Justin Avi and Julian Vallozzi's Pittsburgh dumpling stories begin in Western Pennsylvania coal mining towns. Although their families came from wildly different places in Italy, their culinary evolutions follow similar arcs that included matriarchs who started food businesses to earn extra money, a generational distancing of migration history and their own resurgent embraces of Italian food culture.

Avi's roots in the United States extend to his paternal great-grandparents, who came to Armstrong County from Italy's far northern coal mining region of Trentino-Alto Adige. His great-grandmother, Louisa, purchased a bar and restaurant to bolster her husband Fiorente's coal mine income and better feed the surrounding community. Fiorente left his job in the mine to run the bar.