Nadia Caterina Munno, known as Pasta Queen, continues to keep it real. Her rise to social media fame spurned an Amazon Prime original show along with a line of pasta sauces, but there’s been no shortage of family time and fork tossing in between it all.

We caught up with the two-time bestselling author and mom of four prior to her pasta-making masterclass and live on-stage discussion at Allegro on October 2, where we talked about her past successes, current adventures, and future projects.

We’re excited to have you in Vegas!

I know! It'll be my first time in Las Vegas.

What are you most looking forward to?

To see if it really is like it is in the movies that I've watched — crazy, dazzling, grand, noisy, a lot of artisticness, lots of great lights. 

What’s on the menu for the masterclass?

It's going to be really delicious and very rustically Italian. We're not going for avant-garde or minimalistic dishes. We're going for the old-fashioned, homey type of dishes.

We've got a couple of starters. We've got a very southern Italian way of making this roasted, sauteed eggplant and tomatoes in toasted crostino bread with some garlic, and it's going to be just delightful. We're also making some Roman-style arancini, these fried rice balls, and it's going to be tomato-ey, and it's going to have a heart of mozzarella inside. And then we're making two entrees. We're making a classic Roman cacio e pepe, and then we're also making a risotto on the side. It's going to be very authentic, very classic. We're going to have some little sides and then, as a finale, we have my classic torta della nonna, which is a grandma-style type of pie which has custard, pine nuts and lemon with a fresh Chantilly (cream) on top.

You have two New York Times bestselling cookbooks. Are you working on a third cookbook now?

I am! It's going to be different than the first two. I think that, based on what I have experienced with my audience, and what I've seen traveling, the subject of the third cookbook is going to be a very interesting take and very useful, very practical, but also an insight into my life that people have not seen.

Is that the only project you’re working on now, or do you have other things in the works?

I already have five pasta sauces, which are extremely successful. They have been selling across the country at Walmart, in about 2700 stores, and they are my favorite things to the point of another push, where we're going to bring more products in the food space. We also have products for the home that are coming next year. This year I've been really building the business in terms of a lifestyle brand, for the products that we've been developing and we've been working on for the last year. We're launching them next year in 2026, so I'm doing the book, I'm doing the products, I'm working on a new TV show.

Between creating cookbooks to working on longer-form videos to social media, what do you enjoy the most?

My utmost passion, I would say even above cooking, is to entertain. If I could have — and I did, for a short time when I was a kid in Rome — I would have been a theater performer. 

With social media, it feels instant. You see it right away. It feels like you're with a live audience, just like when you're in the theater. You get the comments coming in. You get people liking it, sharing it, sending you messages about it within seconds. It's so rewarding as someone who creates content, (and) I’m a creative content person, to see what works on an immediate basis and to repeat it, or to expand upon whatever the audience enjoys the most, or whatever you see is working best. It's instantaneous. 

You found online success at a lightning-fast pace. What would you say your secret is to social media success?

The only thing that I know for a fact — and I have compared this and talked about it with other content creators, performers, musicians, actors even — (is that) it has nothing to do with whether you think you have talent per se, or an X factor. The only secret is persistence. 

Will there be a little bit of utensil throwing at this masterclass?

I did ask to be provided with a bag of plastic forks, because then, no casualties.

If somebody were to start this for the first time, maybe start from their first recipe. Where would you recommend they start?

I think that everybody should master the simple spaghetti with tomato and basil. To me, it's a staple of where I come from. It takes 15 minutes to make everybody happy.

So do you think with mastering the basics, everybody can cook pasta?

Everybody can cook pasta. I've taught people that thought that they were awful cooks and are now incredible party throwers.  That's why I wanted to create the Royal Court of Pasta because I really wanted to put it in an index: all the tips, how to make the starters, how to make the main dishes, the little hacks, to make them even extra special.

What’s your favorite episode of your Amazon Prime show Pasta Queen?

I think that my favorite is episode six because of my kids, because I was in the outskirts of Rome, I was going to the local farms (and) I was making dishes that I actually love. But the Christmas Special, which is episode 13, is also incredible, because I was cooking with my grandmothers. We were making fresh pasta, and we were making real, iconic, southern Italian staples, and the atmosphere of that was so heartwarming.

Your kids frequently make appearances in your videos. Would you say that Gabriel is your Pasta Prince?  Would you say that all of your daughters are the Pasta Princesses? 

People have called him that. He's the Pasta Prince-in-training, I would say.

Funnily enough, my youngest, seven-year-old Penelope, is the one that actually loves to cook. Sometimes she begs me to cook with her, and to do videos together. She was in some of the episodes on my Prime Video show and she was insistent on being in as many scenes as possible. When I asked her, “why is that?” She's like, “I want to make people laugh.” She's got that hospitality, the hostess vibe.

What kind of pasta are you? What kind of sauce?

I'm definitely spaghetti pasta shape-wise, because I'm classic, authentic and iconic. I feel spaghetti is very similar to my personality. 

In terms of sauces, because of the fact that I grew up in the south of Italy, I would say a Puttanesca sauce. It's got anchovies, tomatoes, olives, capers, parsley, sometimes I add tuna in it. It's got chili peppers, it’s not too spicy, but it's very interesting and layered the flavors just like me.