Donna Lennard has a lot of plates spinning—both literally and figuratively.

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The filmmaker turned restaurateur (and author), is the mastermind behind the critically acclaimed Il Buco family. Serving authentic Italian fare from New York’s NoHo neighborhood since the mid-90s, Il Buco has outposts in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and even Ibiza. And then there’s Vita, a love letter to Italian craft, with glassware and tabletop essentials made using skills passed down through generations.

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Il Buco Vita takes everything back full circle. Before mushrooming into multiple restaurants, the company started out as an antiques store. On opening, Donna and her business partner, Alberto Avalle, applied for an alcohol license “because the best way to loosen people up into buying antiques is to give them a glass of wine, and it worked!” she laughs.

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They soon added food: Donna fell in love with Italian cuisine when she traveled to Sardinia aged just 17. “It was the first time I ever tasted a fresh fig or apricot,” she recalls. Her late fiance was also Italian-American, and she remembers the scent of his mother’s tomato sauce simmering on the stove: “I was unbelievable. I connected with the country at a very visceral level.”

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Here she explains how she has created much more than just a restaurant empire, and fostered a sense of community through the act of gathering around the table.

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How Il Buco Vita came to life…

We’d spent years dreaming about a home line of artisan-made goods and talked about the dying crafts that were being taken over by the big-box stores. Friends of Alberto's, whom we collaborated with on the design of Alimentari (our market and trattoria on Great Jones Street), were keen to help and connected us with makers in their native Umbria. I wasn’t quite prepared for the container full of goods that arrived, but we opened a small shop on Bond Street and people fell in love with what we’d produced.

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My design philosophy…

Il Buco Vita serves to remind us that it’s really all about lifestyle: whether it's the olive oil that you cook with, the plates that you eat on, or the table that you sit at—it’s all a reflection of how you want to feel, eat, and enjoy your life. I eat on our Assisi plates every day, and by surrounding myself with objects that make me feel good, I feel better.

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What I love about our makers…

Everything's made exactly the way it has been for centuries. For example, our candlesticks are hand-wrought by artisans who really care about what they do. In the world we’re living in now, that’s especially important to me.

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How I’ve created more than just a restaurant…

Joshua David Stein, who I worked with on my cookbook, perfectly sums up Il Buco as: ‘Not a place, but a feeling’. It’s that feeling you get when you walk through the door, coming off the cobblestones into our modest 1840s building. You're welcomed by this very warm and tangible ambiance. People who know Il Buco share it with the people that they love, so we have a particularly wonderful clientele. The most satisfying piece has been creating this community.

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Why I love setting the table…

Hosting at home is my joy! It's so different from being in a restaurant… I love to cook outside, whether it’s grilling a fish or making a beautiful scallop ceviche, and using special ingredients like my vinegars and anchovies to create simple, delicious foods. And it’s all about the table: what's the centerpiece? What’s the water in? What kind of linens are set? It’s all an expression of my mood and a reflection of who is coming over.

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The surprising synergy between filmmaking and hospitality…

Creating a restaurant is like an independent film project: you put things together and you pull pieces out that really appeal to you. It’s all about digging into your creative mind. I remember when Alberto and I stood outside Bond Street and we looked at each other and he said: ‘Could you ever have imagined it would be so beautiful?’

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The piece I’m excited to bring to The Expert…

It’s hard to choose just one but our ceramic cheeseboards are unusual because most people use wooden cutting boards. And the Belvedere linen napkins in burnt orange pair beautifully with brown and off-white table linens. For a customer in L.A., we composed a dinner service of a dozen flat Assisi plates in Bianco with appetizer bowls in Plum for a little pop of color.

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My happy place…

I’ve just finished renovating my beach house in East Hampton. The place is put together with all of my favorite things, like terracotta tiles from Italy, a beautiful reclaimed wooden floor, and a stone sink from Umbria.

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My pinch-me moment…

Getting three stars in the New York Times. When we opened, I used to say: ‘One day, we'll get three stars, even if we’re a restaurant with no tablecloths that does food simply and just with the best ingredients.’ That really was my dream.

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