Meet Ada Mottola

She is the matriarch of the family that founded Vince's Italian Restaurants, which are celebrating their 50th anniversary this month.

Vince's is one of the oldest family owned Italian restaurant chains in Seattle. With unbridled animation, hand gestures, and in heavily accented English, this vivacious Liz Taylor look-a-like from Naples told Elsbeth and me that only 10 days off "the boat" (1955) she gave birth to the first of her and Vince's five children.

A few year's later, she and her late husband started building their American Dream by opening a restaurant where she waited tables and he prepared food. Fifty year's later she tells stories of family and the hard work of building a business.

I asked her what she does now that she's on the sidelines of the business,

" I enjoy life ... I shop ... I gossip with my friends and (with a bit of a flirty grin) I sip a little Limoncello and watch the sunset from my deck."

When I told her she was a spicy meatball she said something in Italian that I think meant, "you are a handsome fellow."

But Elsbeth, who speaks several languages, said, "She thinks you are ordering spaghetti and meatballs."