Newlyweds Samantha Hunt and Luca Frau discovered that their differences complement each other well in life — and in the kitchen.
Hunt is a Jewish teacher and artist from New York, and Frau is a trained chef from Italy. Together, they started Oy Vey Osteria, offering the best baked goods from both worlds. They make challah, babka, focaccia, cookies, pies and more out of their Woodside apartment.
The name of the bakery represents the combination of their Jewish and Italian heritages. Frau came up the idea to use the Yiddish exclamation “oy vey.”
“I’ve always liked this expression. It reminded me of ‘mamma mia,’” Frau said.
He explained that in Italy, an osteria is a casual place where you get homemade food at a fair price, which speaks to what the couple does.
Before they started living together in what is now their home and studio, Frau and Hunt met during the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Some of their dates involved taking walks through Astoria Park and enjoying a delicious fruit tart Hunt brought Frau from her local bakery. Hunt and Frau got married in an intimate ceremony in their apartment in January 2021.
After working nearly 20-hour shifts at a restaurant during the pandemic, Frau wanted to get out of the restaurant grind. He thought starting his own side business would help him go out on his own while freeing time to build his relationship with Hunt.
Hunt and Frau are both “food obsessed” and creative. The business “just kind of happened,” Hunt said. They started working on a blog together last summer about their personal backgrounds. That led to baking challahs and babkas at home, which they posted pictures of on Instagram and shared with friends, family and coworkers — and people asked for more.
After ramping up their baking business in the late summer of 2021, they sold challah, rugelach, and babka for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) in September, and then officially formed an LLC.
The couple said the menu has grown naturally based on what they like to make and inspiration from restaurants, travel and cookbooks, as well as requests from customers. Menu options are also seasonal and based on holidays.
Around Thanksgiving, they offered a menu of pies like brûlée pumpkin and mascarpone; dark chocolate and pecan; and tiramisu and halva. For Hanukkah, they fried up a variety of sufganiyot (doughnut) flavors like espresso coffee custard; dark chocolate orange ganache; and sour cherry jam and coconut. They’ve also sold rainbow and black-and-white cookies.
The duo divides the labor in the kitchen based on their skills. Frau makes the dough and Hunt braids, decorates and stages it.
“All this Jewish food is new to me,” Frau said. “We’re learning while doing — that’s also the fun part.”
Hunt doesn’t have a background in baking, but growing up watching her Jewish grandmother from Poland cook everything from scratch had an impression on her.
Hunt had never braided challah before, but she learned for Oy Vey Osteria. According to Frau, she picked it up quickly.
“She’s a very good artist,” Frau said. “She’s very good with her hands, with the bread. Her braiding is amazing — one of the best.”
Frau went to culinary school in Italy, studied pastry-making and has worked in restaurants in Spain, France and New York City. He currently works at an Italian bakery in Brooklyn. His grandmother was a baker, which, like Hunt, makes him feel like he’s connecting back to his roots.
While Oy Vey Osteria is a combination of Hunt and Frau’s cultures, they’ve used ingredients that also reflect the diverse populations in the neighborhood. Selling at the Queens Pop-up at the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights inspired them to make mini babka buns made with ube, a purple yam from the Philippines, and another variety with guava cream cheese
“We brought something new,” Frau said of the community response. “There are not too many Jewish modern bakeries here in the area … so the people really love it.” Customers also appreciate their gluten-free and vegan options.
They’ve also sold at a Sunnyside Shines market, and recently got accepted to the Down To Earth Market locations in Morningside and Greenpoint starting in March. They’ve been delivering orders themselves, but soon they’ll include the option for customers to pick up orders at the farmers market locations.
To prepare for the upcoming season of farmers markets, the couple wants to get new equipment and try new recipes, like switching the product to sourdough. They also talked about making new menu items like Hamantaschen (triangle-shaped cookies with filling) for Purim, Hunt’s grandmother’s cookies for Passover and cinnamon rolls.
A lot of customers come from Oy Vey Osteria’s Instagram account, where they post reels and professional-level pictures of their food. That, too, takes teamwork. Frau also likes video editing and photography, and Hunt handles posting and copy, including history about the food in the descriptions.
Oy Vey Osteria will expand to YouTube, too. Frau started a cooking channel during the pandemic with demonstrations on making Italian recipes. They plan to transition it into the Oy Vey Osteria kitchen channel with videos of them baking.
Frau would love the business to be a hybrid between a traditional bakery — with a small café one day — and a content platform.
Hunt and Frau both find the business rewarding. They love interacting with people; providing delicious, beautiful food; and figuring it out together while connecting with their Jewish and Italian roots. They’ve found that they’re more alike than they realized.
“We both grew up in cultures and families where breaking bread with someone is so important, to just make something really good and share it with someone,” Hunt said.