“My body, make yourself a hut, because here there is food… And you, try to remake it at home”: this is how grandmother Silvi, a tiktoker belonging to the “over” group, addresses her followers, very popular for her cooking recipes, so much so that this summer she was even called abroad, none other than to the royal palace in Qatar.
Her record-breaking video is the one on pasta alla carbonara, which has had almost 35 million views. “Only” two million, however, for the one on lasagna, another two for the one on saltimbocca alla romana, both published only a few days ago. And what about the almost seven million for spaghetti alla bolognese last spring? Among other things, highly contested by residents in the shadow of the Torre degli Asinelli, who maintain that local tradition strictly requires egg tagliatelle. “What a lovely little dish, Madame Dorè,” she exclaims undaunted, between a piece of guanciale and a plate of peppers. With the same ease, at 83, she flew first class to reach the Middle East and have the Al Thani family, one of the most powerful in the world, taste her lupo delicacies, before returning to the stove in her Tuscany.
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Who is Grandma Silvi?
In real life, Grandma Silvi is called Silvana Bini and was born in 1941 in Montespertoli, near Florence. She currently lives with her family in Castelfiorentino, where her son Marco opened Forno Martini in 2006: from here she shares the videos that have made her a very popular food blogger, on TikTok, but even more on Instagram, where she has 3.4 million followers, a word so modern that she struggles even to pronounce it. “Silvana, the Tuscan grandmother,” we read in her bio. It all started when her grandson shared a video in which she criticized his new tattoo: the classic Tuscan accent, combined with friendly and genuine ways of doing things, immediately made her a viral character. If the friendliness is combined with the game for cooking, the hard part is done: TV interviews arrive, guests at events, the opening of the website with e-commerce, video collaborations with other food tokers.
@nonnasilviofficial GRANDMA’S PASTA ALLA CARBONARA RECIPE ❤️ ( Ingredients in the comments ) #nonna #recipe #imparacontiktok ♬ Becoming – Ludovico Einaudi
The Call from Qatar
“Were receiving strange emails in the spam folder, in broken Italian,” Gabriele, one of Grandma Silvi’s grandsons who runs the family business, explained to FirenzeToday about the trip to Qatar. “It said that a very particular family wanted to invite Grandma to taste her dishes. So I tried to respond, and in the end we managed to get in touch with the royal family, discovering that the queen had literally fallen in love with Grandma’s dishes.” Silvana Bini prepared a menu of 35 courses, featuring the flavors of the past, including lamb, spaghetti with tomato sauce, and Grandma’s cake, of course.
Grandma Silvi goes to New York
In addition to the store in Castelfiorentino, as Firenze Today explains, in 2014, Nonna Silvi’s family opened a second one in Montelupo and is now aiming for New York, in addition to already shipping her products all over Europe. An international grandmother, in short, who now has more followers than Cannavacciuolo (3 million) and is “on the heels” of Benedetta Rossi (5 million).
