Julia Molinari is a true Jersey girl. She was raised on the Jersey Shore, grew up working in her parents Italian restaurant and loves pizza. Really loves pizza.
If you are one of the millions of people who follow Molinari on TikTok or Instagram, you have likely watched her expertly knead and toss dough, sprinkle fresh toppings and drizzle olive oil across bubbling cheese. Her videos are often set to Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart and other classics, and punctuated by her signature smile.
In each video, Molinari draws viewers into the experience. She gets the camera close to the ingredients so you can see every detail, right up until she slides the finished pie from the oven, cuts a slice and takes a bite.
Molinari grew up in Red Bank and Little Silver and graduated from Red Bank Regional High School. She learned to make pizza and cook other dishes at Molinari’s Restaurant, the Italian-American spot in Neptune City owned by her parents, Laura and Ralph.
“If I wasn’t in dance class or school, I would be at the restaurant observing, learning and helping in the kitchen and the front of the house,” she says. “My mom always had me involved in the cooking process, whether it was at home or in our restaurant.”
Her social media breakthrough arrived in December 2023, while she was home from Rutgers University for winter break. She filmed a TikTok with her father and her uncle, who she says has “a big personality.” The video went viral.
“It was so much fun,” she says. “Creating video content about food at the restaurant and at home grew into a regular thing. I am so grateful that more and more people are having as much fun watching the videos as I have making them.”
Today, more than 2.7 million TikTok users follow her as @jumo and 1.5 million people watch her on Instagram at @juliahmolinari.
A competitive dancer since age 9, Molinari often incorporates choreography into her videos and sometimes pulls family or restaurant employees into the fun. She trains in hip-hop, tap, contemporary and jazz, and still takes classes at Project Dance in Eatontown and Dance Molinari in New York.
“I love different generations and styles of music and will choose a sound that fits the mood and style of the food or pizza I am preparing,” she says. “There is also an aspect of performance and conveying emotion that I learned from being a dancer. It is very important to be yourself, be original and be authentic.”
Molinari loves the creative process, from planning and testing recipes to selecting music, filming and editing.
“The reels are usually under two minutes long,” she says. “If they are less than a minute, there is not enough time for storytelling and it feels rushed. In the future I would like to do longer videos.”
Although pizza is her specialty, Molinari creates other dishes too. Her most popular Instagram video to date features her making cannoli. Her top pizza reels include her Capricciosa pizza, which has earned more than 15 million views, and a TikTok documenting the day she made two pizzas because she was “extra hungry,” which earned more than 11 million views.
Her Grandma Pizza clip has drawn more than 8 million views.
“My family is super involved and super supportive of my videos,” she says. “We even dedicated the corner of the restaurant where I film as my studio.”
In the future, she hopes to create a cookbook of family recipes and travel to learn from chefs across the world.
“Collaborating with people and restaurants in the U.S. and other countries is a big dream of mine,” she says.
For now, her fans want to know one thing: what is her favorite slice?
“My favorite pizza changes every other day,” she says. “But I always rotate back to a Capricciosa. It has sauce, mozzarella, olives, artichokes, mushrooms and it is topped with prosciutto after it cooks.”
And yes, she adds, olives automatically put a pizza higher on the list.
To learn more or try the pizza that started it all, visit Molinari’s Restaurant at molinarisrestaurant.com.