Before there was Bar Capri, there was Elizabeth Street in New York City.
In the late 1800s, Paul Gillingwater’s great-grandparents left Sicily for the United States, settling in Little Italy before making their way to Brooklyn. After World War II, his grandparents headed west to California, carrying their family history with them.
Paul grew up knowing that history, but not necessarily experiencing it firsthand.
“I’ve always romanticized the Italian life and culture of NYC,” he says. “I wish I could have been at those dinner tables hearing stories about the homeland.”
His own childhood table looked quite different.
The youngest of six children, Paul grew up on a small California farm where much of what they ate came directly from the land.
“We just didn’t have the money for groceries, so we grew what we ate,” he says. Summer’s abundance was canned or dried for winter, meals followed the seasons and every Sunday brought pot roast.
Paul remembers being the quiet one at a crowded table, watching and listening. His father, a schoolteacher who often worked a second job, had a particularly strong influence.
“I carry that work ethic with me to this day,” Paul says. “On the farm we worked till sundown when there wasn’t enough light to see. I still work until the sun goes down, even today.”
Some of his strongest memories of food happened before anyone sat down to eat. Preparing meals with his sisters created opportunities to talk, laugh and reconnect.
“There is something magical about taking a bunch of ingredients and transforming them into something special,” he says, “but it’s the journey that is memorable.”
And then there was the lasagna.
Each birthday, Paul chose what his mother would make for dinner. His answer never changed.
“I still can’t make lasagna as good as my birthday lasagna,” he says.
Today, Birthday Lasagna is the most direct family connection on Bar Capri’s menu, but the restaurant draws from Paul’s larger journey through his Italian heritage.
His roots stretch from Piedmont in northern Italy to Sicily in the south. As a teenager, Paul became fascinated with San Francisco’s North Beach and its Italian-American culture. Years later, he began traveling through Italy, starting in Piedmont and working his way south. This September, he will finally visit Sicily and the village where his family lived for hundreds of years.
By the time Bar Capri came to life in South Tempe, Paul had spent years preparing. He studied culinary arts, worked in corporate and local restaurants and attended Arizona State University’s business school.
“I knew right away I was going to do Italian food,” he says.
His Sicilian heritage offered an opportunity to explore a cuisine that felt at home in the Southwest, bringing together ingredients like Calabrian chile peppers and North African spices.
“It felt like the Sonoran Desert meets Italy,” Paul says, “without losing Italian roots in the process.”
But Bar Capri was never intended to recreate Paul’s childhood dinner table.
“My dinner table at home had one purpose: sustenance,” he says. “I wanted to create the opposite. Let’s romanticize dining out and leave the world outside.”
Paul wants guests to forget they are inside a South Tempe strip mall. Maybe they’re in SoHo. Maybe they’re in North Beach. The unread emails and responsibilities can stay outside.
At the center of the restaurant is a large family table, designed to seat Paul’s parents and all six children. Today, it invites other families and friends to share a meal and reconnect.
Paul’s grandfather also has a place of honor inside Bar Capri. His photograph hangs beside the bar, a reminder of the generations and sacrifices that helped make Paul’s dream possible.
“I wish my grandpa were here to see what I’ve created honoring his heritage,” Paul says. “I want to show him his hard work to build his version of the American Dream helped build my own.”
“My dinner table at home had one purpose: sustenance,” he says. “I wanted to create the opposite. Let’s romanticize dining out and leave the world outside.”
Subtitle: Where Community Comes Together
Bar Capri | 1730 E Warner Rd. #10 | Tempe
Bar Capri carries forward the work ethic Paul learned from his father, his Italian heritage and the connection he discovered cooking with his sisters. But for Paul, it isn’t simply about preserving his own family story.
“It’s about the community that I choose to serve with gratitude,” he says, “and hope they embrace me and my craft in return.”
Perhaps that is what Paul has carried forward most: an understanding that meaningful moments happen when people come together around food.
Make something with care. Put it on the table. Invite people you care about to sit down.
Then stay awhile.
“My dinner table at home had one purpose: sustenance,” he says. “I wanted to create the opposite. Let’s romanticize dining out and leave the world outside.”