Edible Landscapes Dinner: Festa Italiana

An Italian Dinner Party Celebrating the Vettrainos, Cranbrook’s Other Founding Family 
Featuring Cory Barberio, Executive Chef, San Morello & Shinola Hotel

Presented by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research 
$325 per person (includes a $100 tax-deductible donation to Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research) 

The Center gratefully acknowledges Idyll Farms for their contribution to the dinner.  Strolling Italian music provided by Rosalia Schultz and Natale Emanuele.

The Edible Landscapes Dinner has sold out. Please click the button below to join our waitlist. 

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THE VETTRAINOS
Michele “Mike” Vettraino came to America from Italy in 1905 and began working at Cranbrook that same year. Initially hired as a planting assistant, whose big feet were ideal for tamping down the soil around new trees, Mike would become head gardener and superintendent of the Cranbrook grounds, before finally retiring after a fifty-year career there in 1955. He was a skilled landscaper who shaped Cranbrook’s hills and valleys into their current forms, along with his brothers, Gaetano “Tony” and Giovanni, several cousins and other countrymen. 

In 1913, Mike married Michela Angelosanto, who hailed from his own hometown, Sant’Elia Fiumerapido. Mike and Michela’s six children grew up in their home on Cranbrook’s campus and, in time, each made their own mark on the community. Their daughters Antonia “Annette,” Concetta “Connie,” and Rosa “Rose,” and sons, Dominick, Giovanni “John,” and Saverio “Sam,” all worked on the Cranbrook grounds and stepped up to carry out landscaping during World War II. Mike’s son Dominick served as Cranbrook’s first fire chief and head of the campus police; roles in which he was ably assisted by his brother John, who was also assistant fire chief and the head of Cranbrook’s transportation department. John and Dominick both worked at Cranbrook for more than fifty years. John’s daughter Cecilia “Cec” Vettraino Strine carried her family’s legacy into the third generation, teaching second and third grade for thirty-nine years at Cranbrook’s Brookside School. 

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This not-to-be-missed, unique dining and cultural experience is strictly limited to eighty guests. Guests are encouraged to register early as Edible Landscapes Dinners sell out quickly. If you try to register for the dinner and find that it has sold out, please contact the Center to be placed on the waitlist.

5:00pm - 6:30pm    Drinks, Appetizers, Storytelling, and Music in Cranbrook House 

6:30pm - 8:45pm    Italian Family Feast in the Library

HISTORY OF THE EDIBLE LANDSCAPES DINNERS
The Center’s signature Edible Landscape Dinners were conceived by artist and Cranbrook Academy of Art graduate Emily Staugaitis (CAA ’15). For the first dinner in 2015, the Center worked with Seldon Standard in Detroit to craft an experience highlighting food items planted in Cranbrook's gardens a century ago. Subsequent dinners—presented in collaboration with Gold Cash Gold, Wright & Company, Chef Sarah Welch, Chef Matthew Baldridge, and Chef Suzuki of Sharaku—explored the history of Cranbrook’s Greek Theatre; the Lake Como-inspired Boat House; the story of Cranbrook’s matriarch Ellen Scripps Booth; the European travels of the Booths’ youngest son Henry Booth and his wife, Carolyn Farr Booth; and the history of the Cranbrook Japanese Garden.