Joseph Iannaccone

The Path

Training at Culinary Institute of America gave Joseph Iannaccone the base for a career built in demanding kitchens and under exacting standards. From 2017, he worked as chef at Napa in California, then moved through chef roles at The Vestry and The French Laundry, followed by chef at Le Zoo in Florida and chef at Goodfellas in New Haven. Taken together, those rooms point to a working background shaped by pace, precision, and consistency — the daily requirements of kitchens where the line leaves little room for drift. Today, Joseph is head chef and co-owner of Casanova.

The Work Today

At Casanova, the work extends beyond the plate and into the room itself. The restaurant’s pizza-bar seating is part of the service model, keeping cooks and guests within view of one another and making the oven a focal point rather than a back-of-house tool. As he puts it: "The pizza-bar seating brings customers into the action, where they can watch us making pizza and ask questions. We love that." The result is a dining room that treats visibility as part of hospitality, with the meal unfolding in front of the guest rather than at a remove. The wood-fired pizza oven does similar work on the visual side: it gives the room a clear center, signals heat and motion, and frames the food as something made in real time. A glance through the windows is enough to understand the pace of the kitchen and the kind of service Casanova is built around.

Signature

Joseph's signature dishes include truffle pizza, corn agnolotti, pork chop parmigiana, Caramelle, and Nerano pizza. The range sits inside Italian cooking, but it moves between registers: pizza that carries direct appeal, pasta that asks for more precision, and plates that balance comfort with technique. The list shows a kitchen vocabulary built for both familiarity and control, with each dish pointing to a style that values generosity without losing discipline.

In Their Words “What I think will draw people in will be that moment when they look through the windows and see the wood-fired pizza oven and what it is we’re doing.” “The pizza-bar seating brings customers into the action, where they can watch us making pizza and ask questions. We love that.”

Acclaim

Joseph Iannaccone's public identity is grounded in Italian cooking and in making the kitchen legible to the dining room. The point is not distance or mystique, but clarity: guests can see the oven, hear the room, and follow the work as it happens. "We want everyone to feel comfortable, have fun, and enjoy themselves." That idea shapes Casanova’s service from the seating to the pace, giving the restaurant a directness that comes from experience in demanding kitchens and now gets put to use in a more open, more conversational setting.