TONY SORIANO

The kitchen is his. Everything else, he wisely leaves to Maria.

Tony Soriano came to an early understanding of what he was good at and what he was not, and he has spent his life operating accordingly. He is a chef and a restaurateur and a man who loves his family at considerable volume.
The front of the house is Maria's – the customers, the vendors, the ten thousand details that keep Toma Bistro running – and Tony supports this arrangement completely. He has always trusted Maria to handle her domain. He has also always been aware that her domain will function correctly with or without his input, which makes trusting her very easy.

He is social, and playful in a way that does not always account for room temperature before entering. His energy can take a situation that was progressing peacefully and give it a productive boost in an unintended direction. His sons understand this. Maria manages it. Tony, for his part, means well, and the distinction between meaning well and reading the room is one he has been working on for some years with limited but genuine progress.

He has always understood food completely. Not as something you consume but as a language – specific, loaded, passed down through recipes nobody wrote down because the writing was never the point. Food is Tony's primary form of I love you. It is his argument, his apology, his celebration. It is, on the right Sunday, all three at once. His sons run the restaurant now. The sauce, though, is still his.

Family is everything, the kitchen is sacred, and Maria runs the rest – as it should be in Tony’s world.