La Tavola Italiana owner Joseph Giaramita knows all about Pittsburgh’s artisanal pizza movement.
His son, Anthony, was at its forefront, running Pizza Taglio in East Liberty in 2015-2020.
“The only advice I gave Tony when he wanted to open his place was to watch the oven and to follow his passion,” he says.
That’s because Giaramita, who celebrated 60 years as a Pittsburgh pizza maker this month, has little use for custom flour blends, fastidious notebook recordings of dough and ambient room temperatures or today’s technologically advanced electric ovens.
The maestro of Mount Washington keeps it classic at his takeout pizzeria.
“I don't have to go back to the old techniques, because I am the old techniques,” he says.
He's used the same bread flour since he started in the business. His dough recipe hasn't changed either. Only three other people know it: his wife Carmela and La Tavola Italiana’s two pizza cooks.
“My dough is completely different from the modern guys with their high hydrations and long fermentations,” Giaramita says. “It’s just a good, classic bread, and people love it.”
He mixes dough by feel, often working in 100-pound batches. After letting it rise for several hours, he blind bakes the shells in a dependable 55-year-old bread oven. He uses “newer” black steel pans, which he's relied on since 1985 when he and his sister, Josephine, opened the pizzeria’s third iteration on Boggs Avenue.
“You have to pay attention to these ovens,” he says. “There are hot spots and cooler spots. You need a bit of expertise to use them.”
Born in Sicily, Giaramita dreamed of coming to the United States since he was 7.
He got his chance a few years later, after his father passed away. His half-sister, Josephine, had married an Italian American named Giuseppe, who lived in Pittsburgh.
“I told my sister, 'Put me in a suitcase with some holes in it and feed me through the holes,'” he says. “Well, she got me over without the suitcase. I flew. I've been here since March 29,1956.”
Josephine, 22 years his senior, and Giuseppe adopted and raised Giaramita as their son. He frequently refers to them as his mother and father.
Giuseppe started helping a friend at a pizzeria on Mount Washington, eventually purchasing the business.
Giaramita was still in high school when Giuseppe asked him to become a partner in the business. They called it Josephine’s and opened on April 10,1965.
“My dad said, ‘You're going to be the boss, and nobody can fire you.’ He forgot to tell me I couldn't fire myself either, and I've been here now for 60 years.”
While Giuseppe wasn’t heavily involved in daily operations, Josephine remained integral through several evolutions of the restaurant on Boggs Avenue. When Giaramita and Carmela expanded the pizza shop into La Tavola Italiana in 1994, Josephine was a daily presence until her death in 2007.
Giaramita’s tray pizza, which has a crisp, airy crust, tangy tomato sauce and provolone-mozzarella cheese blend, was one of a variety of styles prominent in Pittsburgh’s early pizza history; you can find similar old-school representations at DiSalla’s in Homestead (1954) and Della Sala’s in Verona (1959).
Now in his late 70s, Giaramita is slowing down a little bit — working 30 hours a week rather than the 80 he did at his peak. Nevertheless, he plans on keeping his pizza hot, fresh and unchanged, just like he has for the past 60 years.
“When people love what you do, you don't want to take that away from them,” he says.
1 Boggs Ave., Mount Washington; latavolaitalianarestaurant.com
First Published: April 14, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
Updated: April 15, 2025, 2:33 p.m.
