Plot Synopsis

Celebrity chef, author and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich travels across America in this series of specials, exploring how other immigrants have preserved their unique culinary traditions for generations of tasty ethnic celebrations, including holidays, weddings, rites of passage and celebrations of independence. Lidia is joined by special Stanley Tucci, Mo Rocca, Ruth Riechl and Mario Cantone, as she experiences the country's diversity through the lens of culture, tradition and mouth-watering food. In the first special, Lidia enjoys an Italian Christmas Eve feast in New York City, a Mexican-American Christmas Day in San Antonio, a Chinese New Year feast in San Francsico and a Jewish-American Passover seder in New York City.

On Friday, December 16, 2016 at 10pm (check local listings), PBS premiered the "Holiday for Heroes" special of LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA, as Lidia celebrates veterans, who discuss the importance of family during holidays, the challenges and sacrifices of their work and the pride they take in having defended our country. Throughout the special, Lidia meets with these five featured veterans: Bryan Anderson (Los Angeles, CA), who served two tours of duty in Iraq before he lost both legs and his left hand to an IED; Yonas Hagos (Yorkville, IL), a retired army staff sergeant and Purple Heart recipient, who came to the USA from a refugee camp in Sudan at 10 years old; Marlene Rodriquez (San Antonio, TX), who served three tours in Iraq before sustaining injuries that forced her to retire; Willie Sherrer (Methuen, MA), who struggled with alcoholism and homelessness before being accepted to Culinary Command, an elite program that trains vets in new careers as cooks; and August Dannehl (Los Angeles, CA), who joined the Navy after September 11th, and after being honorably discharged in 2010, has attended the Jon Stewart Veteran Immersion Program, which offers veterans job training in television and film.

On Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 9pm (check local listings), PBS premiered "A Heartland Holiday Feast," a one-hour special that follows Lidia Bastianich on a cross-country journey to discover American holiday traditions, as she immerses herself in diverse cultures that provide inspiration for the holidays. Lidia travels across America to visit towns in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Minnesota to explore how tiny towns and charming hamlets in America's rural regions celebrate diverse culinary traditions and how the food itself helps to shape and preserve the identities of the people and places. Inspired by her travels, Lidia then prepares a sumptuous holiday meal for a gathering of friends, family and people she has met along the way. In Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Lidia returns to the small town where she went to high school and first learned what it meant to be an American teenager while she lived for a year with relatives shortly after arriving in the U.S. She visits family and friends and retraces her rural roots in Pennsylvania Dutch country, with its traditions of succotash and shoo-fly pie, and cooks pizza in an outdoor brick oven, reminiscent of her childhood in Istria. She then heads south to the land of gumbo and crawfish, where many cultural influences and ethnicities collide to form the Creole cooking traditions. In Natchitoches, Louisiana Lidia learns how to make file, an herb made from the sassafras tree, used for seasoning gumbo, and enjoys some downhome cooking among locals who have been there for generations. The special also explores the influences of growing immigrant communities. In Denton, Texas, near Dallas, a restaurant family brings its Mexican heritage to the local food culture and shows Lidia how to make tamales, a traditional and classic Christmas dish. In Wausau, Wisconsin home to a thriving Hmong community -- a group of refugees who escaped Laos after the Vietnam War -- a family prepares for Lidia a favorite Hmong ceremonial dish of pork and greens. Lidia also visits Lawton, Oklahoma, home to some of the best BBQ around--including hotspot Sam's Soul Food. It was once home to the famed Buffalo soldiers in the 1800s, the African American troops who served on the western frontier after the Civil War and later helped the US expand westward. Lidia cooks a dinner on the open fire in their tradition--salted pork, cornbread, baked beans, dumplings and coffee. Up north, we get a taste of the Scandinavian culture, food traditions and ice house fishing when Lidia travels with her grandson to the tiny town of Walker, Minnesota--gamely setting out on a snowmobile for the annual Eelpout Festival. Fishermen all over flock to compete for the freshwater cod that hides at the bottom of Minnesota lakes and drill deep holes through 30 inches of frozen water for a chance to catch the strange eel-like fish. Lidia kisses the fish for good luck and fries eelpout nuggets in oil on an open fire out on the ice. She also learns an old family recipe for leftse, a Scandinavian dish similar to crepes. LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA: A Heartland Holiday Feast culminates in a festive celebration with families joining Lidia as she returns to rural Pennsylvania for a large family-style dinner -- including antipasto, risotto with leeks, Arborio rice, carnaroli, a main course of braised porkchops, red onion and pears, polenta, winter caponata, acorn squash salad and braised broccoli rabe. The dishes are inspired by her travels and experiences across the country.

LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA: The Return of the Artisans premiered on Friday, December 20, 2019 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings). In this one-hour special, Lidia journeys across the country to explore how food artisans and artisanal crafts are gaining momentum in the United States -- including travels to Tennessee, California, Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin and New Jersey -- and to meet with American makers who are mastering the art of meat curing, coopering, coppersmithing, jam-making, cider-making, and more. The American work and education landscapes are evolving, and artisans are gaining in cultural relevance. With a renewed focus on vocational training and working apprentices, artisans and the trades are making a comeback here in the United States. The Return of the Artisans looks at how this new generation of craftspeople is training today. From vocational high schools to apprenticeships to incubator programs, Lidia observes firsthand how young people are looking to artisanal crafts and small business as a fulfilling way to earn their livelihoods, and how many young craftsmen are bringing their skills back to their own communities. All of the stories in The Return of the Artisans focus on artisans and craftspeople in the food and food-related industries. First stop for Lidia is Madisonville, Tennessee, where she catches up with Allan Benton, of Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams, who has spent 45 years mastering the art of curing meat and making traditional country ham, slow-smoked bacon and sausage using century-old techniques rather than modern technology -- customs that spring from his Appalachian upbringing. Allan is committed to passing on his knowledge and has been mentoring young people in the fine art of dry-curing, which is sought after by chefs around the country. Lidia then heads to Knoxville, TN to sample the end results in some of the local eateries. Next, Lidia goes to the Napa Valley to look at the ancient art of coopering, practiced today by only a few dozen masters around the world. Ramiro Herrera, of Caldwell Vineyard is one of them. He began his apprenticeship as a teen and devoted four years of intensive training. Now he heads production and trains others. He shows Lidia how he assembles American oak into barrels by hand, and also demonstrates the complex art of toasting a barrel -- a process which is as integral to wine-making as the grapes, since the level of roast in a barrel determines the flavors imparted to the wine. The nose knows -- or it must to ply this trade, since it's essential to becoming a master. Lidia puts hers to the test to see what aromas she can detect. In Denver, Colorado, Lidia pays a visit to the Comal Heritage Food Incubator, where budding chefs can take their family recipes and elevate them for public consumption through a restaurant and catering business. The incubator offers a diverse menu -- from Mexican to Middle Eastern -- and has become a Denver hotspot. It's also a training program for people passionate about food -- where trainees work in both the kitchen and the front of house to learn cooking techniques as well as business acumen and how to deal with customers in order to open their own small businesses. The locally grown program provides an incredible model that can be duplicated in other rural and urban areas around the country. Because workers are paid for their work as they train, it breaks the cycle of foregoing income to pursue education. From there, Lidia heads up to the northern fruit lands, on the banks of Lake Michigan, where small businesses like American Spoon, in Petoskey, MN, offer a rigorous training program to teach workers how to produce the finest fruit preserves while remaining committed to using centuries-old cooking techniques. Founded by Chef Larry Forgione and foraging expert Justin Rashid, it resembles Willie Wonka's jam line -- using small copper kettles and wooden paddles and locally sourced ingredients from over 100 area family farms in the woodlands of northern Michigan. If it's copper cookware you need, just ask Sara Dahmen at House Copper in Grafton Village, Wisconsin. She created her own apprenticeship opportunity by reaching out to a local craftsman preserving a dying art -- creating tin, iron and copper cookware using centuries old techniques. Lidia connects with Sara-- one of the only female coppersmiths in the world -- to see where she and the master tinsmith create cooking utensils and pots using tools from the 1700's and 1800's. LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA: The Return of the Artisans culminates with Lidia hosting a special celebration meal to give back to the artisans who've generously opened their lives to her. The dinner is held at Ironbound Farm in New Jersey, home of Ironbound Hard Cider, which creates meaningful, skilled jobs for the chronically underemployed by training them to be farmers and educators, and which works to cultivate an interconnected community of local food artisans at the farm.

On Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 8pm (check local listings), PBS premiered "Overcoming the Odds," a new installment of LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA. Stories from people who have overcome extraordinary odds to find purpose in serving their communities in big cities and small pockets of rural America.
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LIDIA CELEBRATES AMERICA returned with a new special on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 at 9pm (check local listings). In this new one-hour program, "Flavors That Define Us," Lidia Bastianich travels from big cities to small towns in rural America to share the inspiring stories of first, second, and third-generation Americans forging their own way, and shaping the shifting definition of what it means to be an American. Common among this nation of 46 million immigrants is the fact that these individuals are often faced with the question of how much of their culture to bring with them, and what to leave behind. What's clear is that as America grows more diverse than ever before, many immigrants are making different calculations -- as they more openly share their heritage within a country they are now helping to define.