A family-taught cook, Giulia Millanta's skills rival many professionals in town, and her dinner party series is bringing groups of Austinites together to celebrate authentic Italian home cooking. While the communal experience is fueled by her food, Millanta, guitar in tow, also performs her original songs live at each gathering, because her first love is music.

"I'm a songwriter. I've been a musician pretty much my whole adult life, even though technically I'm an M.D. – I got a degree in medicine, but it's a really long story. Mostly, I just had to do it, and so I did, but I realized it wasn't going to make me happy, so I quit everything and became a full-time musician," she said.