VUE Long Island

"One of my favorite questions I get to this day is, 'are you Joe's daughter from Joe & Pat's?' It makes me smile every time," explains Maria Pappalardo. "My dad is the reason we have this iconic pizza." Today, Maria is the owner of Rubirosa in Manhattan and co-owner of Camp Rubirosa in East Hampton and Mt. Rubirosa in Aspen, proudly carrying forward her family's celebrated restaurant legacy. Her journey began at 10 years old, working alongside her father at the iconic Joe & Pat's pizzeria in Staten Island, recounting it as her version of "summer camp." "One of the best educations you can get is working in hospitality," Maria shares. "e summers and decades working for my dad have prepared me in ways I couldn't have possibly imagined." While she could not have foreseen it then, Maria was acquiring essential experience that would aid her in becoming a successful commercial casting director and restaurateur. "I like to say I cast my team. If I meet someone that's unique but doesn't necessarily have the experience for a certain role, I go with my gut and give them an opportunity to perform," she says. Maria's brother, AJ, and father, Joe, opened Rubirosa in 2009, but AJ's untimely passing in 2015 le the future of the family business at stake. Maria's father asked her "to step in for a week or two until he figured out the next steps," she recalls. While she helped out at the restaurant as a guest hostess on the weekends, Maria's career was cemented in the advertising industry, working as a prolific casting director since 1995. "All the boys are in the pizzeria business," she remembers. "ey said, 'don't do it, you're making a mistake. She doesn't make the pizza and has never run the pizzeria,' but I said, 'Dad, give me a year, watch every move I make. If I can't do it, I'll be happy to step aside.'" Noting that the doubts of others gave her "a superpower. No one thought I could do it, so I had to," Maria recalls the early days of stepping into an unfamiliar role. "I made countless mistakes and each one sharpened how I lead now," she says. Also juggling being a single mother at the time, Maria found herself tasked with taking care of "two babies simultaneously," her own child and the restaurant. But for Maria, failure was never an option. It was not until Maria began trusting her own instincts that things began to shi into place. "I was trying to lead in a way and continue what my brother did, but it wasn't me," she states. "I wasn't able to step into my power and be my authentic self." Once she did, however, everything changed. V U E H A M P TO N S . C O M 4 5

• Cover