Mother-Daughter Duo Serving Up Italian Fare on Cowley Road
“When they look for someone in charge, they look for a man”
In the two-part immigrant women in business in Oxford series we meet Rosa and her daughter Denise. Rosa, 57, and Denise, 28, own the popular Italian restaurant on Cowley Road La Smorfia.
Opening a restaurant is not everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee, if you wish). Although Rosa and Denise had years of experience in the hospitality industry in Italy, they were surprised and unprepared for the challenges prevalent in the business industry in the UK.
Rosa as a single woman, Denise as a young queer woman, both immigrants, faced the challenges of patriarchy at almost every step.
The mother-daughter arrived in the UK in High Wycombe in 2016 and 2017 respectively. These were the years when the full impact of Brexit was still sinking in.
As Italians, both women had the advantage of pre-settled visa status. Rosa and Denise had a further advantage of financial backing from an Italian investor back home in Italy.
Rosa, and Denise moved to Oxford in 2021, which was still recovering from the pandemic. They instantly loved Oxford due to its diversity of locals, students, and tourists.
It took nine months of scouting to ultimately find the space which would become their beloved restaurant La Smofia, on Cowley Road.
Rosa ran a bistro in her native town of Matelica in Italy for 20 years. Denise also grew up in the restaurant business, learning the ropes from her mother from a young age. However, this collective solid experience hasn’t always been considered good enough.
Denise says, “Because you’re an immigrant, everybody thinks that you’re stupid…. just because maybe you struggle sometimes to speak or to express yourself in a certain way… they just have the assumption that you’re not as intelligent as them.”
While refurbishing their leased property into a restaurant, Rosa and Denise constantly faced patronising contractors (mostly men), who trivialised and undermined their inputs on the functional and aesthetic designs of their own restaurant.
Rosa says, “you always lose with them (professional men). They are so good at tricking you”.
Denise, who identifies as a queer woman, and has an androgynous appearance, especially faces challenges as the front face and manager of the restaurant.
Denise shares “As a white, I haven’t experienced that type of discrimination, but for sure we did feel immigrant discrimination, and for myself, the homophobic discrimination.”
She adds, “if there was a ladder, simply from the fact that they come in and they see me as a young queer and a woman, I’m three steps below them. And that’s not fair.”
While navigating these nuanced layers of their lives, Denise and Rosa are focusing on perfecting the operation of their restaurant.
Denise concludes by saying that “being women and being immigrants, people definitely make your life harder. But at the end of the day, you just got to keep going.
“Putting people in their place in a sense where establishing boundaries and establishing respect is definitely something that you need to learn to do.”