Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Mexico

Few people know the power of food to bring people together better than Chef Lidia Bastianich. Through her acclaimed restaurants, best-selling cookbooks, and hit PBS shows, she has shared her Italian heritage with millions over a culinary career that began when she was 14.

When you meet Lidia, the first thing you realize is that the warm, outgoing presence that has made millions of people of all backgrounds feel like her extended familia is not an act; it is who she is through and through. And, as someone who came to the United States as refugee in 1958, she is always looking for opportunities to pay her blessings forward, to help other disadvantaged children likewise live out their wildest dreams.

It was this drive that led her to first start supporting Smile Train in 2008. 

“I have children and I come from a small village in Italy. So I understand the pain that could be in a family, in a child, when they are ostracized, when they are excluded in a close-knit community,” she explained. “When I first heard that children with clefts experience that, I said, how can I not change somebody's life for not very much money. And so I did.” 

In 2025, after 50 years in the restaurant business, Lidia decided to step out of the pressure cooker of life in a professional kitchen to focus on things that “really matter to me.” On her list is writing more books and, above all, devoting more time to her favorite charities.   

Which is how she found herself in the operating room of a Smile Train partner hospital in Toluca, Mexico, in May watching as a three-month old boy received the cleft surgery that would transform his life forever.

How the Smiles Get Made

Unlike other cleft organizations, which send foreign doctors into other countries to perform cleft surgeries for a week or two then leave, Smile Train funds, equips, and trains local healthcare workers around the world to provide timely, safe, high-quality cleft care to their neighbors in need 24/7. It’s how we have sponsored more cleft surgeries — more than 2 million — than every other charity combined in just over 25 years. Toluca’s Hospital para el Niño del Estado de México has been one of our premier partners since we sponsored our first surgery there in 2007. They regularly perform more than 300 life-changing cleft surgeries each year, in addition to other essential cleft treatments, from presurgical nutrition and feeding support to post-surgical speech therapy and orthodontics and more — all made possible by the generosity of Smile Train’s donors. 

Much of the credit for the hospital’s success can be traced to the vision and devotion of one woman: Dr. María Luiza López Salgado, who has personally performed nearly 2,000 Smile Train-sponsored surgeries for local children in need. 

Including the procedure Lidia witnessed in Mexico.

Universal Languages

Though they come from different worlds, watching the quick yet precise, delicate yet confident motions of Dr. Selgado’s hands, Chef Lidia immediately felt a kinship with her. 

But that wasn’t what impressed her the most.

“I think she is extraordinary,” Lidia said. “Not only did she perform her task well as a surgeon, it was the way she approached the child to begin with. She was there every step of the way beyond the operation…. After the surgery I watched, she was telling the mother how to massage her child’s lip after surgery. She is endless in her teaching and directing, pointing these mothers and children in the right direction.”

Following the surgery, Lidia was led into a room of Smile Train patients wearing little chef’s hats they had decorated themselves. They may not have known who Lidia was, but they understood that a great chef had come from New York to cook with them, and they were jumping with excitement for the opportunity to learn from her.

And she was just as eager to learn from them.

Lidia speaks Spanish and used it to get to know each of the two dozen kids in attendance. Her concern was so genuine, her rapport with the children so authentic, that by the time she had finished, even the shyest among them was regaling her with stories about how much they love to help in the kitchen or cook with their own grandmothers.

Then, her audience enthralled, she stood behind a food cart and taught her new friends how to make a special “Lidia Sandwich” for lunch.

“One thing I learned on this trip is how much having a cleft can affect how a child eats, that they often can’t latch on to their mothers [to breastfeed] when they’re born and develop all kinds of other problems from there, so their families have to really be careful of what they can feed their children,” she said. “And since that will be different in every culture, it really matters that Smile Train partners live where their patients do, so that they can really help and be sensitive.”

A Pot, a Pan, and a Bowl

The next morning, Lidia and Dr. Selgado set off early to meet a family at the local farmer’s market to buy fresh ingredients for a big, traditional Mexican breakfast. The family led the way, while Lidia listened and learned. This family has two daughters with clefts, both Smile Train patients: Dalia, 18, and Norma, 11.

As the family picked through produce and pork, Dalia lingered behind, seemingly eager to avoid the local photographer documenting the trip.

Back at their house, Dalia’s mother and grandmother taught Lidia how the women in their family have been making tortillas for generations.

“Grandmothers. You know I love them, and Grandma was phenomenal,” Lidia said.

Dalia kept her guard up at first, but as the women cooked, her story spilled out: She had had a poor-quality cleft surgery as a baby, the best her family could afford, and was often bullied for the way she looked. Even once her family found Smile Train when she was nine and Dr. Selgado corrected her previous surgery, the harassment continued. She’s always felt different, like no one without a cleft can understand her. She even felt alienated from her sister, who, having received a Smile Train-sponsored surgery when she was one, will never know the troubles she experienced.

But by the time the first batch of tortillas was hot and ready out of the oven, Dalia was hugging Lidia. It came out during their conversation that she had never seen a picture of herself as a baby, before cleft surgery. She had never wanted to.

“Do you want to see one now?” asked Dr. Selgado.

She did, and broke down in tears at the sight. Then asked if she could keep it.

“Food is a great connector. Food breaks down barriers. It was just amazing the transformation that happened within one hour,” Lidia said. “I hope Dalia goes on and conquers all of her goals and becomes a changer of people’s lives. I am sure she will go on to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.”

She added: “This shows how Smile Train and the local partners are part of the local life, entering into their patients’ lives and their issues, trying to just help these children, one at a time, have an opportunity for a good life.”

From a Sparkling Son to a Creative Sun

From there, Lidia went to meet Emiliano, a bubbly seven-month-old who had had his first cleft surgery just a few months earlier.

His family is determined to make sure that that contagious smile never leaves his face. And thanks to Smile Train donors, his future is looking bright as his gummy grin.

After spending some time with Emiliano and the women raising him, Lidia visited one of Toluca’s defining attractions, the Cosmovitral — an enclosed botanical garden with huge stained glass walls depicting humankind’s relationship with nature.

The Chef’s Secret

A two-day trip might not seem like much in a life as long, rich, and accomplished as Lidia’s. Yet she is certain that what she learned in those 48 hours about clefts, family, resilience, and the lives her gifts to Smile Train absolutely transform will stay with her forever.

“I knew that seeing these children would really touch me and it did, beyond my expectations…. When I came back home, seeing that this works fulfilled me in a strange way. A lot of times when you give to a big charity, you wonder: Does it really go to the child?

“This trip has given me faith, because I saw that in this organization, people don't only join because they want a job, they join because they have a commitment, because they have a passion, and because they have a sense of humanism in them. I saw that in the doctors like Dr. Selgado, but also in the families and, so often, in the communities, how they come together to support their children.”

Bringing people together is what Lidia has always done best. And whether it’s around a table at one of her world-class restaurants or at a tiny home in Toluca, her recipe for a satisfying life is always the same: it’s not how much salt you put in the pasta water or how you chop the garlic that matters most, it is the smiles you make along the way.