Geno D's
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
My name is Gina DePaolo. I'm the owner of Geno D's Pizza at the Market at 7th Street. We specialize in old‑school New Jersey–style pizza.
Our grandma pizza started in my family. My grandmother and my father’s recipe of our grandma pizza and Sicilian pizza meant we would make the dough in the morning, proof it for midday, cook the shell, and then finish it at night for dinner. So a center pie with fresh mozzarella, strips of sauce, and then a quick pesto sauce with just basil and olive oil laid on the pizza.
We have lots of handwritten recipes. All of our recipes are written on this piece of paper we have hidden in the back in the archives. My dad wrote down these recipes with my grandmother—lots of our pizza recipes, even our regular hand‑tossed dough recipe.
That’s kind of what came together, which started me back in the 80s: Sunday sauce. I remember as a kid, every Sunday we would make a pot of sauce at home as early as I could remember. And then as I got older, I would go into the restaurant, and that same smell and that same pot of sauce was at the restaurant every Sunday.
I would go in on the weekends as a kid helping my dad out. The same recipes we made at home, we’d mass‑produce in the restaurant. I would always be there. Young as a kid—at least seven or eight years old—but making pizza in the shop probably around 10 or 11 years old, throwing the dough out. And then when I was old enough to start working the line, I was 12 or 13 years old.
My father influenced me in every single way. Everything that he taught, he has taught me right on my shoulder. Everything I think about and I do in the restaurant. And he’s still here, and he still comes in and helps me out and tweaks everything to make sure we’re on par with everything we do.
I would hope for the next generation finding this grandma recipe or even a pizza dough recipe that it’s just about taking your time. It’s not going to be perfect the first time. It’s all about trial and error and finding the crust, the crispiness, and the texture that you want with your pizza. There’s no specific way a pizza can be—it’s your version of your pizza.
We play with it just a little bit to find our perfection. We like a little semolina flour mixed on the bottom of our regular pizzas. And we like to make sure with our grandma pizzas there’s that airy, crisp bottom. We like that nice char on the bottom of our grandma pizzas. It’s very important to us.
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