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Before he blossomed into an All-American at Yale, before he shared the ice with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh, before he was chosen to represent the United States at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Mark Arcobello worked as a busboy for an Italian restaurant in Bridgeport. But Arcobello, who was in high school at the...

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Except on one occasion, when it traveled briefly to an adjacent building, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s bust of the 16th century Italian Jesuit priest Roberto Bellarmino has for nearly 400 years sat aloft and out of sight in a niche, well above the high altar in the Church of the Gesu, in Rome. But for the coming three months, the bust will be brought dow...

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Gastronomes descend daily on the thriving restaurant row on Bedford Street. Now, the thoroughfare has a new retailer catering to their meals at home. Opened last month, Stagecoach Olive Oil & Vinegar Co., at 180 Bedford St., sells more than 60 varieties of olive oils and vinegars. Owner Rick Doyle, a former restaurateur in New York City and Las Veg...

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In 1965, during my sophomore year at Yale, football coach John Pont abruptly resigned to take a more prestigious job at a Big Ten school. Instead of tapping another WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), the school replaced him with an Italian American, assistant coach Carmen Cozza. I still remember how outraged the alumni were. Yale had always had W...

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Chester’s Grano Arso, a new seasonally inspired Italian restaurant, came together quickly and fortuitously for first-time owner Joel Gargano. The chef, a native of Branford, became familiar with the charming community a few years ago while buying produce at the town’s popular farmers’ market. In the years following, he lived and worked in New York...

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The LoFrisco Family Cookbook is part cookbook, part memoir. The author, son of Sicilian immigrants in the early 1900s, shares not only his mother's time-tested simple and delicious recipes, but he brings them to life by embracing them with endearing family stories of growing up in an Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn.  LoFrisco intersperses...

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Regina DeCicco, who has been seen on FOX TV’s “Laughs,” brings her stand-up act to the Treehouse Comedy Club in the Westport Inn on Saturday, Jan. 20. Spoiler alert — yes, she’s Italian. And yes, that aspect of her background inspires some of her comedy, like when she talks about how her mom wanted her to marry Tony Danza. She was only 5 at the tim...

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Let’s dispel a big misconception some people around here might have: Not all of the world’s great flat-pickers are from Appalachia, the South or even from the United States. Just ask Beppe Gambetta, who hails from Genoa, Italy, one of the masters of the acoustic guitar who will be here as a living breathing example of that. “Here” in this case will...

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On the edge of the dock among rows of colorful buildings in Burano, Italy, Ashley Pales felt at home. A Lincoln Southwest High School graduate and Yale University sophomore, Pales spent five weeks exploring the country and reconnecting to her family's Italian heritage during a study abroad program last summer.  When she got back to the U.S., she...

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Before UConn hired a little-known Italian-born coach with a wry sense of humor and an insatiable work ethic, the school’s women’s basketball program had only produced one winning season in 11 years. Geno Auriemma has since guided the Huskies to 29 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, 18 Final Fours, 11 national championships and six undefeated...

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