Daniela Zuniga won the prestigious 2024 Caputo Cup World Pizza Championship, held June 17-19 in Naples. But, as the 35-year-old pizzaiola from Chile reflected a few weeks later, she doesn’t consider herself to be the best pizza maker on the planet.
“I received [the award] with a lot of humility, truly with very mixed feelings, like happiness, pride,” she told Chilean website emol.com recently. “But I have so much respect for Italian culture and their product that, personally, I can’t say, ‘I am the best in the world’ because it would really be like disrespecting the Neapolitan people in this case.”
Zuniga, who owns Massa Mia in Lo Miranda, Chile, triumphed in the STG category, in which competitors must prepare either a Margherita or marinara pizza. Zuniga went with the former, firing up a pie featuring tomato, basil, fior di latte and olive oil.
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She competed against 600 pizzaioli from across the world—including many from Italy, the country she loves and respects deeply. “Pizza is their product,” she told emol.com. “So, to say that a Chilean pizzaiola is the best in the world, I think it is somewhat disrespectful to their culture, their people and their country.”
On the other hand, Zuniga was the first South American to win the Caputo Cup, marking a major milestone for the Latina community and demonstrating that Latin American pizza and pizzaioli are earning growing respect worldwide.
Zuniga had participated in pizza making competitions before, but none like this one. “So, one kind of measures oneself in the competitions one participates in and says, ‘I might do well,’ but against 600 participants, it is a bit difficult. Especially if you are competing against masters from the same town of Naples,” she said. “So, one has hope but is also realistic at the same time. I saw such a high level [of competition] that day that I was saying, ‘This is very difficult. There are generations, four generations of pizzaiolos competing, so [they have] generations of experience.’”
In the end, her victory took Zuniga by surprise, especially since she has only been making pizzas for three years. “Obviously, I thought it was very difficult to win,” she told the Chilean website. “I just wanted to come to learn more, to have more contact with people. I wanted to make connections because, in the end, it is also, like, three days of friendship, of camaraderie within the field, and of getting to know other cultures and more languages.”
A contingent of Americans also took home awards at the Caputo Cup. Audrey Kelly of Audrey Jane’s Pizza Garage, located in Boulder, Colorado, won first place in the Pizza in Teglia competition. She won the category with her mother’s recipe, a sesame-crust grandma pie.
Siler Chapman, who co-owns King of Fire in Fort Mill, South Carolina, was crowned the overall Pizza Americana Division winner. Lars Smith, owner of State of Mind Public House & Pizzeria in Los Altos, California, earned second place, and Leah Scurto of PizzaLeah in Windsor, California, came in third. Kelly took fourth place in that division.
This year’s Caputo Cup coincided with the 100th anniversary of the competition’s host company, Mulino Caputo. “There couldn’t have been a better occasion to share our satisfaction and joy with friends, collaborators and pizzaiolos from around the world,” Antimo Caputo said. “We welcomed a record number of foreign delegations—35—with 600 competitors from five continents, all converging in Naples, which reaffirms itself as the pizza capital. We are pleased with the massive youth participation and the variety of categories in which the participants competed, from American to contemporary, from gluten-free to fried pizza.”