By Charlie Pogacar
The backstory of how Anthony Ludovici-DeBrigida became a pizzeria owner and operator will be familiar to many: An Italian-American, he grew up in the business. Different members of his family owned multiple pizzerias in the Philadelphia area.
But to say Ludovici-DeBrigida was preordained to become a pizzaiolo would be an oversimplification. In fact, the accomplished pizzaiolo initially resisted going into the family business, instead taking the scenic route to opening Anto’s Pizza Romana & Italian Market, a shop that offers both New York and Roman-style pizza in Conway, South Carolina, a small college town, in October 2024.
It’s a journey that has taken Ludovici-DeBrigida from Philadelphia to the Florida Keys. From the Florida Keys to pizza making classes in Chicago and Long Island and back to the Florida Keys. To a Dave Portnoy One Bite Review where he playfully showed off his giant tattoo commemorating his favorite football team, the Philadelphia Eagles, much to Portnoy’s chagrin. Then a visit with a psychic directed Ludovici-DeBrigida his shop in Conway, where he now serves up Roman-style squares and New York-style pies for the locals.
The latest chapter for the 33-year-old pizzaiolo brought him to the International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas, where he entered his first pizza making competition and finished sixth in the Roman-style category of the Pan division. His reaction to finishing sixth is a window into the determination that has driven Ludovici-DeBrigida throughout his career.
Related: Why Roman-Style is ‘One of the Most Fun—And Most Difficult—Pizzas to Make’
“Before we got on the plane to come back home,” he told PMQ Pizza, “I was already thinking about my pie for next year.”
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The Philadelphia Story
Ludovici-DeBrigida and his sister, Maila, grew up in the family pizza shop, Illianos, north of Philadelphia. Ludovici-DeBrigida’s first job was washing dishes, after which he started driving delivery and waiting tables—whatever was needed. But he didn’t think much about spending his career in pizza. “As a kid, I never really thought this is what I wanted to do,” he said. “I just kind of did it without thinking about it back then.”
The family members of Ludovici-DeBrigida encouraged him to not go into the pizza business, in fact. They told him to finish high school, go to college and figure out what his calling was. He followed their advice up to a point—he tried a couple of different colleges and programs, but he found himself pulled back into the family business at the age of 20. His uncle was running a shop called Toscana’s in Horsham, Pennsylvania but had a partner with a bad back who was looking to get out of the business. Ludovici-DeBrigida took out a loan and bought the business partner out.
“My uncle had been doing this forever,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “He was the only guy making pizza, morning and night, going crazy. I mean, he’s the hardest working guy I’ve ever known. And he was telling me, ‘Don’t be a jerk like me.’ And after that, the shop wasn’t really taking off, and he kept telling me to go back to school to see what I want to do.”
What Ludovici-DeBrigida was actually interested in, he realized, were animals. He had always been fascinated by creatures like sea turtles, and he began eyeing up a place called the Turtle Hospital, a small nonprofit in the Florida Keys that specialized in rehabilitating turtles. There was a college down there, too, where he planned on taking classes. But perhaps the real draw was getting away from Philadelphia—and pizza. “At that point, I thought I’d never be making pizza again,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said.
A Turning Point
When a young Ludovici-DeBrigida arrived in the Florida Keys, he began volunteering at the Dolphin Research Center—the Turtle Hospital turned out to not need volunteers—and taking classes. In order to make ends meet, he began working at a local bar. The bar was eventually acquired by a young couple, one that happened to be thinking about opening up a neighborhood pizza shop, too. They caught wind of Ludovici-DeBrigida’s pizza making background and approached him about it. Would he consider getting back into the game? Sure, he thought, not quite sure what he was getting himself into.
Ludovici-DeBrigida began making pizza at the new pizza shop, Coast to Coast Pizza Company, using his family’s recipes. The pizza must have been pretty good, as locals flocked to the joint. A few months later, however, a snag: The city identified some issues with the building the shop was housed in and ordered it to be closed for repairs.
Instead of giving up on the business, ownership doubled down. They sent Ludovici-DeBrigida to The North American Pizza and Culinary Academy outside of Chicago to hone his skills. The experience opened up a whole new world for Ludovici-DeBrigida and was arguably the biggest turning point in his professional career.
“Old-school Italians, when you’re in the shop, you fill up something to this line,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said, indicating an imaginary line. “You put a handful of this or a handful of that when you make your sauce or your dough or whatever it is you’re doing. So [taking classes] introduced me to a lot more things as far as the science behind pizza. You know, pre-ferments, poolish, all of this stuff I had no idea about before. It completely flipped a switch for me: Like, oh, you actually have to weigh this stuff out in order to be consistent.”
One day for lunch, an instructor cooked Roman-style pizza for Ludovici-DeBrigidia and his classmates. Something about it struck a chord within the young man. “I was like, oh my God, what is this?” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “Something clicked in my head where I was like, I gotta find out more about this.”
When he returned to the Florida Keys and Coast to Coast opened back up, Ludovici-DeBrigida began experimenting with his pizza menu in a way he never had before. He was making New York-style pizza, Sicilian, Detroit-style pizza—but the one style he couldn’t get out of his head was Roman. One day, the social media algorithm showed Ludovici-DeBrigida an ad for Roman-style pizza classes taught by Massimiliano Saeiva and Rob Cervoni.
“I went up to Long Island and took the course there,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “And since the classes at the Pizza Academy, I had been, like, I love this stuff. But after that class [with Saeiva and Cervoni]? I was, like, this is what I want to do. This is [the style] I want to try to perfect.”
It was during this period that the country’s most famous pizza influencer, Dave Portnoy, visited Coast to Coast Pizza Company. Before he had time to consider what he was doing, Ludovici-DeBrigida showed Portnoy his full back tattoo depicting Philadelphia Eagles’ linebacker Brandon Graham strip-sacking New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady—a play that famously, for all intents and purposes, ended Super Bowl LII, giving Philadelphia its first-ever Super Bowl victory.
The interaction prompted Portnoy to somewhat playfully call Ludovici-DeBrigida a “scumbag.” But it ended up serving a larger purpose: The review went viral in the community of Eagles’ fans, who recognized Ludovici-DeBrigida as one of their own. It didn’t hurt that Portnoy also scored the shop a 7.7—his highest-ever rating in the Florida Keys.
“We had people coming from all over the place to the Florida Keys,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “It took off so much that they opened a second location in Fort Lauderdale about a year after that.”
The Conway Connection
You could say the stars aligned when Ludovici-DeBrigida and his wife, Carly, found the current location for Anto’s Pizza Romana & Italian Market. First, while still in the Florida Keys, a psychic told the pizza maker that his late grandfather—the man who helped raise Ludovici-DeBrigida—could picture him opening up his own shop. Soon thereafter, Ludovici-DeBrigida had a customer come into the bar in the Florida Keys who was a realtor in the Myrtle Beach area, where Carly had attended college and a place the couple had talked about perhaps relocating to.
The realtors showed them around Myrtle Beach, but none of the businesses spoke to them. The realtors then suggested looking at a spot in Conway—about 20 minutes north of Myrtle Beach and home to Coastal Carolina University. Then, with the psychic’s words about his grandfather ringing in his head, Ludovici-DeBrigida took note of the location’s address: 1129, or, when read a certain way, his grandfather’s birthday: 11/29.
“So that’s how we stumbled upon the spot,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “And we just kind of took a shot on it. It ended up being a great location but we kind of accidentally ended up in Conway—it wasn’t something we were planning on doing.”
The shop would not have been possible without some help from his family, Ludovici-DeBrigida noted. In particular, his cousin, Mike Frugoli, is a minority owner of Anto’s due to his investment in it and the support he’s given the shop since it was but an idea.
The New York Pivot
As Ludovici-DeBrigida got ready to open his shop, he began promoting his pizza on social media. He was determined to make his vision a reality: to open a Roman-style pizza place in Conway, South Carolina.
Two weeks before opening, he began hearing a common refrain from the local community: What in the world is Roman-style pizza? Everybody seemed to want conventional, circular pizza. It freaked him out. Enough so that he pivoted—just two weeks prior to opening—and started developing a New York-style pizza to anchor the menu.
“We had this whole plan,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “It was going to be just me and my wife, and I figured I’d get one person to help me out in the back. As the orders came in, I figured, we’ll just top the pies, throw them in the oven, and boom, they’re out. So two weeks beforehand, we decided to add New York [style pizza]. Now we’ve got a whole other process. We’ve got two different doughs, two different temperatures in the ovens. We’ve got to set both decks at different temperatures.”
It was a difficult but correct decision, it seems. The day Anto’s opened its doors, it was flooded with locals. Nearly all of them wanted to try Ludovici-DeBrigida’s New York-style pizza. Inevitably, the shop would run out of New York-style pizza, and an effort was made to sell the customer on Roman-style pizza. Sometimes, the customer would accept. Often, those who tried the Roman-style would report that they would never order New York-style pizza again. Still, the shop probably sells 75% to 80% New York-style pizza and 20% to 25% Roman-style, Ludovici-DeBrigida estimated.
“The idea was to introduce a community to a new style of pizza,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “There have certainly been some growing pains, but there’s been some success, too.”
Via a specialized water filtration system, Ludovici-DeBrigida uses New York water in his pizza dough at Anto’s. In his Roman-style dough, he uses imported Italian flour from Mulino Caputo and 50% biga with 80% hydration to create a lighter crumb. Other key ingredients include Grandé fior di latte and Stanislaus tomatoes. The New York-style dough sports a 64% hydration and 50% biga.
One of the biggest problems Anto’s has faced in its six months of existence is overwhelming demand. There are still times when the shop runs out of dough. Early on, this led to some ornery customers who treated cashiers poorly. This didn’t sit well with Ludovici-DeBrigida, so he tried something out: a “wall of shame,” spotlighting customers who had misbehaved at the shop. When one customer freaked out on his team members, he put their name and picture up on a wall and posted it to social media. It caused quite the commotion in the local community, with people split between supporting the shop and accusing Anto’s of crossing the line.
Ultimately, it was a fellow local business owner who convinced Ludovici-DeBrigida to turn something negative into something positive. “He messaged me privately and he was like, look, I get it,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “I mean, I was working insane hours those first couple of months because it was so crazy. And he said, ‘I know you’re tired, but you’re better than this. Don’t do [the wall of shame].’ He said, ‘Don’t do it, just keep it moving—why don’t you lift up good customers rather than put bad customers on blast?’”
It was what the young shop owner needed to hear. The banned wall didn’t feel right to him in the first place, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do. He felt he needed to protect his team members first and foremost. But he thought positivity was the right path. So Anto’s instead implemented a new program: It began celebrating a “Customer of the Month.”
“You come in, put your name and number in a bag,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said. “And if we pick you, we’ll take your picture, you get a free pie, and then your picture stays on the wall: You’re a customer of the month.”
The Animal Story
If the pizza aspect of Ludovici-Debrigida’s life has remained constant, so, too, has his love for animals. The pizzaiolo forged connections with tortoises, sea lions, dolphins and other sea creatures at the Dolphin Research Center that were hard to leave behind when he moved to South Carolina. He honors those animals by naming menu items after them and spotlighting the connection(s) on social media. Many pizzas—the Miss Molly’s Margherita, for example—carry that type of backstory.
Anto’s also partners with a local animal rescue shelter that helps dogs get rehomed. Next month, the pizzeria will host an adoption event with wine and pizza with proceeds that go towards the cause. The shop also staples flyers for the rescue shelter to its pizza boxes that have already helped connect dogs with new homes.
“We want to keep helping animals, even if we can’t be physically there for them,” Ludovici-DeBrigida said.
