-based restaurant. The intruder left around 4:10 a.m.

“I arrived around 5:15 after getting a call from our first employee. Our pasta maker who gets there around 5 saw the front door was shattered and everything was on the floor,” Giorgia Sinatra, co-owner of Pasta Sisters, told McClatchy News. “When I went to the office and saw the safe was ripped out, my first thought was the diary.”

The Pasta Sisters, a family-owned restaurant, opened their first location in 2015 on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles and their second in 2018 in Culver City, Sinatra said.

“We moved to Los Angeles about 10 years ago from Padova, a small town in Northern Italy, maybe 30 minutes from Venice,” Sinatra said.

Nonna Gianna who was born in 1929, started writing in the diary as a young girl until she passed away in 1999, according to her granddaughter.

The diary, now old, shrinking little by little and missing a few pages, had recipes for Nonna Gianna’s signature dishes like gnocchi and lasagna, Sinatra said.

After the ordeal, the family is desperate to have it returned.

“We understand that they were not after the diary, they were more after money and cash and it’s clear that the book has no value for them. We had maybe $2,000 in the safe,” Sinatra said. “We’re trying to spread the word as much as possible in hopes that these stories reach the thieves.”

Culver City police are continuing to investigate the theft, according to FOX11.

The owners of Pasta Sisters asked the businesses around their restaurant to see if they have any security footage that might help catch the thieves, Sinatra said.

“In case any neighbor or business has camera footage between 3:30 and 4:30 and they notice a car passing by please stop by the restaurant or email info@pastasisters.com so we can see the footage,” the co-owner said.

The owners hope that with the reward, someone will return the heirloom.

“We just want our diary back, $5,000 — no questions asked,” Sinatra said.

This story was originally published November 22, 2022 at 2:59 PM.