Matthew Tropeano

Private dinner · Cape Cod

Cousins
Cooking Together.

Fourteen people. A long summer evening built around family, instinct, and the pleasure of leaving the platters in the middle of the table.

August 15, 2026Yarmouth Port, MA14 guests
Family gathered around the outdoor table during Cousins Cooking Together
Fourteen guests, one long table · Photography by Mary O’Keeffe

It started the way the best meals often do: not with a formal first course, but with food appearing.

An antipasto omakase.

Prosciutto di Parma. Fresh mozzarella. Octopus salad. Jerry’s zucchini blossoms stuffed with lobster and ricotta. My eggplant meatballs.

No rush. No reason to force the evening forward.

We let people eat, drink, talk, settle in.

Then we stopped.

The antipasto spread prepared for the dinner
The antipasto begins
Octopus salad served with grilled bread
Octopus salad and grilled bread
45

The first pause

For about forty-five minutes, nothing happened.

Which was exactly the point. The kitchen reset. The table changed. Everyone had time to breathe. By the time we came back, the night had shifted from cocktails and antipasti into something more intimate.

01

At the table

Cooked mostly
on instinct.

Jerry rolled out his handmade tagliatelle, and from there the table started to fill.

Primo

Tagliatelle aglio e olio

Cape-style shrimp scampi with sourdough crumble

Secondo

Filetto di manzo ripieno

Whole roasted stuffed filet mignon, carved by hand at the table

Contorni

Jerry’s potato croquettes

With prosciutto

Contorni

Matt’s minestra

With escarole

“Taste it. Adjust it. Let it go another minute. Add the garlic. Pull it now. Get it to the table.”

Everything came out the way we would feed our own family: serve a little to everyone first, then leave the platters in the middle. Take more if you want it. Pass it down. Tear off another piece. Stay awhile.

Matthew Tropeano and Jerry Gaita cooking together in the kitchen
Cooking mostly on instinct · Matthew and Jerry

Then another pause

Cold, floral,
bitter, sweet.

The meal started moving again in a cold goblet: cream of limoncello, with an amaro cherry and lavender.

Cream of limoncello served in cold goblets with amaro cherries and lavender
Cream of limoncello · Amaro cherry · Lavender
Dolce

Tiramisu coupe

Mamma Maria’s mascarpone recipe with summer berries

By that point, nobody needed another course. But everybody wanted one.
A crescent moon over Cape Cod at the end of the dinner
“For a few hours, it felt like we had slipped out of Cape Cod and landed somewhere under the Tuscan sun.”

Only to end the night back where we belonged—sitting together beneath a waxing gibbous Cape Cod moon.

It was generous without being excessive. Elegant without being formal. Thoughtful without trying too hard. Mostly, it felt like family. And that was the whole idea.

Jerry Gaita · Rossana Gonser · Matthew Tropeano
Photography by Mary O’Keeffe

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