Pappardelle and beef gravy

Chef Paul Smith Turns Family History Into Paulie’s Fine Italian

By Eric Barton
5:51 a.m. ET, June 11, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

Paul Smith learned to cook while standing on a milk crate, stirring sauce for his grandfather as Sunday dinner filled the house.

That memory now sits at the center of Paulie’s Fine Italian, Smith’s Charleston restaurant built around the Italian-American food he grew up eating and the coal-country history that brought his family to West Virginia. His great-grandfather emigrated from Italy to work in the mines, while his grandfather, Joe Fish, later cooked Italian nights at the Glen Ferris Inn and taught Smith his way around a kitchen.

Paulie’s Fine Italian Charleston West Virginia Chef Paul Smith Pizza

Margherita

Smith has carried that story into a restaurant just across the street from 1010 Bridge, where he became West Virginia’s first James Beard Award winner in 2024. Paulie’s is less formal, with leather banquettes, family photographs, an open kitchen, a pizza oven, and a menu Smith calls Appalachian Italian.

Paulie’s Fine Italian Charleston West Virginia Chef Paul Smith Chicken

That means fried curds with tomato sauce and parmesan, wood-fired oysters with caviar and chili butter, and local lettuce with fennel and honey vinaigrette. Pastas include Sunday Ribbons—pappardelle with beef gravy and parmesan—along with 20-layer lasagna, lobster bowties in sherry cream, carbonara, and rigatini alla vodka. There are also pizzas, steaks, seafood, and meatballs that arrive in tomato sauce with parmesan gravy.

Berkshire pork chop with Florentine sauce

Paulie’s Fine Italian Charleston West Virginia Chef Paul Smith Sausage pasta

The restaurant is personal down to the name: Paulie was one of Smith’s childhood nicknames. But the idea stretches beyond one family. Italian immigrants helped build West Virginia’s coal towns, bringing their food with them, and Paulie’s folds that history into a restaurant that feels both celebratory and lived-in.

Sausage and pea rigatini