But getting the gregarious DeMattia to talk about her background is no challenge. She'll readily tell you that she and her husband, Tom, grew up in Queens, then lived on Long Island for eight years before moving to the Triangle and opening Georgina's Pizzeria last November. She'll eagerly divulge that the restaurant, the couple's first, is a family affair, with 16-year-old son Tom manning the pizza oven, 15-year-old daughter Georgina (the restaurant's namesake) hosting and waiting tables, and 12-year-old daughter Antoinette busing tables. And she'll proudly inform you that virtually everything served in the restaurant, from meatballs to pasta sauces, is made from scratch using her own Italian-American family recipes.

If you're thinking that Georgina's sounds like just the sort of New York Italian restaurant that many displaced New Yorkers in the Triangle have been longing for, you're right -- except for one important detail. Georgina's pizzas are, as DeMattia will emphatically affirm, not New York-style. "They're better than New York-style," she'll tell you matter-of-factly.

Are they ever. With all due respect to fans of the foldable crust school of pizza making, Georgina's pies are more closely related to the Neapolitan original that is the pizza purist's ideal. The crust is very thin and cracker-crisp (even at the center of an 18-inch pie) with a textbook blistery puffed rim. Sauces and toppings are applied in just the right proportion to complement the crust.

That's not to say that Georgina's limits itself strictly to classic Italian toppings. The list of 29 topping options covers the spectrum from pepperoni and anchovies to pineapple and Buffalo chicken, available in mix-and-match combination or "Specialty Pies" such as Eggplant Parmesan, Meat Lovers, and White Pizza. Rest assured, however, that if you choose to go the traditional route, you won't be disappointed. Georgina's Margherita pizza, which features sliced tomatoes, torn basil leaves and fresh mozzarella on an olive oil-brushed crust, is nearly perfect. Once tomatoes are in season, it may well achieve that ideal.

Nor is Georgina's Sicilian-style pizza precisely what most Americans associate with the term. You might say it's a hybrid between American "Sicilian" and true Sicilian, combining the crust of the latter (thicker than the Neapolitan but thinner than is typical of American "Sicilian") and toppings of the former (not incorporated into the dough, but placed on top). The Grandma Sicilian, in which the sauce is not spread evenly across the dough but dropped onto it by the spoonful, is a delight that offers a different taste experience with each bite.

If the appetizers, entrees and pasta dishes that make up the rest of Georgina's offering aren't as consistently stellar as the pizzas, they nonetheless offer rewards aplenty. Crab-stuffed mushrooms, baked in white wine, avoid the usual pitfall of dryness; unfortunately, they sometimes go too far in the other direction, becoming soggy, which, in turn, dilutes their flavor. On the other hand, Rose DeMattia's Italian wedding soup -- even the meatballs are homemade, as she'll tell you -- is a soul-satisfying delight. And fried calamari is a model of delicate-crusted tenderness, served with lemon wedges and an excellent warm marinara.

If the marinara leaves you with a hankering for more of the same, your options range from a simple spaghetti with marinara (add an order of meatballs, a toothsome blend of ground beef and pork, for a real treat) to a rustically elegant shrimp marinara. Or try penne alla vodka, in which the marinara is softened with cream and accented with prosciutto and onion, or a distinctive spaghetti Bolognese, whose sauce is enriched with Italian sausage rather than the usual ground beef.

Among the dozen or so entree and baked dishes, options range from wild mushroom ravioli to shrimp scampi to chicken Marsala (a respectable rendering, though the mushrooms were recently inexplicably bitter). Baked ziti is excellent, though the presentation -- not in a casserole dish, but loosely scattered over a plate and baked under mozzarella -- is unlike any I've seen before.

Just one more of Georgina's many surprises, you might say.