Philadelphia was not on her radar then - but look at her now:
At 48, Spurio commands the kitchen at Le Virtú, a Passyunk Avenue restaurant devoted to dishes she grew up cooking - the cuisine of the Abruzzi region, where she spent much of her childhood, and of Ascoli Piceno, the neighboring seaside resort where she was born.
At the restaurant, she re-creates her grandfather's hand-crafted sausage, her grandmother's ravioli filled with braised rabbit and grated amaretto cookies; grilled monkfish and savory deep-fried olives. She cooks by touch and taste, making herself an essential ingredient in each dish.
"I learned from the old women," say Spurio, a sturdy beauty with thick blond hair twisted into a braid that stretches down her back.
"In Italy, usually the young women will learn traditional recipes from the old women. And my mother used to teach too."
But put any two cooks in the kitchen, she says, and give them identical ingredients for the same dish, "and the results don't taste the same," she says, her English perfected now but still heavily accented.
"Because it's all in what the cook brings to the food. It's the touch."
The owners of Le Virtú, Francis Cratil and Catherine Lee, knew the restaurant they hoped to open would need a chef who was native to the Abruzzi.
Cratil, 44, originally from Reading, knew only that his father's family had come from Abruzzi. Neither Cratil, nor Lee, who is 41 and from North Jersey, had any experience in the restaurant business.
But after they honeymooned and made several extended visits, they came to love the southern coastal and mountainous region and became determined to bring the area's authentic dishes, and perhaps its style, home to Philadelphia.
