This NYC chef is the only female pizza maker featured in Michelin Guide

She’s a pizz-a culinary history. 

Giorgia Caporuscio is breaking the sauce ceiling as the only female pizza chef featured in the Michelin Guide.

The Italian native said when it comes to kneading dough, a woman’s touch is better — especially for the Neapolitan-style pizza she makes at her Hell’s Kitchen restaurant, Don Antonio.

“Women have less power in their hands and they can control that power more,” Caporuscio, 34, told The Post ahead of International Women’s Day on Saturday.

“So when you are going to touch Neapolitan pizza, whose dough is fermented at least 24 hours, you need to be really soft and gentle because you’re pushing the air that was created.”

The foodie bible is far from the only acclaim showered on Don Antonio. The restaurant is ranked seventh in the U.S., and 30th in the world, according to 50 Top Pizza. 

Caporuscio grew up on a farm in Terracina, 35 miles from Rome, and immigrated to New York at 19 to join her father, Roberto. He was one of the first to introduce Neapolitan-style pizza to Manhattan when he opened Kesté Pizza & Vino on Bleecker Street in 2009.

She was the only woman at the eatery, and the Italian male employees taunted her.

“Everyone was making fun of me, saying, ‘You are Italian, you don’t know how to make pasta or pizza,’ so I said, ‘Why don’t I show them that I can make better pizza than them.’”

She began closely watching her father prepare pies — and soon learned that pizza-making was in her genes.

“It came naturally,” said Caporuscio, who took over her dad’s second NYC restaurant, Don Antonio, on West 50th Street, in 2020.

“I felt really that it was in my blood.”

When she was 22, she traveled to Naples for the Caputo Cup, known as the Olympics of Pizza, with her dad, who, unbeknownst to her, signed her up for a pizza-making competition — where she made history as the youngest woman to ever win it.

At the contest, she made La Montanara — deep-fried pizza with tomato sauce, smoked buffalo mozzarella, pecorino romano and basil — the signature dish at Don Antonio, which has roots in women’s history.

“To help the economy of their house, women would fry pizza on the street while the men were working,” she said.

Despite her early success, many still thought she couldn’t stand the heat.

“One pizza maker said to me, ‘You cannot reach the same success as a man because at one point you need to slow down to stay home with your children,’” she recalled.

Caporuscio married Don Antonio’s bartender, Matteo, in 2022 and the couple has two children, Leo, 1, and Liam, 3 months.

“And in the past two years, I accomplished a lot more than I ever did,” she said, smiling.

After over a decade of working with her dad, she decided to take over Don Antonio with the help of Matteo.

“It was hard for me to step out of his shadow,” she said.

“But it was the right moment to show the customers who I am.”

There were some who took a while to get used to a woman making their pizza.

“When I was expecting my first child and making pizza at the oven, a guy from Italy came to see who was making the pizza,” she said.

“And first he was shocked because I was a woman and second he was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re expecting a baby!’”

Now, Caporuscio is mentoring young women who want to follow in her footsteps, as a founding member of the nonprofit Women in Pizza.

“This is the biggest difference between us and male pizza makers. They don’t like to share. They say all the time, ‘No, this is my secret sauce.’

“But we don’t have any secrets, we are sharing everything.”

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Stephen Collopy

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