It's no secret that Food Network star Christian Petroni is a native New Yorker from the Bronx and a first-generation Italian-American. But, in an exclusive interview with Mashed, Petroni revealed how his career and life have been deeply influenced by his boyhood summers in Italy.

Food has always been a big part of the chef's life, and he refers to three types of cooking he had as a child as being super important: The Italian-American red-sauce joints (it "wasn't the food that was cooked at home"); his mother's five-o-clock dinners; and the authentic Italian food of Ponza, the tiny, beautiful island situated off the coast of Italy between Rome and Naples. "We didn't have a lot going on in the summer," Petroni told Mashed, "so we would go out there so my father could work."