She is Piz's culinary history.
Giorgia Caporcio She is the only female pizza chef featured in the Michelin Guide, breaking the ceiling of the sauce.
The Italian native said that the texture of the dough is better for a woman's touch. Especially for the Neapolitan pizza she made at Don Antonio, a kitchen restaurant in hell.
“Women have less strength in their hands and have more control over that power,” Caporcio, 34, told the Post before International Women's Day on Saturday.
“So when you touch a Naples pizza where the dough is fermented for at least 24 hours, you're pushing the air made, so you need to be really soft and gentle.”
The Foodie Bible is far from the only admiration of Don Antonio in the shower. The restaurant ranks 7th in the US and 30th in the world. According to 50 top pizzas.
Caporcio grew up on a farm in Terrasina 35 miles from Rome, and at the age of 19 he moved to New York to join his father, Roberto.
He was one of the first to introduce Neapolitan-style pizza to Manhattan when he opened Kesté Pizza & Vino on Bleeker Street in 2009.
She was the only woman in the restaurant, and an Italian male employee untook her.
“Everyone teased me and said, 'You're Italian, I don't know how to make pasta or pizza' and then I said, 'Why don't I show you that I can make better pizza than them?' ”
She began to watch her father prepare the pie in detail. And soon she learned that pizza making lies in her genes.
“It came naturally,” said Caporcio, who took over Don Antonio, his father's second NYC restaurant on West 50th Avenue in 2020.
“I really felt it was in my blood.”
When she was 22, she traveled to Naples for the Caputo Cup, known as the Pizza Olympics. Her father signed a pizza making competition, unknown to her.
In the contest, she made the La Montanara – fried pizza with tomato sauce, smoked buffalo mozzarella cheese, pecorino romantico and basil.
“To help their home's economy, women will fry pizza on the streets while men work,” she said.
Despite her early success, many still thought she couldn't stand the heat.
“One pizza maker told me, 'You can't achieve the same success as a guy because at some point you have to be late to stay home with your kids,” she recalled.
Caporuscio married Matteo, a bartender from Don Antonio in 2022, and the couple have two children, Leo, 1, Liam and three months old.
“And over the past two years, I have accomplished more than ever,” she said with a smile.
After working with her father for more than a decade, she decides to take over Don Antonio with the help of Matteo.
“It was tough for me to get out of his shadow,” she said.
“But it was the right moment to show the customers who I was.”
Some people took a while to get used to the women making pizza.
“As I was hoping to make pizza in the oven, hoping for my first child, an Italian guy came to see who's making pizza,” she said.
“And he was shocked at first.
Currently, Caporuscio is a founding member of a nonprofit organization and mentors young women who want to follow in her footsteps. Pizza woman.
“This is the biggest difference between us and male pizza makers. They don't like to share. They always say, 'No, this is my secret sauce.'
“But there's no secret. We share everything.”
