They’re two Sicilian boys from Texas who love to cook and eat. They love the Sicilian food their parents and grandparents cooked. They love the Creole and Southern food their family members picked up passing through Louisiana and stepping off the boat right on the dock in Galveston. And they love the Western food that’s just part of being in Texas. Food, you see, isn’t only about food. It’s not some big secret. It’s something that just happens when all of the interconnected families get together-the Carrabbas and the Mandolas, plus anybody with enough good sense to marry in. “You may be poor,” went the saying a mere generation ago, “but you’ll never be hungry.” The Gulf Coast experience is about the place where all of their ancestors came to build their lives. They called it America! And they didn’t just mean Ellis Island, or Little Italy in New York, or the North End of Boston or South Philly. They meant the whole place, wherever it began and ended, which of course nobody much knew. And it meant an idea too, a big promise in the air during the hard times in Sicily that if you sacrificed just about everything and pretty near worked yourself to death, you could have something a little better. Which, after all, was exactly what you did in the Old Country-without any promise at all. So they came, ship after ship full of them. Full of us. And all the while, there were other ships filled with other people, speaking different languages. In America, they would come to know them all. And talk with them all. And wrestle with them all. And, in some cases, cook with them all. They kept on being who they were, sure enough, but after a while, they were something different, too. Something entirely new. Redeemable at any Bloomin’ Brands restaurant locations in the United States. Also redeemable at Outback Puerto Rico and Guam locations.
