CARMIE AND GEMMA CATALDO

Meet Carmie and Gemma, @thecataldosisters, of @antonios_italian_restaurant in Elkhart, Indiana!

For Carmie and Gemma, pizza has always been prominent. As Gemma pointed out “a big part of it was being around it all our lives. It was never forced. It was really cool watching our dad compete.” For Carmie, motivation also came from “seeing our two other siblings, Tony, and Caitie, compete and travel. It was always highly encouraged!” Both Gemma and Carmie started working at Antonio’s when they turned 10 years old, but neither made pizza until they were 13. While Gemma has only been making pizza consistently for 2 years, this past March, at only 18 years old, she placed 1st at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas in the Traditional Division.

Carmie, now 20, started making pizza 7 years ago. “We always kind of new how to make them, but at the store we weren’t making them consistently.” When she entered high school, that started to change, and Carmie focused more and more on pizza. Gemma points out, “Pizza was always Carmie’s deal. I was behind the line for 5.5 years doing what our sister Caitlin did. When Carmie left and went to college, I had to start making pizza.” With Carmie in college, Gemma took over the primary role of pizza making. “Our dad and younger sister Gianna are usually at the pasta line. Gianna is an absolute wizard — she is just so impressive! She’s 17 but you should see the way she handles and runs the line. The food she creates is consistent and beautiful all the time.”

While neither of @thecataldosisters won their first competition unlike their dad, both are incredibly impressive pizzaiole. “Seeing her win Columbus made me strive to be better,” says Gemma. In 2020, Carmie competed in the Midwest Pizza Expo in Columbus, OH and placed 1st. She had placed 4th in 2019 and would go on to place 2nd in the Non-Traditional Division at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas in 2021 and 12th in the same division in 2023. But Carmie will be the first to tell you that you don’t know when you’re ready to compete. “The first time, in Columbus, I competed with a pizza that I had made hundreds of times. You just have to do it because you never feel ready your first time, but I did the second time. When you’re at a competition, it’s not your oven. I didn’t realize how weird it was using someone else’s oven. You know your oven and the hot spots, so it’s nerve-wracking, especially with our dad. It’s not that you have to do it, but there’s pressure to impress dad. I couldn’t care less about actually winning, but I want dad to be impressed by what I make.” As Gemma notes, it’s something they want to do on their own. “We don’t want his help.” There’s no question their hard work has paid off. Gemma also excelled at her first competition, the Pizza Pasta Northeast show in Atlantic City in 2022, where she placed 3rd in the Young Pizzamaker of the Year category.

Though accomplished, Carmie and Gemma still face challenges every day. “The hardest part is reaching the oven,” according to Gemma. “Having to get heavy pizza out of the back of the oven takes strength when you’re short.” There were also some things they didn’t expect when first learning to make pizza, like the math, as Carmie points out. “We have an equation for our dough based on the air temperature and flour temperature. I didn’t know math was going to be involved. It’s not hard, but it’s almost shocking. Our house dough that we make is used for regular pizza, garlic knots, and bread. We have to learn the life span of that versus our 72% high hydration dough. We can’t freeze the regular dough, but we can freeze the high hydration dough.”

Until 3 years ago, @antonios_italian_restaurant made all their dough by hand. “We had a big stainless-steel bathtub-like container. We’d make 150lbs of dough and it would take us 40 minutes. We finally bought a Hobart, and now our dough is more consistent, and it’s done in 6-8 minutes!” Their dad, Paul, tends to lean towards tradition. “Paul is traditional and old school. He’s open to new things and not stuck in the 80s, but it took him a long time to come around to a mixer. It’s more for our convenience so we can do it for him.”

Carmie’s love language is making food for other people and seeing them eat it. “I really enjoy cooking for people and having them enjoy it. If I make something spectacular, I’m rejuvenated. If I know it’s good, that’s my favorite part, but that feeling does get really depleted after an 8, 10, 12 hour shift.” Antonio’s has 2.5 ovens and sells 300-400 pizzas in a week, 150 of which are on a Friday night.

@thecataldosisters have similar tastebuds with both citing banana peppers as one of their favorite toppings. For Carmie, they are “the most underrated. They elevate anything.” For Gemma, her favorite pizza includes them alongside, “pepperoni, garlic, and hot honey!” They love to get creative and make beautiful pizzas. “What we eat every day is not what people in Indiana typically go for, not to say that there aren’t those that appreciate it.” They have a garden in the summer and use all the ingredients they grow at Antonio’s. They make their own sausage and blend their own cheese. “We have a very European view that simple is better, lighter is better. There’s no digestibility in Indiana. We try to use mostly fresh ingredients, but ingredients like artichokes we have to import.” Their menu consists of artisan pizzas and build your own. “If someone on the phone is trying to put 9 toppings on a crust, I tell them it’s going to be soggy. I usually try to be up front with people. We never want to put our name on something that will turn out bad. It also makes people mad that we don’t do any of the artisan pizzas for carryout. A lot of it doesn’t travel well because it’s so fresh.”

@antonios_italian_restaurant was started in 1979. “Our dad, his siblings, and parents immigrated from Calabria. It used to be called ‘Bruno’s’ pizza because our Uncle Bruno and great grandfather, Antonio, started it. They had a lot of skill and knowledge of flavors.” By the late 80s, their dad, Paul, had joined. “Some time in the late 80s/early 90s, someone set it on fire and it burned down. Our dad, Uncle Bruno, and grandfather rebuilt it as Antonio’s. Bruno moved back to Italy for some time and eventually our dad bought out his brother and dad.” It turned out to be the greatest decision he could have made. “He genuinely loves it. He has the cheesiest smile on his face and just really loves cooking. Growing up in Italy, food was everything for them. It’s all he’s ever known. Coming to the US from Italy as an immigrant, you want to hold onto culture and traditions. Our family, our heritage, we’re going to do something to keep it going and pass it on so that history isn’t lost. Our marinara and lasagna recipes were our grandmother’s, just tweaked a little.”

For @thecataldosisters, the traditions they want to hold onto come with Christmas and Easter. “Christmas Eve is huge for Italians. It’s more important than Christmas Day. We go all out. It’s a communal sharing of food. We make this bread-cookie-dessert thing called Nocatalli that is fried. Everyone makes them and the recipes are all slightly different. We exchange them! At Easter, we make easter bread and bake whole eggs into the braid.” The sisters hope to make a family trip to Italy by 2025 to visit their roots. “Our dad competes in Italy, and each time he takes one of us. Gianna just went and she was the last one and he’s always said he’s going to take all of us together and go down south after we’ve each had a turn to go with him.”

@thecataldosisters are 2 of 6 siblings. They are the oldest and middle of the younger 3 – their 3 older siblings, Alannah, Tony, and Caitlin, are at least 9 years older and Gianna is the youngest. According to Gemma, “Carmie got the oldest child genes,” and Carmie agrees. “Working together is like 2nd nature, it’s very fluid. We genuinely don’t argue. We always talk about how well we all get along because we know that not everyone gets along with their siblings. Because we’ve been put in a professional environment, we try not to be petty. We’ve developed adult relationships with our other siblings and Gemma, Gianna and I have spent more time together at the restaurant than at home.”

@antonios_italian_restaurant used to be open 6 days a week, and the siblings would work all 6 days. “The only day at home was Monday. We were all homeschooled, so we’d do our work in the morning and then go into work until 10/11 or 12/1. The nice thing, was that we could take a day off. When you’re younger, it’s harder because you’re immature, and you think, ‘no, I just want to have fun at work.’ It’s a little bit challenging to stay focused as a kid. We weren’t put into adult leadership positions, but we assumed them because we knew where everything was. There was a silent understanding because we were the leaders. By 12 or 13 we knew how to do everything on the line. We were looked at and expected to behave accordingly. We were representing the family and the restaurant. Our dad would always say, ‘immediate obedience.’”

Today, Antonio’s is only open 4 days a week, which gives Gemma more time to hang out with her friends. For Carmie, it was a little harder when she was in high school. “I would work 6 days and since my older siblings had phased out, I could feel my parents depending on me. I have a lot of oldest child traits. They hadn’t raised a child in 9 years when they had me. There were things I chose to say no to because the restaurant was more important. I prioritized being there with my family and saw it as really important, but my senior year, I was more flexible.”

College was a difficult transition for Carmie, and it didn’t help that it was during Covid. “There were a lot of restrictions. My dad got covid and was in the hospital for a couple of months. It was very intense. I felt this duty as the oldest child – ‘do I go home?’ I felt that as the older daughter, my duty was to be back home and doing things at the restaurant. My first year of college, I would go back once every 2 weeks and work a couple of days. I was able to separate myself and not feel guilty. Now, it’s a, ‘call me if you need me,’ type thing.”

Carmie is gearing up to graduate early. “I kind of had this weird quarter-life crisis where I decided to graduate early. My major is theology with a focus in English Literature, so I’m figuring out if I want to do something with my degree. I’ve really missed being with my family and working in the restaurant over the last 6 months. Vegas was great because I forgot how much I loved making things. After I graduate, I’ll be home for some time and I’ll focus on some social media things and marketing, not so much the food aspect, to help it run more as an efficient business.” Though Gemma just graduated and is getting ready for college, she is excited to execute their ideas together. “We’re working on something that’s more merchandise and product based than food based. We’re hoping to start a business under Antonio’s with our sisters, so it will be women owned! We know what products we like and don’t like, so we want to create our own that we know work well, like chefs’ coats. Most chefs’ coats and aprons are made for men and don’t fit women. As women who work in the kitchen, nothing is really meant for us. We want to make things that are made for us and are flattering. It won’t be in full effect until January when I come home from college, and we’re hoping to drag Carmie’s fiancé into the restaurant. Now that we’re older, we get excited by small things like, ‘look at how beautiful those bowls are!’ Women prefer to cook with beautiful things because why not? We have a lot of things in the works!”

As women, @thecataldosisters have noticed that they’ve been treated differently, by, as Gemma points out, “We face the whole, ‘can I talk to the manager? I am the manager’ thing. Our Employees respect us and we respect them. We’re not just there sometimes, we’re there all the time. We’re the first to get there and the last to leave.” Carmie agrees that their employees see that they have a place there. “Gemma knows everything there is to know about dough. We have put in the work so we can say that we know what we’re doing. We don’t say that without any backing and there’s always room to improve and learn.”

What keeps them going is the adrenaline rush and bonding that comes with working at the restaurant. As Carmie points out, “if none of our siblings wanted anything to do with this business, I don’t think I would either.” And Gemma agrees. “A lot of the motivation is because I love you guys so much and because you love it so much, it makes me love it more.” It’s a true family affair. “Our sister Caitlin is always creating new things for wine dinners, Gianna is killing it on the line, our dad’s keeping it all moving, and our aunt works 3 days a week.” It’s a very strong community that is literally family. It’s encouraging. Our cousins come when they can. It makes it all worth it.”

The motto at @antonios_italian_restaurant always has been, “we feed you like family,” and that’s exactly what they do. As Gemma notes, “some of our employees like to say, ‘we treat you like family.’ Our dad deserves all the credit in the world. Both of our parents do. They are the best role models. Our older siblings, too. For at me at least. Even you, Carmie. You make us who we are.” Carmie agrees, “My success in college and in the jobs I’ve done is 100% because of my parents and the environment. Having that responsibility at such a young age completely changed the game for me!”

For other women out there, @thecataldosisters encourage you to get your hands dirty. Carmie is the first to tell you, “Don’t be afraid to try. We’ve done everything from the glamorous competitions to scrubbing and scraping floors. You have to be comfortable enough to be creative.” And as Gemma emphasizes, “don’t be afraid to fail. You’re not going to win every competition and everything you implement isn’t going to work. It’s about finding what fits you, especially as women. We’re less catered to, so don’t be afraid to get in it. I’m the only girl in our pizza kitchen.”

Carmie and Gemma are dynamic, driven, and bright. They’re each other’s biggest fans, full of love and gratitude. They take on challenges with the biggest smiles, lead by example, and chase their dreams. They’re only just getting started and there’s no doubt their futures will be exceptionally bright. Next time you’re in Indiana, stop by Antonio’s to share a slice with the Cataldo sisters and talk all things pizza!