By Charlie Pogacar  |  Photos by Noah Fecks

When Giorgia Caporuscio first arrived in New York City from her native Italy in 2009, people teased her. How could an Italian woman—and the daughter of a renowned pizza chef—not know how to cook pizza and pasta? “So I said, ‘Why don’t I start making pizza to show them?’” she recalls. 

Nobody is laughing now. In January, Caporuscio took over New York’s globally acclaimed Don Antonio from her father, Roberto Caporuscio, and his mentor, Antonio Starita, both iconic pizza makers. Handpicked for the role by Roberto himself, she is now set to carry on the Neapolitan pizza restaurant’s legacy, along with her husband/partner, Matteo Bassani, who runs the restaurant’s beverage program.

“[Giorgia] is proof that the possibilities are limitless when you work hard, stay true to yourself and don’t let the fear or doubt of others hold you back.”

—Alexandra Mortati, Orlando Foods and Women in Pizza

But Caporuscio’s influence spans far beyond the kitchen and dining room of Don Antonio. Over the past 15 years, she has inspired women around the country—even the world—to step up and find their place in the pizza industry. As Alexandra Mortati, marketing director of Orlando Foods and founder of Women in Pizza, puts it, “She is proof that the possibilities are limitless when you work hard, stay true to yourself and don’t let the fear or doubt of others hold you back.”

“Why Am I Here?”

Despite her family ties, Caporuscio took a humble road to running Don Antonio, which is ranked No. 37 on 50 Top Pizza’s current U.S. rankings. The journey began when she was 19. After graduating from high school, she followed her father to New York City, where he’d recently opened Kesté on the Lower East Side. The move from her family’s farm in Terracina, Italy, to New York came with a great deal of culture shock—Caporuscio barely knew how to speak English at the time. “The transition was not easy,” she says. “I cried a lot and kept wondering, why am I here?”

She found the answer to that question in the form of authentic Neapolitan pizza. Though her father did not immediately start her on the make line—she had to work her way up at Kesté—he was soon sharing insights with her. An eager student, she was enraptured with the pizza making process. 

“Making Neapolitan pizza, you’re working with really simple ingredients,” Caporuscio says. “But if you change a little on each ingredient and the quantity of that ingredient, the result is completely different. That’s what I fell in love with: It’s so simple and so complicated at the same time.”

In 2012, Don Antonio opened as a joint venture between her dad and Starita. The latter descends from the family behind a historic pizzeria in Naples, Starita a Materdei, which was founded in 1901. Starita a Materdei was immortalized in L’Oro di Napoli, a 1954 film that famously starred Sophia Loren as a pizza maker. That movie can now perhaps be viewed as a prophetic sign of things that were to come for Caporuscio: She has been at Don Antonio from the beginning, learning the business inside and out and earning a reputation as a barrier-busting pioneer who has paved the way for female pizza makers.

Winning the Caputo Cup

Caporuscio began to turn heads on the international stage when she became the youngest woman to win the prestigious Caputo Cup, held in Naples in 2013. At just 22 years old, she had joined her father on the trip without expecting to compete. Roberto had other ideas; perhaps knowing she would refuse if she had time to think about it, he told his daughter she would be competing about five minutes before the event started—and that she’d best get ready. 

With just a few minutes to prepare, Caporuscio opted to make a pie that has become her signature: the Montanara, named for its origins in the mountains surrounding Naples. The pizza dough is fried first and finished in the wood-fired oven—hence, it’s also known as pizza fritta. “What I specifically do is stretch the pizza dough and put the pizza in the fryer, then [later] add toppings and put it in the side of the oven,” Caporuscio says. “The extra oil has evaporated. It’s the crunch from the pizza being double-cooked that makes the Montanara so special.” 

Caporuscio recalls being shocked when she won, but perhaps others weren’t all that surprised. A keen student of the craft, she had been absorbing any and every pizza making detail that her father and his mentor, Starita, had taught her for more than four years. Essentially, she had earned the equivalent of a college degree in pizza making—and now it was clear she had world-class talent, too.

Of course, some might have been surprised by her championship win simply because Caporuscio was a young woman in a male-dominated space. While the industry has since benefited from grassroots movements like Women in Pizza—for which Caporuscio is a passionate ambassador—and Women’s Pizza Month, neither existed in 2013. Today, Caporuscio takes a lot of pride in serving as a role model for other women entering the industry. 

“For me, it’s been really important to break down this idea that the pizza world [should be] predominantly male—little by little, by just being in the pizza shop and going to competitions and promoting the idea on social media that everybody can make good pizza,” she says. 

Modernizing the Menu

During Caporuscio’s 15 years of pizza making, she has helped open several restaurants. She’s slowly put her fingerprints on the Don Antonio menu, too, which now features pizza fritta—another point of joy and pride for her.

Overall, the Don Antonio menu showcases more than 45 Neapolitan pies, such as the Macellaio, inspired by Italian butcher Dario Cecchini and topped with mozzarella, sausage, porchetta, salame Toscano, prosciutto di Parma, basil and extra-virgin olive oil. Then there’s the Pistacchio & Salsiccia, made with mozzarella, fresh pistachio pesto, sausage and basil. Caporuscio describes the latter as “a meld between my father and I.”

Don Antonio also offers gluten-free pies that are prepped in their own designated area and baked in a separate oven. For Modernist Cuisine’s Stephanie Swane, who hosts the Women in Pizza Live streamcast on Instagram, they’re standouts on an already outstanding menu. “Her gluten-free Neapolitan pizza is the best in the world,” Swane says, “and one [that sets] the highest bar for when I try others while I’m traveling.”

Caporuscio says she has some other menu tweaks in mind to ensure Don Antonio is always evolving for the next generation of diners. “We have a huge pizza menu with so many options,” she says. “My hope is to partner with more local farmers and maybe offer some limited-edition pizzas with seasonal ingredients. In the past, for example, during the fall we made a pizza with butternut squash, and I’d like to do more things like that.” 

Raising Two Babies

Caporuscio has relished the opportunity to work with her husband, Bassani, whom she credits for elevating the beverage program to match the world-class pizza served at Don Antonio. And that’s not the only fruitful partnership she and Bassani have entered into lately—in 2023, the couple welcomed their first child. Baby Leo has already accompanied Caporuscio to the restaurant, and she and Bassani coordinate schedules to ensure the restaurant is running smoothly while juggling child care duties.

“It’s really a big challenge,” she says. “I just came back to making pizza, and I was very excited and happy, but it’s also totally different. I still need to find a balance between my first baby—that is, Don Antonio—and my actual baby. That’s an area where Matteo has really helped me a lot.” 

“I still need to find a balance between my first baby—that is, Don Antonio—and my actual baby [Leo, age nine months].”

Giorgia Caporuscio

Striking that balance has meant building a team strong enough to maintain the restaurant’s high standards—whether Caporuscio is in the kitchen or not. She’s proud of her team and notes that even when she wasn’t physically in the restaurant during her maternity leave, she stayed up to speed on all the goings-on via a group chat with Bassani and the management team. “With pizza and the restaurant business, every day is a new day,” Caporuscio says. “As much as you organize, you can rarely be prepared for what’s going to happen next.” 

So what will happen next? Caporuscio hasn’t ruled out the possibility that she will open more pizzerias in the future. She even floats the idea of opening a Don Antonio location near the beach or developing a new concept that solely focuses on pizza fritta. For now, though, she’s content raising her two babies: nine-month-old Leo and Don Antonio.   

Charlie Pogacar is PMQ’s senior editor.