Executive Chef Chris Capoccia
On a Sunday evening during Bear Shadow Festival, I joined local architect Paul Schmitt – husband of my good friend Andrea Schmitt – at the Paoletti’s bar, where the room had that particular charged energy the festival brings to Highlands.
I was chatting happily with Rolling Stone writer Garrett Woodward, who was seated next to me, when Stacy Carter – Bear Shadow Festival partner and Stage4Hope founder – walked in. Woodward, who’d been covering Charley Crockett since the singer’s early days on the circuit, graciously offered Carter his seat as he was heading out. Minutes later, two more stools opened up and Crockett himself walked in with his photographer. A near-miss for the ages, but a fitting backdrop for a restaurant that has always had a talent for timing.
Paoletti’s has a new executive chef, and he’s been hiding in plain sight.
Chris Capoccia, born and raised in Franklin, assumed the role in January 2026 after five years at the restaurant, the last four as sous chef, and a decade before that in Madison’s kitchen at Old Edwards Inn, where he worked his way from line cook to sous chef.
“From day one they made me a part of the family,” Capoccia says of Paoletti’s.
That sense of belonging runs through everything he does in the kitchen – and, not incidentally, through the food itself. His culinary sensibility is shaped by two poles: a Southern upbringing and an Italian grandmother who raised him on spaghetti bolognese in her South Florida kitchen.
Getting into restaurant work was, by his own account, an accident of friendship – a high school buddy pulled him into the Boiler Room Steakhouse in Franklin, and what started as a part-time gig became a vocation. “I fell in love with the crazy dysfunction of the kitchen,” he says.
At Paoletti’s, Capoccia has stepped fully into the creative lead. He runs the daily pasta specials, oversees training, and is introducing a more regionally specific Italian repertoire – authentic dishes from different parts of Italy inflected with his local roots. One signature addition is the vodka sauce – a highly guarded family recipe from Mama G’s mother, Paoletti’s co-founder Maria, that Chef Chris and Gina Paoletti spent the offseason carefully refining. Draped over 20 layers of house made lasagna noodles, it delivers extraordinary depth: silky, concentrated, perfectly calibrated between tomato, cream, and acidity. This lasagna dish has not been on the menu for over 40 years, partly because it is so labor intensive to make.
“The family ties run really deep here,” Capoccia says, “and we all try to honor it.”
The stuffed manicotti is another new showpiece—house-extruded noodles filled with ricotta, smoked gouda, spinach, and a touch of house-made Italian sausage.
The night I visited, the appetizers made a strong case for his range: goat cheese crostini with apple butter, arugula, and aged balsamic; Oysters Rockefeller with mascarpone, smoked gouda, spinach, bacon, and nutmeg; and a seafood ravioli packed with diver scallops, lump crab, lobster, and shrimp in a brandy-cream lobster bisque – the pasta made fresh daily. The spaghetti cacio e pepe, a Paoletti’s staple, delivered its usual satisfactions –mpecorino and freshly cracked pepper, nothing else to get in the way. The Grouper francese was perfect enough that I slid a bite toward Crockett. He ordered one.
Dessert kept the momentum going. Executive pastry chef Valeria Bravo – Capoccia’s wife, whom he met while both worked at Old Edwards – sent out tiramisu so feather-light it practically disappeared on the fork, and a dark chocolate mousse cake layered with glossy ganache that Paul and I intended to share politely.
We failed.
What makes Capoccia’s cooking so appealing is that nothing feels overworked or performative. The food arrives hot, confident and deeply personal – exactly the spirit that keeps Paoletti’s buzzing night after night.
Favorites Count: 0