Story, experience, and what she's building next — from a childhood kitchen in Naples to Momo Cooking, Melting Pot, and now CASA.
Dear friend,
My name is Raffaella. I'm Italian, and I come from one of the most beautiful cities in the world — Naples, where food isn't just tradition, it's the expression of a community, and a family.
On feast days, there was never just one cook in my house — there was everyone. My mum would roll out the pasta on the kitchen table, my aunts and uncles had the ragù going since the day before, one uncle was in charge of the antipasti, my aunt ruled the fryer. And we children helped where we could — or got in the way, which is pretty much the same thing. There were people who talked non-stop, people who tried to sneak off, and people who tasted things on the sly.
It wasn't just lunch. It was a ritual. A way of saying: we're here, we're together, we love each other.
When I moved to the Netherlands, I missed that. Not the food itself — that sometimes arrives in a parcel from home. I missed everything else. The noise of a full kitchen. The laughter, the shouting, the scolding, the teasing. The sense that cooking for someone is an act of love.
With Momo Cooking, I started to find that feeling again. And through the workshops I discovered something even more beautiful: that around a worktop, with your hands in flour, people open up. Different people, from all over the world, who deep down share the same things — the joys and sorrows of love, dreams, the tiredness of everyday life and the small victories. And so many of them, like me, who have come from far away with the same desire: to build, day by day, a place to call home.
That's exactly why I now want a fixed place — my own place — where that magic can happen every day.
With love, Raffaella
Raffaella has spent the last four years cooking in other people's spaces — borrowed kitchens, rented venues, clients' homes — building Momo Cooking one workshop and one private dinner at a time.
Hundreds of people have made pasta with her, sat down to a menu she wrote for their table, or hired her to feed a room for an office party or a wedding. Neapolitan technique, no formal front-of-house, and food that's meant to be eaten together rather than photographed first.
Raffa — add real numbers here if you want them: years cooking professionally, roughly how many workshops/events run so far, any training or kitchens you trained in, press mentions, etc.
Everything Raffaella cooks today happens somewhere borrowed. CASA is the plan to change that: a fixed place in Schiedam with its own kitchen, where workshops, private dinners and an everyday bistro can run every day instead of whenever a venue is free.
It's being built through a crowdfunding campaign — every workshop and catering booking made today already goes toward the same door.
See the campaign →
Where it started. Raffaella's hands-on pasta and Neapolitan cooking workshops, run in borrowed kitchens around Schiedam and Rotterdam since 2021 — still the base of what she teaches today.
The foundation
The culinary conversation lab, run by Raffaella together with Valentina. Around one worktop, people cook side by side, swap stories and sit down to eat what they made — the cooking is the way into the conversation. A favourite for company team-building days.
Runs at Rose Molen in Delft, with Ferm as a second location Raffa — confirm Ferm. Raffa — confirm how often it runs, so this description matches reality.
See upcoming sessions →
The fixed home for all of it: a kitchen in Schiedam for workshops and private dinners, and an everyday bistro serving pasta, breakfast and good coffee. Currently being funded.
Support the campaign →
The space isn't finished. The cooking already works.
