All Aboard The Pizza Bus!

Scott Wiener, founder of Scott’s Pizza Tours, has made a name for himself as one of the most knowledgeable and passionate pizza experts in America. (He has the Guinness Record for the world’s largest collection of pizza boxes -- nearly 2,000.) This week, Dan and his family join Scott on one of his famous Sunday tours, in which pizza pilgrims board a school bus not knowing what pizzerias Scott plans to take them to.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  My whole extended family and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past spring. And I gotta say, I came away feeling like, number one, this is a great family destination. Number two, this is a great place to come all year round. The mini golf alone is probably worth, it's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh local seafood to craft burgers and craft beers to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frill seafood shacks

• 0:43Dan Pashman?

  to chef-driven dining, Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach, there's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long. Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now, Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking.

• 1:23Dan Pashman?

  Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 1:32Dan Pashman?

  So, Scott, set the scene. Where are we and what's happening today?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  So, we're at the corner of Fulton and Gold Street in Lower Manhattan, which is where I start every Sunday pizza bus tour.

• 1:43Dan Pashman?

  And what is the Sunday pizza bus tour?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Sunday pizza bus tour is electric. This is unlike the other tours we do throughout the week that are walking tours, where you go to one neighborhood and we go to a bunch of places in that neighborhood. The Sunday tour, we go around all over the place, wherever the school bus will take us. So, it's the most improvisational tour, and it's like, the one that's definitely the most interesting, because the most can go wrong.

• 2:07Dan Pashman?

  What's the thing that went the most wrong on one of these tours?

• 2:10Speaker 01

  You know, fortunately, it hasn't gotten that bad because it's always salvageable. But there have been times where I'm like, oh, I forgot that today's the Five Borough Bike Tour. Oh, there was one time there was a car show on Arthur Avenue. And I was like, OK, we're gonna park the bus a block away. Everybody will find us. Everybody didn't find us, Dan. I left two people in the Bronx. That was... OK, scratch what I said about nothing ever going wrong.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. This week, we're going on a food field trip with pizza obsessive Scott Wiener. He's the guy behind Scott's Pizza Tours, a company that offers tours of New York City's most notable pizzerias. Now, Scott started this business on his own back in 2008. The company has grown a lot since then.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  All right, excited, we're gonna meet Scott from Scott's Pizza Tour. And look at the ride Galman sprung for.

• 3:11Dan Pashman?

  In 2018, Scott gave a tour to Ryan Seacrest for an episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Why do you like Lombardi's?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  So coal-fired oven, fast bake, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Perfect balance.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Everything I want to hear.

• 3:24Dan Pashman?

  Scott's been running his company for 17 years now. It's become so popular, he's had to hire a whole team of people to help him lead all the different tours. They take eaters through all five boroughs of New York City to try a range of pizza styles. Neapolitan, Sicilian, deep dish, wood-fired, coal-fired. Over the years, Scott's made a name for himself as one of the most passionate and knowledgeable pizza experts in America. And he never stops doing research, although he limits himself to 15 slices per week. Now, if all this sounds familiar, that's because we had Scott on the show back in 2018. In that episode, we heard he's not just obsessed with pizza. He's fanatical about anything relating to pizza, which is why he has the Guinness Record for the world's largest collection of pizza boxes. He's now got nearly 2,000 of them from all over the world, so many that he's had to move them into a storage unit.

• 4:09Dan Pashman?

  But back when I first interviewed Scott, he was keeping all those boxes in his apartment. Here's a bit of that conversation.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so well, now we're in my office, which has two stacks of pizza boxes that have been photographed, but not logged into my spreadsheet. So I catalog all the boxes.

• 4:25Dan Pashman?

  It's a big spreadsheet. Clearly, as I learned the first time I interviewed Scott, when you turn your passion into your day job, there's no such thing as leaving work at the office, which made me wonder, how has this career path influenced your dating life?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Oh, what a funny question. Um, it's interesting because I try to stay away from talking about my job. If I like first meet somebody, I try to stay away from even talking about it.

• 4:56Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, you're trying to play it cool.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm like, I'm worried about, it's so easy for this to take over a whole conversation. But I'm, I also know that it's very much truly me. So it's okay if I'm getting to know somebody, they will need to know this at some point. But maybe not the first five minutes of like, hey, how you doing? Hey, I gotta tell you about this pizza I saw yesterday. Listen to this.

• 5:22Dan Pashman?

  I would save the discussion of the spreadsheet for the second date.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I mean, if that, if that comes up and she's into it, then hey, I'll buy a ring.

• 5:36Dan Pashman?

  Has anyone you've been dating ever said something along the lines of, I think you love pizza more than me?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Oh, everyone.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Oh, no. And, you know, maybe it's, it was acted as if it was in jest, but I know the truth.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Look, I love pizza, but I don't, I really don't think I'm insane.

• 6:10Dan Pashman?

  We'll return to the topic of Scott's love life later. But now, let's get to that field trip. This past January, I met back up with Scott for one of his famous Sunday bus tours. His company offers a lot of different kinds of tours, but this one is special for a couple of reasons. It's the only one Scott consistently leads, and while the others are walking tours, stay in one neighborhood, this is the only one with a bus, which allows Scott to cover more ground. He promises to take you to four pizzerias with diverse styles in at least two different boroughs of New York City. Scott starts every Sunday tour at Castee Pizza and Vino in Lower Manhattan. With the other three stops change every time, Scott improvises the itinerary based on his read of the crowd. There's about 30 of us on the tour today, including my wife, Janie, and our kids Becky and Emily.

• 6:53Dan Pashman?

  It's a mix of local New Yorkers and tourists from across the US, South America, and Europe. As the group assembles, Scott chats everyone up to learn about their previous pizza eating and pizza making experiences. It helps him plan his route. Sometimes he doesn't know where he's going until 15 minutes before, but he's so tapped into the New York pizza scene that he can secure a reservation on a moment's notice. And if one of the places he wants to go doesn't pan out?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I'll reroute. There's 3,000 pizzerias in the city.

• 7:18Dan Pashman?

  Once everyone's seated inside Castee, Scott gives us the rundown. He explains that the point of this tour is not just to taste a bunch of pizza. He wants us to really pay attention to what we're eating and evaluate it scientifically. That's why he gives everyone a pocket pizza journal and mini pencil to take notes.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  We do cheese pizza at every stop. Cheese, sauce, crust. We don't add anything else because that will skew the scientific method. I want the variable to be the pizzeria itself. So that's why when we're at the pizzeria, as you're eating, you should be jotting down your personal tasting notes. Come on in, come on in.

• 7:52Dan Pashman?

  Midway through Scott's spiel, two more people walk into the restaurant and join our group.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  We're talking about, we're talking about cheese to sauce ratio, or we're talking about structural integrity of crust. I, still, I'm, you gotta hide those boxes from me. I can't concentrate on anything else right now. They brought boxes. You guys are in Sao Paulo? Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 8:12Dan Pashman?

  The two latecomers brought gifts, new additions to Scott's pizza box collection from a pizzeria in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Scott is like a puppy who just heard the word "treat."

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Yes. Can I really have this? I will. I, whoa.

• 8:29Dan Pashman?

  Scott is very excited.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  I can't breathe.

• 8:34Dan Pashman?

  Scott forces himself to settle down and get back on track. He tells us about the restaurant we're at, Casti. It's a Neapolitan pizzeria and stop number one on the tour. He tells everyone to get up and follow him into the kitchen to get a good look at the oven.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  And the way that it's designed is to trap as much heat as possible. So that's why this style of pizza, Neapolitan pizza, is always baked at high temperatures for a very short amount of time. In fact, right now, we're at 750 Fahrenheit, which is 400 Celsius.

• 9:06Dan Pashman?

  Scott just pulled an instant read thermometer out of his pocket.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  That's the temperature of this oven right now, and it's the beginning of the day.

• 9:11Dan Pashman?

  Like an infrared thermometer.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And in fact, that's just the temperature of the floor of the oven.

• 9:16Dan Pashman?

  I love that nobody on this tour thought it was strange that Scott had an infrared thermometer in his pocket.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  So, reason for that is because pizza first evolved, like way back in the day before we had pizza in New York, it came out of Southern Italy in and around Naples. And the reason that pizza developed the way it did is because pizza wasn't originally made as a food. It was made as a tool.

• 9:43Dan Pashman?

  As Scott explains, the first people to make pizza in Southern Italy were bread bakers in the mid 1700s. Back then, they weren't trying to make pizza. They were just trying to cool down their ovens.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  So you see how this oven's really hot, right? If you were a bread baker, you would build a fire in the inside of the oven, and the fire would heat up the oven, and that's when bread bakers would start baking breads. But the problem is the oven floors were so hot that they would burn the first bunch of breads.

• 10:09Dan Pashman?

  Just so we're clear, these ovens have no racks. So the floor of the oven is not only the bottom, it's also the surface you put the dough on. But for these bakers back in the day, when the fire first really got going, the floor was too hot. So bakers would toss circles of dough onto their oven floors, purely for the purpose of absorbing heat. Problem was, plain dough would puff up into a balloon when baking. So hardly any of it was touching the oven floor, which meant it wasn't serving its purpose of absorbing heat and cooling the oven. The solution? Put something on the dough to weigh it down, to keep it flat. Toppings. According to Scott, when bakers first put toppings on flat dough, pizza was born.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Pizza, in my definition, is a...

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Levend dough that gets stretched, topped, then baked. So when people try to argue that, "Oh, so, uh, oh, that's, deep dish pizza's not a pizza." I say, "No, of course it is." Dough that you top and then bake, pizza.

• 11:11Dan Pashman?

  But it took time for those early toppings to change, for pizza to evolve into the food we know today.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  If you think with the mind of a, you know, mid-18th century bread baker in southern Italy, you're using whatever is available, whatever's cheap, and whatever's edible, which would have, at that time, been lard, fish paste.

• 11:30Dan Pashman?

  Scott says tomatoes didn't enter the equation until the early 1800s. Any fresh produce would have been too expensive and hard to come by to be used just for pizza. Because, you know, at that time, pizza was a food eaten only by poor Italians.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Pizza was not a celebrated food. It was a part of the culture, it was a part of the street culture, and the people who ate it are what they called the lazaroni, the beggars, the street folks.

• 11:52Dan Pashman?

  In the late 18 and early 1900s, there was an influx of poorer southern Italian immigrants to America. And over time, pizza became hugely popular here. Only then, starting around 1950, did pizza become more commonly eaten across Italy.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So this in my hand here is a Neapolitan pizza.

• 12:09Dan Pashman?

  Scott pulls a freshly baked Neapolitan-style pizza out of the oven that we're all standing around.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It's also so soft and puffy on the edge that when you poke it with your finger, it pops right back up. This is where this style of pizza is really, really good.

• 12:23Dan Pashman?

  He leads our group out of the kitchen and back to our tables to try our first slice of the day.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  When the pizza lands at your table, you're gonna put your plate right next to the slice you want, and then you're gonna do the snag and drag. Snag the slice, pull it horizontally on your plate. All right, first pizza, first slice, casta.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  The crust is really good.

• 12:42Dan Pashman?

  This is my daughter Emily.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  To me, what makes this crust so good, you notice how it's like crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside? And it's that combination of crispy and chewy together.

• 12:53Dan Pashman?

  Is special and that's very hard to find in pizza crusts. The sauce is also excellent. The only ingredients in it are fresh raw tomato and salt. After finishing our slices, I go over to the couple that brought Scott the pizza boxes all the way from Sao Paulo. Turns out they own seven pizzerias across southeastern Brazil. Last year, they competed in the World Pizza Championship and came in second for the best Roman-style pizza in the country. And for them, coming on one of Scott's tours is a sort of pilgrimage. I was curious to get their thoughts on the pizza at Casta.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  It's very, very amazing. The fermentation is perfect. I think it's very good.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  The smells of the dough is very amazing.

• 13:33Dan Pashman?

  I, I, I didn't smell the dough. Next pizzeria, I'm gonna, I'm gonna smell the dough.

• 13:43Dan Pashman?

  After everyone's finished their slices, it's time to head to stop number two. When we leave the first stop, people always say, "Oh, I'm so hungry. I need more." And I'm like, "Just wait. Trust me about this." Scott leads our group out of the restaurant and onto the street where we find the defining feature of the Sunday tour. Oh, look, it says pizza bus on it. It's a big, yellow school bus. Okay, pizza buddies, welcome to the school bus. We climb in and head towards the second stop. But only Scott and the driver know where we're going. Remember, the Sunday pizza bus tour is improvised. So we just crossed under the Brooklyn Bridge. And then we're gonna go under the Manhattan Bridge. And we're gonna be cruising up the east side of Manhattan. On our way, Scott asks if anyone has any questions about what we've seen so far. Someone in the back raises their hand.

• 14:26Dan Pashman?

  So Karen's question is about why is pizza better in New York than it is in other cities? My, my first response is it's not, it doesn't have to be better. Pizza can be equally as good in every other place on the planet. Like Lindsay was just joking about. People say, "Oh, it's because of the water." It is 100% not about the water. Our water doesn't have anything extra that nobody else has. What it has is less. Low, pretty low in chlorine, especially in the winter.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  And that just means you can match our water pretty easily by filtering and doing like pretty simple filtration systems that anybody can get. What it is about a place like New York is culture. It's not that the pizza can't be better in other places, it's that there's no reason for it to match the style that we have here.

• 15:17Dan Pashman?

  Because sliced joints are such a huge part of New York culture, there are pizzerias everywhere, which means a lot of competition and a discerning customer base, which creates pressure to make better pizza. You know, it's the same reason why barbecue is, on average, still better in the parts of the country known for barbecue, even though you can smoke meat anywhere. Anyway, after about 20 minutes, we arrive at our destination.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so we're up First Avenue between 117th and 118th Streets. I'm taking you to the original Patsy's in East Harlem, which has a coal-fired oven. So this way, we can learn more about the difference between this and other oven types and all those other details, alright? Ready to rumble? Let's go. You hungry?

• 16:00Dan Pashman?

  The pizza at the original Patsy's is coal-fired. It's made in the same oven they used when the restaurant first opened in 1933. Patsy's was one of New York's first pizzerias alongside Lombardi's, Tetonos, and Johns. Today, there are a handful of spin-off locations under other ownership, but only this one and the one in Brooklyn still use a coal-fired oven. So before we eat, Scott takes us into the kitchen to see the oven in action.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Watch your step here.

• 16:25Dan Pashman?

  Pizza's coming through. When Scott spots two pizzas that are about to go in, he pulls out his phone to time how long they take to bake.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Now, these are going in. Two regular pies.

• 16:34Dan Pashman?

  We all crowd around the oven, which Scott's infrared thermometer tells us is about 750 degrees. The coal inside burns day-glow orange.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Boom. 3 minutes 20 seconds. And it looks perfect.

• 16:49Dan Pashman?

  With two pies freshly out of the oven, it's time to eat. Scott still has his thermometer in his hand. Scott, how often do you break out the infrared thermometer at home?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Infrared thermometer is an important part of every day. Every day. I wake up, I shoot it out the window toward the sun. I want to know what the weather's gonna be like.

• 17:08Dan Pashman?

  This time Scott measures the temperature of the cheese on top of the pizza as it comes out of the oven and lands on our tables. You know, because he doesn't want any burned mouths. We're only at stop number two. And a burned mouth at Patsy's specifically is a real concern because of the type of cheese they use.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  It's called low moisture mozzarella, it's more fat. So this comes out hotter.

• 17:25Dan Pashman?

  All right. Our pizza's coming. This looks beautiful.

• 17:33Dan Pashman?

  Let it cool. Scott, Scott, what's the temperature of the surface of our pizza right now?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  So this is where, this one's gonna be hotter. 187, so...

• 17:41Dan Pashman?

  Don't eat it yet. The cheese pizza at Patsy's is extra thin and crispy with shredded mozzarella on top and a more savory sauce than what we had at Kestee. Picture an upscale version of a classic New York slice. What temper, temper we at now? Let's check the temper of the cheese again.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  So it's been a couple minutes, so my bet is that it's around 176. Oh, down lower, 165.

• 18:02Dan Pashman?

  So we're safe?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Golden territory, guys.

• 18:04Dan Pashman?

  All right, chow down.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  This crust is pretty good.

• 18:09Dan Pashman?

  This is my wife Janie and our other daughter Becky.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  This is, um, very good, but the crust like at the top of the slice looks, um, less, uh, like soft than the other one.

• 18:18Dan Pashman?

  It's more crispy. I mean, I do love the thinness of this crust. I think the flavor is great. But I think that difference of the uncooked tomato sauce that they use at Kestee, that they just put tomatoes on, the only cooking is in the oven, gives it more of a fresh tomato taste, which I kind of prefer versus the sort of stewed tomato taste.

• 18:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  For the first one, I rated it an 8.7.

• 18:38Dan Pashman?

  And what'd you rate this one?

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Um, 8.5.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  No. Cause it's 8.5, 8.57.

• 18:46Dan Pashman?

  Oh, so this is better, you're rating it?

• 18:49Speaker 03

  No. The other one's gonna be 8.85, this is gonna be 8.57.

• 18:54Dan Pashman?

  Wow, it just got promoted?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Nope, 8.58. Actually, 8.5789, no, 8.5897.

• 19:00Dan Pashman?

  Oh.

• 19:11Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, the tour continues and we try two more styles of pizza in two other boroughs of New York. I feel like because there's been time in between each slice, each slice that I eat, Scott, I just get more hungry.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That's the goal. You should not feel full until after the fourth one. But when you get to the fourth, you should look at it and be like, I know my body's done, but my heart is not.

• 19:31Dan Pashman?

  Then later, has Scott found someone who can capture a bigger slice of his heart than pizza? We'll find out. Stick around.

• 19:45Dan Pashman?

  Time to cook up some advertisements.

• 19:51Dan Pashman?

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• 20:33Dan Pashman?

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• 21:17Dan Pashman?

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• 22:01Dan Pashman?

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• 22:46Dan Pashman?

  So send it with love. Send it with USPS. The United States Postal Service. Learn more at USPS.com/holiday. For a long time, I did not understand the point of vests. Like, why not just have a jacket? That covers your arms too. But something clicked for me. I think I got gifted a vest and now I am obsessed with vests. And it just adds that little bit of toastiness. And I got this new Quince Packable Puffer Vest. I love that you can just squish it up and shove it in the bottom of your bag. That way you have it with you all day. If it gets a little chilly, break out the vest. I also got a Quince Down Quilted Vest. It is so soft and cozy. They make them for men and women, and as with everything you get at Quince. They focus on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian

• 23:30Dan Pashman?

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• 24:15Dan Pashman?

  trying multiple versions of spaghetti alla assassina in the city where it was invented, we'll have other surprises. Like, last time we visited a vineyard in Leche, we met the Orecchiatee ladies of Bari and ate freshly baked focaccia with a view of the Adriatic Sea. Damn, I could go for a piece of that focaccia right now. Anyway, whatever. This trip, it's so special, you're gonna have a blast, you're gonna learn a ton, and you're gonna eat really, really well. But here's the thing, it's almost sold out. Only four spots left. For more info and to reserve your spot, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. That's culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. All right, back to Scott's pizza tour. After a lot of careful consideration from Emily...

• 24:56Speaker 03

  You know what? Yeah, 8.6.

• 24:59Dan Pashman?

  We leave Patsy's, back on the bus, and head to the third stop on the tour. So we're still in Manhattan, in East Harlem, and we will be departing this borough now. We're gonna be going into Queens. Along the way, Scott tells us about the history of New York City pizzeria naming conventions.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Pizzerias at the time, in the early 1900s. Most pizzerias in New York were just called Pizzeria Napolitana. It's like saying ice cream shop. It's just telling you what it is. Later, they started calling them by the names of the proprietors. So to differentiate between them one and another, you would say Patsy's, or Lombardi's, or whatever. And that's why those pizzerias, they were not called Patsy's, Lombardi's, and John's on day one. It wasn't until like, into the 30s and 40s, that's when we started to get name differences in pizzerias.

• 25:53Dan Pashman?

  About 20 minutes later, we pull up to stop number three. A newer place called Bibi's in Long Island City, Queens. It's located on the first floor of a hipster chic hotel. Now, at our first two stops, we ate pizza with roots in the early 1900s. Scott brought us here to try American artisan-style pizza. Emblematic of what's in style this century. Alright, pizza number three, I'm going in.

• 26:18Dan Pashman?

  I can hear the crunch in that bite.

• 26:23Speaker 06

  This was my favorite sauce. I want this sauce and cheese on Casta's crust.

• 26:28Dan Pashman?

  Really? This is so thin.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  I know.

• 26:31Dan Pashman?

  And so crispy. I don't know, they're all pretty amazing.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Now, I have to try to give it a rating.

• 26:38Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  8.589.

• 26:42Dan Pashman?

  And where does that put it? Is it in the second place?

• 26:45Speaker 03

  No, they're the crust.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  It's very hard, you know?

• 26:51Dan Pashman?

  This is the thinnest one we've had so far.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  And then it like breaks when you fold it, you know?

• 26:55Dan Pashman?

  It's not brittle, yeah. Not brittle enough for Emily to leave on her plate, though. Do you need any help finishing her crust?

• 27:03Dan Pashman?

  While people finish eating, I check in with Scott about the final stop. He admits to me that while stops two and three weren't totally confirmed until today, he did have some idea of where he wanted to go for those. But now, things are getting interesting.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  For the next stop, I have nothing pre-planned. Like, I have nothing even on hold. That one's gonna be a complete audible.

• 27:24Dan Pashman?

  A few minutes later, someone on the tour asks Scott a question that gets him very excited.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  So, your question's what are my thoughts on pan-baked pizzas? This is an incredible question. Every pizza we've had so far today, baked directly on the floor of the oven. Now, our next stop has to be not baked. We need to see a difference.

• 27:42Dan Pashman?

  Since the first three slices we had were baked on the floor, Scott wants stop number four to feature a pizza baked in a pan. Did you just make a decision in your mind about the fourth stop?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Not one decision, but now I've narrowed it down to two places that I'm thinking about going. So now I'm pulling out my map. I got my Google map. Well, there's a place right there that's really good. And there's a place right there that I really like. I'm actually eliminating one place that I was thinking about going. Oh, but now as I zoom in, I realize there's another place that now I'm thinking about going.

• 28:10Dan Pashman?

  Oh, alright.

• 28:16Dan Pashman?

  After BB's, we get back on the bus. And we're moving. And set a course for the last pizzeria of the day. Alright, here we are. Stop number four. Let's do it.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Stop number four, indeed.

• 28:29Dan Pashman?

  For our final slice, Scott's brought us to Brooklyn to try Il Porto Restaurante in Clinton Hill. We follow him inside and find a section of tables reserved for our group. Il Porto is best known for their grandma-style pizza, which is baked in a pan. Sicilian pizza is also baked in a pan, but Scott explains the difference.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  The grandma pizza is characterized by its shape and its thickness. So grandma is always a rectangular pizza, which includes squares. It can be square, it's fine. Now, any style of pizza can have the sauce on top of the cheese, like you see it here. But I think sometimes people assume a square pizza with sauce on top of the cheese means it's a grandma. And I see people ask me about famous pizzerias like L and B's Pomoni Gardens, which is sauce on top of cheese. But it is very much a Sicilian pizza at that place. Grandma pizza is thin and crunchier. A Sicilian is thicker and puffier. I want to let you guys dive into this.

• 29:26Dan Pashman?

  As Scott talks, four grandma slices are dropped off at our table. This is outstanding.

• 29:37Dan Pashman?

  Emily, you're in charge of crunch sound effects today.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  What was your favorite pizza?

• 29:45Dan Pashman?

  Probably Keste, I'd say. My sort of quick reviews are Keste. I love that the crust was crispy and chewy at the same time. Patsy's was very thin. It was more salty. It was more oily. It was a thinner, crispier crust. And then the third one, also very good, but that crust was a little bit too thin for my taste. I mean, it was very good, but it was almost like a cracker. And I want a little bit of chewiness. Keste had the chewiness. Upon further reflection, I want to revise my ratings. I want to put the grandma at El Porto tied with Keste in the top slot. That crackly crust from the pan was so nice and the sauce was insane. It's very different from the others, so it's a little hard for me to really put them head to head.

• 30:29Dan Pashman?

  But biting into her grandma's slice, Emily didn't have any issue.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  This is the best one. Give her like a 9.8.

• 30:37Dan Pashman?

  Wow, that's crushing.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  I think he gave it a 10.

• 30:39Dan Pashman?

  Whoa, 10?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Can't get any better. It was great.

• 30:48Dan Pashman?

  Hi, Mr. Sing.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Alright, thanks, everyone.

• 30:50Dan Pashman?

  We're ready to roll.

• 30:54Dan Pashman?

  After El Porto, the bus takes us back to Keste, where he started the tour.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  We're gonna cruise over the Manhattan Bridge, so check it out. If you look out of the port side to the left, you'll be seeing the Brooklyn Bridge and the sunshine.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys, for coming out. Have a nice day. I'll see you in the future.

• 31:16Dan Pashman?

  For me, there are two foods in the world that, when I have a really good version of it, the more of it I eat, the hungrier I seem to get. One of those foods is steak, and the other is pizza. And apparently, I'm not alone in that feeling, because after the tour ends, my family and I get a table at Keste and order three more pizzas for the table. Scott joins me too, which is good, because I have a few more questions for him. As you heard at the beginning, Scott's first love was and always will be pizza. But in the last few years, it's been bumped down in the hierarchy of his loves. Do you want to tell me your name? Shelby. This is Scott's daughter Shelby. She's almost two.

• 31:55Speaker 06

  Online.

• 31:56Dan Pashman?

  And this is his wife, Elena. They met in 2018, not long after our first episode with Scott aired.

• 32:01Speaker 06

  I don't know. We both were drawn to each other because of the we each had some food element in our profiles.

• 32:07Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  Scott was making homemade pizza and I had picture in Hawaii. He's a pokey, so we were.

• 32:14Dan Pashman?

  Remember, what did your profile say, Scott?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Mine didn't say anything about pizza. I think there was a picture when you can not even tell I was in a pizzeria. But it said something about wanting to make fresh pasta, like wanting to learn how to make fresh pasta. And I think that's, I remember you were interested in that and saying, oh, that's interesting that you want to learn fresh pasta.

• 32:34Dan Pashman?

  Scott didn't hit Elena with the full intensity of his pizza obsession right away. But when they started messaging back and forth, they did bond over a shared passion for food.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, of course. It wouldn't have got any further if that wasn't the case.

• 32:45Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I mean, food's extremely important to me.

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Both of us, yeah.

• 32:50Dan Pashman?

  So after some messages were exchanged, they had their first date. But Scott continued to play it cool on the pizza front. So when the obligatory, what do you do for work question came up?

• 32:59Speaker 01

  I'm sure I didn't say, oh, I run a pizza tour company in the city. Like, I would have been vague about, like, oh, I work in food education or or something, you know, something like that. Even the word pizza, I probably would have left out.

• 33:11Dan Pashman?

  Hmm. For their second date, they went out to a Mexican restaurant in Brooklyn.

• 33:15Speaker 06

  Well, then after we ate there, we went, walked down the street because he wanted to show me Polly G's Pizzeria.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Because you had mentioned being interested in the interior design.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  And we ran into the owners and it became a whole. And then I found out that he had been on with Ryan Seacrest like the day before doing a tour with him. So it just, you know.

• 33:34Dan Pashman?

  So you expressed interest in a, uh, interior design of a pizzeria. Scott took you by, you ran into the owners. Of course, the owners of any noteworthy pizzeria in New York know Scott.

• 33:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:46Dan Pashman?

  And so they are like, hey, Scott. And you're like, who is, like, how is he best friends with the owner? And then the next thing out of his mouth is like, hey, I saw you with Ryan Seacrest yesterday. And you're like, what?

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, yep. Pretty much how it unfolded.

• 34:01Dan Pashman?

  Scott's cover was blown, but as the magnitude of his obsession became clear to Elena, she wasn't scared off. In fact, it turns out their jobs have some things in common.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Elena's an architect and she's done a lot of work with the Department of Buildings and all the stuff with the city. And I think when we first met, you know, as I was trying to connect with you more about architecture, I would bring out like, well, and I collect blueprints from old bakery ovens and, you know, I go to municipal archive and dig this stuff up. And there was that weird connection of like, oh, wait, you use these resources for a completely different reason, but there's a lot of crossover.

• 34:37Dan Pashman?

  Still, it took a while before Elena found out about Scott's spreadsheet, the one that catalogs his pizza box collection.

• 34:43Speaker 06

  I don't think it was till I was already moved, had moved in.

• 34:46Dan Pashman?

  Really?

• 34:47Speaker 06

  When we sat at the, I helped you fill out the spreadsheet.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 06

  I mean, I love spreadsheets, so it would have been fine.

• 34:56Dan Pashman?

  That might have been a turn on.

• 34:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:59Dan Pashman?

  Yeah. You know what they say, find someone who looks at you the way you look at spreadsheets. My thanks to Scott Weiner of Scott's Pizza Tours. I gotta say, whether you are a New Yorker looking for a fun activity or visiting from out of town, Scott's tours are so fun and incredibly delicious. They're really like one of the few activities that I think are phenomenal for locals and tourists alike. See all the options and sign up at scottspizatours.com. Next week on the show, I talk with comedian Mateo Lane, whose hilarious cooking videos on Instagram have led him to write a cookbook entitled, "Your Pasta Sucks." That's next week. While you wait for that one, check out last week's show featuring Michelle Zauner

• 35:42Dan Pashman?

  of the indie band Japanese Breakfast. We talk about her memoir, Crying in H Mart, and how cooking helped her grieve the death of her mother. Finally, remember to reserve your spot now for my pasta tour of Italy. Go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful. And hey, did you know you can listen to the Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful.

• 36:24Dan Pashman?

  This episode was produced by me along with managing producer

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 36:27Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Andres O'Hara.

• 36:29Dan Pashman?

  And producer

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Grace Rubin.

• 36:31Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is

• 36:32Speaker 07

  Jared O'Connell.

• 36:33Dan Pashman?

  And our intern is

• 36:33Speaker 05

  Julia Leo.

• 36:34Dan Pashman?

  Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 36:41Speaker 06

  And I'm Kristin from Jamaica, Queens, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 36:59Dan Pashman?

  Thank you to our presenting sponsor, American Express. Amex Gold makes your dining experiences more rewarding so you can discover and connect more. Enjoy every meal with the benefits that come with the American Express Gold Card. For terms and to learn more, visit americanexpress.com/withamex.

• 37:17Dan Pashman?

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's Syndrome can occur.

• 37:59Dan Pashman?

  Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTC or visit nurtac.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today. Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. Start your morning with the $6 McRiddles Extra Value Meal, featuring your choice of a sausage, egg, and cheese McRiddles, or bacon, egg, and cheese McRiddles, plus crispy hash browns and a small premium roast coffee. Sweet, savory, crispy, and caffeinated, it's everything your morning ordered, all for just $6. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing at participating McDonald's.