Chef Anton Testino
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T
AXTON’S 437 Ringwood Ave., Pompton Lakes
here is nothing more passionate and intimate than cooking for your loved ones and your family,” says Anton Testino,
who you might remember from his successes on the Food Network’s Chopped and Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen
on Fox. The celebrity chef, reality TV star and author opened Axton’s, which he named after his son, in 2015. “Food
is no longer just to fulfill your appetite, but it is about creating a memory. It’s about people getting together at a
restaurant, it's about the first date, it’s about family and the conversation that happens at that table. Sharing in the
traditions your family has had through the years. When it comes to cooking for the holidays, it’s about those eight hours
it takes to cook that holiday dinner, not because you have to, but because it is for the ones you love.”
And Anton should know. After all, he has many memories of his own. “A lesson I learned from my grandmother when
I was 12 at my nonna’s house in Italy… I remember waking up at 4 a.m. with all the noise she was making in the kitchen.
I find this little old lady making thousands of orecchiette with a knife cutting each one, one by one. ‘Why are you making
them when you can just buy them?’ I asked her.
She said, ‘By me making each one by hand I am showing my love to my family, and most importantly my family will
enjoy eating tonight so that we can have a beautiful dinner made with nothing but love.’”
“A holiday dinner doesn't always have to be a fancy dish,” Anton adds. “It could be something simple as long as it
comes from the heart.”
48 WAYNE MAGAZINE
HOLIDAY 2016