In its definitive guide to the best pizza across the island, the award-winning Maui Nō Ka ʻOi Magazine spotlights Sale Pepe as home to Maui's only certified pizzaiolo. The feature highlights Michele Di Bari's Italian training at the Scuola Italiana Pizzaioli, his three-to-four-day dough fermentation process, and the weekly shipment of Italian cheeses and cured meats that make each pie possible — alongside standout pies like the spicy soppressata Calabrese and the mortadella with pistachio and burrata. The guide also honors the Di Baris' commitment to Lāhainā, noting their rebuild in the same community after the 2023 wildfire.

W Magazine tapped three Maui locals — a swimwear designer, a pro windsurfer, and six-time James Beard-nominated chef Sheldon Simeon — for the definitive insider's guide to the island. Among their where-to-eat picks: Sale Pepe, called out as an independent Italian gem from a Milanese chef and Brooklyn native who lost their home and restaurant in the Lahaina fire and rebuilt. The guide highlights the restaurant's commitment to locally sourced ingredients alongside Italian-imported flour, fior di latte, and bufala mozzarella — housemade pastas and artisanal pizzas served the way they were always meant to be.

Resy sat down with Qiana and Michele Di Bari for a deep dive into the story behind Sale Pepe — from Michele's roots in Milan and the lessons learned at Brooklyn's legendary Franny's, to the 2023 Lahaina wildfire that destroyed everything they'd built, and the remarkable community-fueled comeback that made Sale Pepe the first restaurant on the island to rebuild and reopen. Writer Lizzie Takimoto traces a decade of dough craft, aloha spirit, and the kind of neighborhood hospitality that keeps people coming back — and that had the community raising $100,000 to make sure they did.

Two-time James Beard Award winner and Resy managing editor Jon Bonné set out to map the state of pizza across America — and Sale Pepe made the cut. In his sweeping essay on the rise of the country's pizza culture, Bonné calls out Qiana and Michele Di Bari's Maui restaurant as proof that pizza exceptionalism now reaches every corner of the country, noting the restaurant's signature Milan-Brooklyn spirit as a prime example of the hybrid, deeply personal approach defining the best pizzerias in the nation today.