The Pittari family of Ustica rank 28th in size making them a moderate-size family among the families descended from Ustica. In New Orleans, the name is always associated with the restaurant T. Pittari's famous for their exotic meats (hippopatamus anyone!) but actually the normal food was the mainstay. It's a testament to Tom Pittari's success that a restaurant that had its heyday in the 1950s is still burned into the collective memory of the city.

They are a first family of Ustica appearing in the Ustica church records in 1766 with the birth of a child to Antonino Pittari and Caterina Famularo. No marriage record on Lipari was found for the couple but the earliest Lipari baptism for their children in 1761 suggests they probably married around 1760. Antonino's brother Giuseppe Pittari and wife, Grazia Puglise, also show up in Ustica records by 1786, but Antonino Pittari and Caterina Famularo are the true progenitors to the Pittari family of Ustica and their descendants in the US.

The Pittari brothers were the sons of Antonino Pittari and Giuseppa Ferro who raised their family on the island of Salina, the second largest of the Eolian Islands, lying north of Lipari island. There is no evidence that they ever lived on Ustica. The earliest record for the Pittari family in the Lipari church registers is the 1677 marriage of Antonino's father, Cono Pittari to Caterina Cincotta. Cono Pittari is documented as being from Gioiosa Marea, one of the cities on mainland Sicily that was a hot spot of immigrants to both Lipari and Ustica.

The Eolian Islands with an inset of the "hot spot" on mainland Sicily where so many families immigrated from. The Pittari family of Ustica originated in Gioiosa Marea and lived on Lipari and Salina islands before heading to Ustica.