Today we’d like to introduce you to Billy Moschella
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am a Utah-based personal private chef and small-scale caterer with 25+ years of experience in many facets of the food service industry. I was born and raised in the Greater Boston area as part of a boisterous and colorful family of Italian-American restaurateurs, with roots stretching back to Genoa, Naples and Sicily. My grandfather had, many years ago, and prior to his passing, founded a restaurant in Boston’s Little Italy (a part of town known by the locals as the ‘North End’), and my Uncle and his eldest daughter have, for the past 20+ years, owned and operated a high-end Italian restaurant just north of the city called Venetian Moon. So, essentially, I grew up in and around the industry, though most of what I learned as regards the art of cooking itself came from my grandmothers, on both sides of the family. It was from them that the initial ‘spark of culinary inspiration’ was lit.
Throughout the years that have followed, I have spent a great deal of time developing recipes mainly out of my own home kitchen, with friends, family and housemates often serving as the ‘taste testers’ for various culinary creations. In this regard, I am, as a chef, mostly self-taught. It was not until moving to Salt Lake City in the autumn of 2016 – via Europe, via northern and southern Cali, via Minnesota – that I began to seriously consider carrying forward the food service tradition, in turn leading me, in the summer of 2018, to founding Betony Traveling Café, a personal/private chef and small-scale catering business servicing all of the Greater Salt Lake Valley (north into Eden and Morgan, east into Park City and Deer Valley, and south into Sundance). Throughout this time, I have maintained a small yet dedicated team of associate chefs who have assisted me at various events, and it is their hard work and commitment to excellence that has gone a long way towards making Betony Traveling Café successful. Incidentally, the name for the business itself, ‘betony’, which is a type of wildflower in the mint family, was inspired by a friend, now deceased, whose own presence in the Salt Lake area had originally inspired me to move here to Utah eight years ago.
Apart from my business endeavors, I am very much involved in the efforts of a local area nonprofit called the Foundation for Cultural Renewal, founded by a few close friends of mine, which works to identify individuals throughout the world – in the sciences, arts and humanities – who are doing extraordinary work, but who may not be receiving the recognition nor the funding that they deserve. It is the goal of the foundation to identify, to nurture, and to bring together such folks, as part of a far-reaching effort to embrace novel ideas that are ahead of the curve, yet which have neither been embraced nor taken up by the wider society.
As regards the future, I really cannot say just now where all of this may lead. At times, I consider the possibility of opening some type of small bistro or café, offering a small menu of some of my most popular cuisine options – something in the vein of a Café Pamplona, a small Spanish café that had existed for several decades in the Harvard Square area of Boston. The café was situated along a hidden side street close to the Harvard campus, and was located in the basement of an old multi-story home owned by a Spanish immigrant named Josefina Yanguas. Both Josefina’s home, as well as the café itself, served for many years as a hot-spot for the local ‘literati’, and Josefina herself would often host gatherings at her house – her own way keeping alive the traditions of the ‘salons’ of the 18th and 19th century German Idealist philosophers, or the Greater Boston gatherings, throughout the 19th century, of the American Transcendentalists — Thoreau, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, etc. In other words, a cultural hub, a place where the aforementioned novel ideas can be generated. The good food and the great coffee and tea offerings would serve merely as a means of supporting this.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As with anything in the food service industry – particularly something as niche as a personal/private chef endeavor – it takes time and patience to build it up properly. Being completely frank: Communication has been, and continues to be, the greatest challenge. Many of my clients, my staff, and a select number of local resorts, property managers and concierge services have been steady as rocks in this regard, but as with any truly independent and advanced effort in the arts, identifying those who truly value what it is that you do, and who also understand the importance of continuous communication, is vital. With the way things stand now, it seems that the more apps, social media platforms, and AI tools we develop, the more difficult it becomes to nurture and maintain real human connections. As one fellow colleague recently put it, “ghosting has become socially acceptable.” As such, I try to live by the adage: When someone reaches out, in an effort to make an honest, genuine connection – personal, business or otherwise – reach back, even if in doing so one’s own ‘comfort level’ is shaken up. As the jazz singer Cassandra Wilson once said, “No one seems to want to see the other person’s eyes reflect the world go ’round.” All of these things are affecting us deeply, in a social sense, and as a personal chef, there’s no hiding, because the very nature of what I do means plonking myself right into the center of other peoples’ living rooms.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Personal/private chef and small-scale catering services?
Since the time of the founding of the business in 2018, it’s been an interesting adventure, working hard as I have, with an independent entrepreneurial spirit, in developing relationships with national and international concierge services, property management companies, home owners, and travel agencies in spreading the word as to the types of culinary services that I offer. The ‘bread and butter’, as it were, of my business model is that of offering ethnically-themed menu plans from various nations. Across the globe, culinary traditions are so amazingly varied, not merely from one country to the next, but from one region of a particular country to another…and even from one town to the next! Thus, it has been my goal to offer a wide variety of options from the various ‘themed menu plans’ that I offer. Ultimately, I enjoy preparing both hearty and familiar cuisine, as many of the dishes that I offer to my clientele are ‘old classics’, those that will be familiar to guests coming from a particular ethnic background, hopefully stirring memories of their own familial culinary traditions.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Keeping it simple. Offering hearty, familiar fare, from across ethnic culinary traditions, is something that nearly everyone can appreciate.
Pricing:
- Averages $100+ per person for formal sit-down dinner service with servers
- More cost-effective offerings are available, served buffet or family-style
- Multi-day events (family vacations, corporate retreats) are also made available at a flat rate, with groceries incurring an additional cost (included in most other offerings)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://betonytravelingcafe.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betony_traveling_cafe/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betonytravelingcafe
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/betony-traveling-caf%C3%A9-salt-lake-city
Image Credits
Tiramisu = credit to C. Estelle Smith, Trio Appetizer Plate courtesy of Danielle Zaugg
