Scott Wiener is obsessed with pizza

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0:21So I'm going to open today's show with a pretty bold statement. The best slice of pizza in New York City is from Joe's Pizza. I believe it. I stand by it. I recognize how controversial this is, but it's really the perfect slice. I mean, the crust, the cheese, the sauce, it all just hits right. So I got in this massive fight with my wife over this. We were in the West Village here in New York, where I also happen to be today, because where the hell else on earth would I go to talk about pizza? Anyway, so my wife and I were in the village. We wanted a slice, and she said that the best slice she's ever had is Bleecker Street Pizza.

0:56I trust my wife. She owns restaurants, but like she's fucking wrong about that. But I went with her. She wanted a pepperoni slice. And I said, no, honey, if we're doing a taste test, we got to just do a slice, no topping. So we got a cheese slice at Bleecker Street. And then we walked over to Joe's where, of course, the slice was better. We disagreed. I mean, I don't think we talked for an hour. We finished our preferred slices next to this trash can at Bleecker and Carmine. We were pretty much at an impasse. I mean, no sign of finding common ground. And so we did what any fighting couple would do.

1:28We came up with a solution. We decided to bring in Rose's cousin, Bobby Janone, a few weeks later to be the judge. His family is from Naples, Italy, and he lives in New Jersey. So, I mean, what more qualification do you really need to be the judge of pizza? So we went to Bleecker, we went to Joe's, and Bobby actually said that the pizza with toppings at Bleecker was better, but the classic slice better at Joe's, obviously. But actually, I'm going to say the best slice in the world to me is Januzzi's in Margate, New Jersey. I mean, it is intoxicatingly orgasmic. Like as the pizza scorches the roof of my mouth, the cheese blend, the sauce, it's just perfect.

2:10The smell from the oven. But I think there's more to it because Margate is where I spent so much of my childhood and later years with my mom and with my grandma. And so smelling that smell coming out of Januzzi's, it takes me right back to being a teenager, carting my boogie board to the beach. I went back recently to have a slice of Januzzi's and they had moved a few miles away, which seemed catastrophic. But then, of course, I went there and the woman who heated up my three slices, she said the owner had actually fallen ill a few years ago. And so they moved the place. He got healthy. They reopened.

2:43And even though it was in a different spot, all those ingredients were still there. I mean, the sauce, the smell, the cheese, and the hospitality. None of it changed a bit. So I bet a lot of you out there love pizza and have incredibly specific reasons for why one slice is better than all the others. And probably you can relate to me. No small part of it, right, is because of those memories like mine. And if it's not pizza, I bet there's some other food you obsess over because of where the taste takes you or how it makes you feel. This is David Green is Obsessed. I am David Green, and I obsess about a lot of shit like pizza.

3:18Self-absorbed title to the show aside, this show is not about me. It's actually about us exploring our obsessions and the role they play in our lives. And so today we're going to talk pizza with Scott Wiener. He is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours, and I would like to say he's America's foremost knowledgeable person and obsessive when it comes to pizza. And I'm going to bring him a slice of my favorite pizza from New York when we come back.

3:50Welcome back to David Green is Obsessed. I'm David Green, and this week we are obsessed with pizza. I am here in a studio in New York City, probably within a 10-minute walk of at least five outstanding slice joints. And I'm with pizza expert Scott Wiener, who's the owner of Scott's Pizza Tours. He's the author of Viva La Pizza. He is founder of the nonprofit Slice Out Hunger. It's all about pizza. Scott, thank you for stopping in. I hope this isn't too hard for you to talk pizza. Thank you for feeding my obsession. Yeah. Well, speaking of feeding, I brought you a box with a pie from Joe's Pizza, which is my favorite slice in New York.

4:28It is not from the original Joe's at Bleeker and Carmine in the village. It's from the one in Times Square. I hope that doesn't make a huge difference. I'm actually a little scared to, like, are you judging me right now for Joe's? Like, is Joe's, like, cliche? I know they're well-known. They've been written. I feel like you have these secret spots that are less well-known than a place like Joe's. I don't totally understand why people get so wrapped up in everyone else's opinion. Like, I understand where you're coming from. Like, you love Joe's. Yeah. And I'm nervous about it, talking to you about it.

5:01Well, you shouldn't be. It doesn't matter what I think. That being said, I also love Joe's. That makes me happy. And so, yeah, well, but I've never been in this location. Okay. And I also very rarely eat pizza out of a box. So this experience will be new for me. I don't know if I've ever had Joe's out of a box. Why not the box? Have we been messing up all our lives eating pizza out of a box? Yeah, we have. I don't think this is a surprise for anybody. The box traps all the steam. And so you get a soggier crust when you're eating pizza out of a box. So the pizza you get out of the box will always, 100 % of the time, be worse than the pizza that went into that box.

5:40Can you go to a pizza joint and say, can you give me a pie not in a box? Yeah. Absolutely. How are you getting this? You can bring a tray. Or my move is if it's ever going to happen, I have two moves. One of them is I just open the box as soon as they hand it to me. Okay. So I need to be there when it gets boxed. I'm popping it right away. So I've already fucked this up basically by letting this sit here in this box. We have like a social contract that we've signed with pizzerias that says, I understand that pizza is not going to be as good as it could be. OK. But it's convenient. So fine. OK.

6:14We all know that. Also, the other thing is this is an 18-inch box and Joe's does a 20-inch pie. And it's only one dough ball size that they make. Oh, that's what you're – This is thicker than the house pie. I want you – is that why it's like folding on the side of the box? Yeah, their pie never fits in the box. I haven't seen the inside yet, but yeah, this is – And this is actually mild. The folding going on there? Yeah, and they stretch this dough slightly smaller than their house pie. So if you get their house pie, it's a little thinner, a little crispier. And when you get their takeout pie, it's always going to be a little bit thicker because it has to fit in the box.

6:48So there's nothing I want to do more right now than just, like, start eating. But can we start, like, can you look at this like you're a museum curator? Like, what would you look at on this pizza to know if it's quality, if it's not? What stands out to you? Well, always the thing that stands out to me is topping distribution. And what I love about Joe's is the minimal use of mozzarella. Where we live in this world of more is better, Joe's is a minimalist pizza. There's one cheese on it. It's not a multiple cheese pizza. A lot of pizzas you're putting in like Pecorino, Pro-Bone. Okay. But this is part skim, low moisture mozzarella.

7:26That's it. And it's a simple tomato. Tomato and a little sugar. That's it. and their crust is flour, salt, water, yeast. That's it. So it's a minimalist pizza. A lot of people overthink pizza these days is what you're telling me. Yeah, well, like, I think what's cool about Joe's, and maybe this is the reason that Joe's has now become controversial, is that while other pizzerias are doing a lot of things, a lot of processes, Joe's is still very minimalist. And so this is like, when I look at this, I see tomato popping through the cheese, which I love, because I'd rather have kind of a low cheese to sauce ratio.

8:02And with this, I see a great bake. So browning along the edge is always nice to see. Yeah. And then, you know, the next step to this would be to look under the hood, kind of take a peek underneath. You want to do that? Look under the hood? Yeah, we'll take a peek. Okay. Yeah, I mean, you know, even consistent browning, no big burn marks. You'll see burn marks up against the edge. Like this, you can tell, is already going to be a burn mark. When they unload this into the oven, this pizza hit a sidewall or a back wall. so okay so it's touching the steel of the oven so it burned it's like when you hit the hit the flag when you're doing like slalom skiing like you you um you like run into something and it's you get points yeah you get a little point deducted but like you know this is also kind of nice you're with a bunch of friends one person loves the char they go there the other person doesn't love the char they go there a lot of choices yeah community food what how is this still hot enough for you like uh do you have a way to measure temperature when you're I do.

8:58I always carry with me some pizza tools. And I always have a thermometer. You don't even need the thermometer right now. I use this to check if a pizza is too hot to eat. Okay. 175 is. It's like a nail gun a little bit. Yeah, it's an infrared thermometer. Okay. So this is like a surface temperature. So, you know, this is not good for checking if you have a fever, but it's great for surface temperature. Use it for like heating and air conditioning. Like in here. It's great. Dude, 59.3. We're good. Luxurious. But on this, it's definitely sub 90. Yeah, 77.3. That's too cold. This is like high end of room temperature situation.

9:35I don't want to say it's too cold. For me, I either like a pizza at 160, 165, or I like it at refrigerator temperature or just north of refrigerator. Anything between refrigerator temperature and 160 degrees Fahrenheit is not ideal? Not ideal for me. Okay. You like a really hot pizza. Yeah. When it comes out of the oven, this sucker's around 200. And then I let it drop a bit. It takes about maybe five minutes, and now it's in the zone that I like it. And then between that, though, and maybe 50 Fahrenheit, it just feels like the boring temperature. Like I'm going to eat it, and I'm going to love it.

10:13We're in boring temperature zone. Yeah. It's also been in the box. Before I hand you a paper plate, grease. A lot of people talk about grease, like when they see grease dripping off onto the plate. But I've like, don't you want a little bit of grease? Do you not want to over grease? Well, the grease. Is it even grease? Am I using the right word? Yeah. I mean, look, it's, yeah, grease is probably the right word. It's fat from the cheese. Okay. And it renders out of the cheese when the cheese, you call it breaking. So cheese is mostly composed of a protein called casein. And when that protein starts to delink, then the fat releases.

10:47So it delinks when that cheese is dried out in the oven, which means either it's been in the oven too long or it's shredded too thin, there's too much surface area. You know, there's a million ways to avoid that, but it usually happens when you have a dried out cheese, which is why on the reheat, you end up getting more grease. Oh, interesting. So this is actually not a greasy pizza at all. Like even looking into the box, barely anything because it's a part skim mozzarella. It's also been sitting in that box so that that fat has sort of congealed. And it's not like congealed where if you scrape it off, You get a bunch of grease in the room.

11:20It's just, it's re-solidified into the cheese. But if you see like some grease puddles, I mean, is it just automatically bad? Or can you go into a more nuanced forensics investigation of what's going on? So I just was judging at a pizza competition. And most of the pizzas come out great. But a couple of them, you really see that cheese breakage, that grease out. That's definitely a negative. It's a flaw. Got it. And I think people who love that little grease dripping down their arm or, you know, like dripping onto the plate, I don't think that's – I don't think they really love it. It's just they love that part of the experience.

11:57And so it's sort of like loving the smell of popcorn in a movie theater but not loving to eat popcorn. It's the experience. And that's why – oh, it's people who say, oh, you can't have a New York slice without a little grease dripping off the front. It's because of they've fallen in love with the flaw. Well, and like you go to bed after eating pizza and you still have kind of that grease on your hands. And it's like you're living on with the experience. Like you're still experiencing the pizza. Okay, I'm going to hand you a plate. Which slice would you go for out of this? That's what I'll be judging.

12:30Oh, that's, oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, now this is feeling pressure. I don't like a lot of burn, but I like a little bit of burn. it's it's we're you and i are recording this at like 11 in the morning so i don't want a huge slice i would go for this one that has like a little burn a little burn uh and it's a nice sort of medium-sized slice yeah but not too much burn yeah i like that uh did you judge me i mean i'm always judging but silently okay quietly i i the The judgment is more like, do you have a reason for choosing the slice? I don't care so much about your reasons, but like having reasons is always.

13:13You want the passion. You want it to be. I just like intention. Mission guided. But also if you didn't have like, who can, if, if you just said, oh, that's the next slice. So I'm going to take it. That's also a reason. Okay. Here's my last question. And I want to talk to you about various other pizza related things. If you're going with a friend or something late at night after, I don't know, hypothetically speaking, drinking in New York City, you go to a place like Joe's, is it worth ordering a whole pie and waiting the 20 minutes? I mean, how much do you lose out by just saying, hey, give me two slices, they reheat it and hand it to you on a plate?

13:49At a place like Joe's, I prefer the reheat. So actually, I would rather do the reheat. Prefer the reheat? Yeah, at Joe's. Why? Different for different places. Okay. So a place like Lindistry, I prefer a fresh pie. Joe's, I like the reheat because when it comes out of the oven the first time, it's a little on the soft side. I need that toasting effect of the reheat. I used to think that I liked the fresh slice, but recently I had a couple of reheats in a row. And man, I love the texture of that on that pie. But it all depends. Like the texture of the pizza all depends on the bake. So it means the way that the oven interacts with the dough.

14:27And so you take the dough and the, you take this pizza and you put it in somebody else's oven and it's a completely different interaction. Wow. So that's why the way Joe's bakes, it's a gas-fueled deck oven. It's a simple flour, saltwater, yeast dough. And that's it, which is the situation where I like a reheat. Do you know that much about every pizzeria in New York City? Like I didn't tell you that I was bringing Joe's pizza and you're giving me like scientific details of their pizza ovens and baking process. Well, I know that much about maybe 60 pizzerias, 70 pizzerias, but not every single.

15:06Like I could walk into a pizzeria and to an extent figure out some of that stuff. Like even with Joe's, as I'm saying this, I'm like second guessing myself. I'm like, wait a second. And I know that dough does not have sugar in it, but I actually think the dough has oil in it. But, you know, so I'm not 100 percent sure, but I'm close. Does it feel weird that you know this much about pizza? Not really, not really, because it's been so long. I've been running these tours for 17 years and I also don't I don't know anything about anything else. You know what I mean? Like like you probably know something about sports or cars or something.

15:40Yeah. I don't think I know as much as you do about pizza, but anything else. But what do you know statistics about? I know, like, sports statistics, but I can't remember. Like, I've been literally a diehard football fan my whole life, but I could not. I still, to this day, can't watch a play and be like, that's a play action, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I know it's play action, but I can't, like, test things. I don't know what those words even mean that you just said. Okay. But, like, but if I said who's got the most touchdowns ever, would you know that? Probably not. I mean, I now know that Aaron Rodgers is the highest paid player over the course of a career over Matt Stafford because Rodgers signed with my team, the Steelers, and that's been in the news.

16:22But I could not do the equivalent of you saying what kind of oven and the fact that this is a 20-inch pie squeezed into an 18-inch box. That's, like, pretty impressive. Well, I think that is the equivalent. It's just that way fewer people care about and know about pizza in that way. So I think it seems way more unique than it really is. Like it's just a numbers thing. More people like football. And so therefore more people know the details. Fewer people consider themselves pizza nerds in this way. And so I think it just seems a little crazy. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel normal.

17:00No, you're totally normal. Please have a slice. I don't want to hold you up. What slice are you picking? Well, I've been eyeing two of them. Okay. Can I have both? I don't know. I was thinking about this one because the pizza's gotten cold. It's lost structural integrity. I like the wide wingspan. So when I do a fold, it'll hold up better. But the package saver is imprinting itself on that slice, and I don't love that. So I was thinking about the one next to it, so I'm probably just going to do that one. Package saver, for those who are not initiated, it almost looks like a mini table, and they stick it on top to not let the box collapse.

17:34Exactly. Which is weird, I think, when you're doing one pizza. It's weird that they gave that to you. Oh, interesting. It's usually if you stack pizzas. Okay. I think they've wasted that. They've wasted a pizza box thing. And now you've damaged some of the slices. But, man, this is... Okay. You're folding. I do a semi-fold. I keep my index finger in the edge of the crust. I don't like to do a full fold. Let me unfold mine so I look cool. You do you. Well, I'll put it this way. When I get like halfway through, it always collapses into a full fold. Yeah. If I'm in a rush or I'm chatting with somebody.

18:12Just fold. Yeah. It usually ends up that way. But I'll tell you this. I do not want to experience this open face. And I do not want to experience this the whole way fully folded. So you want a semi-fold to start with. Okay. I like to go semi-fold. God, you look good holding a slice of pizza. Like it, I mean, you really. It's my natural habitat. Yeah, you look confident. It's a lot of pizza. I mean, literally, that's all I do every day is. And you're not like an oversized human. Like how do you. I'm fighting, man. Diet advice on. I bike everywhere. I live not in the center of Manhattan. I live in deep into Brooklyn.

18:49So every time I'm going somewhere, it's like an hour. You just calorie burn. Calorie burn. I already had an hour plus bike ride today. Okay. An hour plus home. This is only the first of many slices of the day. So eat pizza and bike. That's the diet advice we're getting. Pizza's not bad for you. Is that true? Totally true. Bad pizza is bad for you. Pizza is a huge spectrum. There's good pizza and there's bad. And you know when you're eating bad pizza. It doesn't make you a bad person. It means that you are desperate at that moment. But you know when you're eating that, it's not for the purpose of nourishing your organs.

19:26Right. It's absorbing alcohol or, you know, curbing the need for, like, you know, more gross food or something. But when you're eating good pizza, you feel good. I feel good right now. Yeah. This is great. All right, I'm going to cue. And I'm going to ask you something you've probably never been asked before. Ready? How did you get into pizza? Oh. I got into pizza the way you got into pizza. Because you're Inuit. You have a favorite place. I do. You're obsessed with. Seriously. You know the story of when they moved. Uh-huh. And I got doing it the same way. Growing up, having an emotional connection with pizza as the food that is accessible.

20:12As a kid, it's like the first food that you ever spend your own money on by yourself. Without the parents, it's my$2. I paid for that slice and that soda. And that little bouncy ball out of that little machine that you put the quarters into. I love those. And I think the combination of loving the food and loving that experience and having an emotional attachment to the celebratory nature of after the Little League game or, you know, whatever, like, it's just, it's such a positive part of life. You celebrate with pizza. You cheer yourself up with pizza. Everybody has some experience with it. So everybody's got an opinion.

20:52Oh, in my town, we had seven pizzerias and four square miles. And that, you know, in New York, that's like nothing. But in suburban New Jersey, everybody had their favorite. And we'd be like, oh, I'm not getting it from that place. I'm going to get it from the one, two blocks from there because they're not as messy of a topping combination. And, you know, you like everybody can have an opinion about it and everybody can be right about that opinion. It's an opinion. What a great place to be. Everyone can have an opinion. Everybody's right all the time. And it like brings you together and you can.

21:21And you can argue about it with your wife, with your friend, whatever. And at the end of the argument, you're not saying lose my number. You know what I mean? If we disagree on a pizzeria, it's of no consequence. It's like a very high passion, low stakes conversation, argument, discussion. And so I got into it because that emotional connection is really great. And then as I realized that there were multiple styles and multiple cities and multiple passions, the journey of like going to New Haven, Connecticut and to Chicago and trying other people's like cultural pizza styles, that became fun adventure.

22:07Even it didn't matter if I liked it or didn't like it. It was just more of leaning into somebody else's local pizza culture became fun and interesting. You were becoming like an investigative reporter on pizza. So part of it was the storytelling, the learning facts. I can relate to that. Yeah, it's interesting. And you've already got that common thread. It's pizza. And then you always have the thing of, it was like in college, if I was playing in a band and whenever we had breaks from school, we would go and tour. And oh, if we were going to play in somebody's town and we would sleep on their floor, they would say, oh, you got to go to my favorite pizza place.

22:44And so that became the common thread of every – we were always eating pizza because it was cheap. And I would keep track – this is like early 2000s, so it was not smartphone taking notes in an app thing. This was like I would keep a diary of – like everyone had a little tour diary, but mine was just about pizza. It was about every page was a different day and where we went for pizza. And I would write who we were with, what we got. I still have them. Like the receipts are in there. You kept the receipt. Like it's a diary with almost every slice you've ever had. Yeah, a lot of them, yeah. And then that became the fun journey was that part of it.

23:23And I would have like ratings in there, but they weren't zero to ten ratings. They were more like this is the pizza that you have at 2 a.m. This is the pizza that you have on your birthday. This is the one that makes you go crazy. Tying into experiences, that's so much better than like a 7.4. Yeah, it's just like I never connected with the idea of this pizza being 0.1 better than another pizza. It's more like when does this fit into my life? And if it's a 2 a.m. slice, that's a nice way of saying I don't need this very often. It doesn't need to be that good. It's not. Every pizza has a place and a time.

23:59And so the one that you don't like is really just the one that you don't have a lifestyle that matches that slice. So there's plenty of pizza in New York that people love and that I don't love. And it's not that they're wrong and I'm right. It's just that I don't drink that much alcohol. So you don't have those experiences at that place where they're drinking a ton and going there. So take me to childhood. What was your first memory of being that little boy spending his own$2 on the little machine with the bouncy ball on his lace? Man. Well, it was, I will never be able to remember my first pizza experience, but the ones that really made the difference were those like after the soccer game or the Little League game.

24:43You played soccer in Little League? Yeah, I hated it, but we got pizza after, so that was awesome. And a little cup of soda after the game, you'd like go to the, where they sold the snacks and stuff. Yeah, little snacks. A little soda. Love that little soda. And then that was a big deal. But then really where it started to make a difference was on like half days, you know, on a Friday when you got a half day. And I'd walk. We always walked because we lived really close to the schools, like a mile or less. And where are we? We're in suburban New Jersey? Granford, New Jersey. Okay. Yeah. In Union County.

25:14So we would always walk. And walking home, you'd pass by. There's one pizzeria called Calabria we'd walk by. And it was$1.50 for a slice and a large soda. and that was just this ultimate middle of the day independence. You know what I mean? Or if it was on a Saturday, I'd walk downtown with my buddies and the center of town was literally in the center. Downtown was in the middle of town. So we would all walk and meet up and we'd go to the record store and not buy anything but talk to the guy about when he saw the Stones in 68 or whatever. And then we would go to the pizza place called Pizza House, which was my real jam and we get that slice and a soda over there but it was always this independence it was like this you're out without your parents for a few hours and that's the food that accompanied that you're totally right I had never thought about it like this but some of my memories like I I was probably in middle school in Kentucky and it's like there was a place right downtown in Murray Kentucky and it's the first place I remember being at a restaurant without adults.

26:18And it was pizza. It's like the first expression of independence. It really is. You're not going to go out for a steakhouse with your, you know, as an 11-year-old. Right. You're not going to go, pizza is the thing. Low price. It's counter service. I don't know if it was by you in Kentucky. Was it counter service? No, that one was, you actually did sit, but it was, you know, the checkered plastic tablecloths and they just bring the pie and sit in the middle and And I remember that being special too. Like, oh, we're sitting at a booth. That's grown up. And we have money. And we can put together our dollars and get a, probably at that point, like a$5.99 cheese pie.

26:59But still, it's a big deal. Yeah. It was huge. No, you're totally right. I think that tie to independence is the big piece of it. And it also helps that pizza tastes awesome. Right. That helps. Okay, so how do you go from a kid like any of us who's got to feel that independence and going out for pizza to making it a career? I think it was, well, I know it was after the bands broke up and I wasn't touring anymore. I still kept up with visiting pizzerias intentionally. And then that kind of snowballed. I had a car. I would drive with my friends to Philly or to the Bronx or whatever in driving distance and do little day trips on a Saturday.

27:41and just hit five or six pizzerias for fun. And then that became renting a bus for my birthday one year and taking my friends on a pizza crawl. And I would give them all the little goodie bags, and I brought a megaphone. And at every stop, I would say, like, this place is a coal-fired oven, and that means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this temperature. You're already being a tour guide, even if you weren't doing it for money. Yeah, no, it was not, I swear, it was not anywhere in my brain to do it as a business. And then at the end of that, that was October of 2007. And at the end of the day, my friends were all like, I had just quit my job.

28:19And my friends were like, this is the next, this is what you're going to do next. Why wouldn't it be? And I'm like, well, how do you run a business? You can't do that. You can't legally run a company. You can't start a business. You know, I was saying that because I don't know how to do it. Right. But that was it. That's all it was. It was, this was really fun. I loved doing it. and then six months later I was running my first tour. And how long have you been going Scott's Pizza Tours? Since April 27, 2008 was my first tour. Oh, wow. At this point that we're talking, it's just over 17 years. It's like two decades into.

28:52Yeah, it'll be 20 years in a couple of years. What's like a memorable moment or two with people who come on your tours that go beyond just like the, oh, take me to this next place? Like it's I'm assuming I'm imagining there's a lot to the experience and the interaction when you're with people who've kind of given a couple hours of their lives to you. Yeah, it's it's an overwhelming amount of personal interactions that are genuine with people who are really great and who I keep up with. so I I can't immediately recall like specific moments but there are people who have been on the tour 20 or 30 times because it changes every time it's always different and those are people who I like become friends with who like they're at my wedding you know what I mean yeah people you met through the tour yeah absolutely so always or people who are in the pizza business who I I meet on the tour when they're thinking about opening a pizzeria and then by this point now they have like award-winning pizzerias and when i see them at pizza trade shows they're like i'll never forget being on that tour with you that really inspired me to go and dig up more of this and now here's where i am and it's like crazy the you get a real mix of people i mean you'll have tourists who have just heard that they need to eat pizza new york city or you'll get some real like serious with the majority of what we get by far 60 it's above 65 % is locals.

30:26Oh, interesting. I had this assumption that you were getting, you know, tourists coming from Europe and being like, I need to eat pizza in the UK. That's what I thought it would be. Google. But it's not, it's, it's weird. It's first of all, we get a lot of people doing private tours and those private tours are mostly companies doing outings, like entertaining clients or doing the outing internally. So there, that's all locals. Unless it's like, oh yeah, we got people from the LA office, somebody from the Nashville office, but they all at some point had lived in New York. So it's a lot of locals.

30:57And that's where we shine because they all think we're going to take them to Joe's, which they all know. But really, we make it up as we go along based on the group. So we interview the group right when we meet them, and then it becomes a game of what are three or four places that we can put together that are all different styles, that will all scratch the itch these people have, and that will be surprising to them. Are you married? I am. Okay. Did you tell me about meeting your current partner and early dates when maybe like the fact that you are this into pizza would come up? So I met my wife, you know, like on an app.

31:34And I really tried to not talk about my work too early and too clearly because then it could tend to take over a whole conversation and become like. Like this. Like put a microphone. Yeah. Yeah. So I try to just be like, no, I'm in food education or something like that. Food education. So that's my euphemism for it. I like that. It's not a lie. But I try to stay away from it. Because once you say I run pizza tours, then it's like, I guess, I don't know. She could have either gone like, that's not a real job. Yeah, whatever. So I kind of kept it quiet. And then on our second date, we went to Ashimoko in Greenpoint, which is owned by Justin Bestarich, who's a owner of Speedy Romeo in Clinton Hill where I used to live.

32:23And I remember he hooked me up with a table at this place. I didn't realize that they had just gotten a Michelin star like that week. And so I took my wife, now wife, there. And we're sitting there and eating and all that. And the chef comes over and he's like checking on us, giving us some extra food. And she's like, what is happening? Why is this happening? And then we leave and we ran into Pauly G and Marianne. and they go, why don't you come down to the pizzeria, Scott? And Pauly looks at me and he goes, hey, by the way, she's a lot nicer to hang out than, what did he say? Oh, I bet you're liking hanging out with her more than Ryan Seacrest, which is a weird thing to say.

33:00Right. She didn't know that the day before this, I was on the Ryan and Kelly show. Wow, with Ryan Seacrest. Yeah. Doing pizza stuff. Yeah, so then I'm like, oh, God, now I got to explain this because this is like the weirdest non sequitur to bring up. You know? It's a weird thing to say. You can't make up a reason to be with Ryan Zekrest. You couldn't be like, we're buddies or, yeah. Yeah. It was just like, so I tried to hold it off. Confess. Yeah. And then it kind of became. And now, looking back, she's like, she showed me recently, like, texts she was sending with her friends that are like, I don't know.

33:34What is up with this guy? Maybe I should, like, look him up. So it's funny. But she's very quiet and shy and would not have ever let on that even if she kind of figured out that I was more involved than just being a food educator. Does she like pizza? She likes pizza. She's not like a fanatic. I feel like she's become a little more snobby in the past few years. About specific pizzas or about other foods are better than pizza? Oh, she's very into food, great cook, great food lover, like loves restaurants, loves all of it. But pizza is kind of the, she's the kind of person who is funny. She never, ever would have taken a pizza tour, ever.

34:20But when this kind of person goes on a pizza tour with a group of friends for somebody's birthday, kind of against their will, she's the kind of person who would have been on it and then like discovered over the course of the tour that pizza is not the junk food that we're being silly by being nerdy about. It's like actually a gateway to history and science. And the discovery of the depth of something that you assume to be so simple is the thing that makes your heart beat faster. Speaking of history, pizza is from Naples, Italy. Is that correct? Or is that a disputed? It is correct. It's not really disputed.

34:58And I think people who do dispute it are like misunderstanding the claim. Dough with stuff on it is not from Naples. But pizza is a specific. There's always been dough with stuff. Yeah. Okay. Pizza is mid-1700s. That's not the invention of putting stuff on dough. That's high temperature flash bake of a yeast-leavened dough that's weighed down with stuff. pig fat, tomato, anchovy paste, whatever stuff. That's like mid-18th century. Chicago pizza, Detroit pizza, those like thicker pizzas. Are they really pizza? It depends on it. I don't consider those pizza linked to this rich history. What's your definition for the word pizza?

35:42This, what we're looking at right now in this box, like a slice. And when I see squares, I get like squeamish and feel like I'm not eating pizza. If I cut this into squares, is it no longer repeats? I would argue that's a hard question. I'm just wondering about, is it the production that defines it? Is it the consumption process that defines it? Where in the experience does the definition happen? I am very intimidated right now and feel like I'm in a college class where I don't know the answer. Dude, I'm wearing shorts. I haven't really studied, I admit. I don't know. I think this speaks to the whole thing.

36:21Like, I think I like the folding, the experience. My early memories are like a round pie. And so when I, I don't know, it just doesn't, I want the word pizza to be so sacred and refer to a specific thing. I feel like broadening to thick lasagna resembling squares just, but I'm happy to. You're getting offensive. I like it. Let me ask you, do you listen to music? I do. Okay. So Western music, Eastern music, different scales, different sets of notes. Yeah. But all music. Yes. Right? No? Yes. Yes. Music is, how would you define music? I mean, it's music. It's sound. It's notes. It could be vocals.

37:07It could not be. It's instrumental. It's humming. I see where you're going. Yeah. I'm just like, okay, music, you know when you're hearing it. but it's different based on where you grow up, what you're into, what you listen to in your house is music that sticks with you emotionally. And I think if you grow up with pizza in Chicago, and we'll just loosely say that Deep Dish will represent Chicago for this conversation, even though it's arguably not the one that should represent Chicago, whatever. Deep Dish in Chicago is a totally different experience. And to the Chicagoan, a thin, round, cut into squares, crispy pizza, and the deep dish are kind of two ends of the spectrum for what's native in Chicago.

37:55But growing up, you grew up in Kentucky. I grew up mostly in Pittsburgh. Oh, in Pittsburgh. Oh, so Pittsburgh is doing essentially the same kind of thing that we now call like New York style pizza. Correct. Neapolitan inspired, like two generations away from Naples, basically. So our version of pizza is round, a puffy bready edge cheese and tomato sauce yes all that that's pizza i think that by defining the food based on like the version of it that's comfortable to you is like ignores that other people grow up with something else that's normal which is why when i get people on tours who are the 35 that are tourists and i feed them cheese pizza the whole I don't do toppings and they think that that means that it's a pizza that's missing an ingredient and to me it's well that means that you grew up with pizza where toppings were the flavor that the neglected component is the bread component and in New York It's a baking culture here bread bakeries.

39:02That is the main component for us The other ones are just there to not get in the way You're wearing a shirt from Slice Out Hunger, which is your nonprofit. Yes. Pizza-related nonprofit. Very much pizza-related. What's the mission? What do they do? We use pizzerias around the country as fundraising engines to support hunger relief initiatives in every pizzeria's local community. That's awesome. So we have like a partnership system where we have about 800 pizza partners across the country. And every one of those partners has committed to support their community with a certain number of pizza donations.

39:36and we just track those and we kind of act as a collective. So pizzerias are always supporting communities anyway. We just act as a way to kind of lump everybody together and help people get benefits from ingredient companies, some support where one little tiny pizzeria, it's going to be hard to get support from your tomato company. But if we pull everybody together, that tomato company wants to help those who we work with. Why is this work important to you? Because food is the most important element of life. There's love and support from family, having a home, like shelter and food. And food is one of those things that as people in the food industry, like I'm in the food business kind of, I guess.

40:30I don't think I'm in the tour business. You're in the food business. Okay. I but yeah but my company treats food like entertainment and so we take people to restaurants as a form of entertainment and even though I think that that's perfectly fine and legal there's still this element of the fact that we waste 40 percent of the food produced in this country and we have so many people facing food insecurity more and more every day especially lately and even though it's fine for us to treat food like entertainment we still have a responsibility to our communities to help by benefiting in a way that we have the power to do.

41:08So I've been in this world long enough that I've got these amazing connections with people, companies and pizzerias. And it just seems like the easy thing to do is to use those connections and leverage them to do good for communities. And so I started doing these pizza parties 2009, 2010, where we'd raise money for local hunger relief organizations in New York. and then my friends in California and Texas and Idaho all started saying that oh we want to do this too can you help us I'm like well I don't have that much free time but we pulled together and formed a non-profit and now we have this system where we help people all over the U.S.

41:49I love that it's really really interesting because it's a great way to pull that community together it has nothing to do with what the ratings are of these pizzerias or whose cheese they use It's very much just about, are you a pizzeria? Do you support or want to support your communities? We can help out and send you some pepperoni every once in a while. All right. I'm going to let you take another few bites. We're going to break for a minute. Then I want to come back and talk to you about your other obsessions. Oh, sounds good. Yeah. Take a moment. Calzones. Just kidding. Just kidding. Preview.

42:23I'm not into Calzones. All right. I'll be back with Scott Wiener in just a second.

42:32All right, welcome back to David Green is Obsessed. I'm with Scott Wiener, who is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours here in New York City. And Scott, this is the part of the show I like to now call Scott Wiener is Obsessed. I want to ask you about other obsessions. Earliest obsession in your life that you remember? The tabs on the top of soda cans. The tabs? Yeah, yeah. I used to collect those little tabs. Okay. You pop a soda can and rip off the metal thing and collect them. Yep. I put them in old peanut butter jars and I had a bunch of don't know why. Don't know how that started. We used to call them Schwartzes.

43:08It's like the movie Spaceballs. Oh, yeah. The Ring of the Schwartz. Oh, yeah. You named the little the can, the ring cans. Because they look like a little Ring of the Schwartz. Yeah. I haven't thought about it very much in maybe 20, 30 years until this moment. Well, it's funny because I realize I forgot to ask you about another collection that you have. Maybe the soda cans were the beginning. That was my first collection that I remember. First collection. And now you hold the Guinness Book of World Records for most pizza boxes? Correct, yes. What's that like? Do you have a large storage unit? Yeah, I have a storage unit in Brooklyn that is packed.

43:47I'll show you a picture later. You really have a storage unit for pizza boxes? Okay. Yeah, it's a 10 by 10 unit. I redid the floor, so it looks kind of nice. And I've got about 2 ,000 pizza boxes in there from 130 different countries. How many? 2 ,000. 2 ,000. You redid the floor of the storage unit. It's got to look nice. For photos and stuff like that. Well, because people always want to come and do photos or a video about the box collection. When it was in my apartment in a closet, it was not great. It didn't look nice. No, and I would have to pull them all out, and it was a pain, and it was bad for the boxes.

44:20So now they're in a, I treat it more seriously like an archive. So there's an archiving system, a categorization method. Like we're working on building a website where you'll be able to see images of all the boxes. Or you just, you know, go to my storage unit in Brooklyn. That's amazing. Go look at them there. What is that? Why do you need that? I don't know. It's just a big hole in my life that I fill with pizza boxes. I think it's because, no, when I started the tours, I figured, well, if I'm in this, it was 26. Yeah. And not a, what I think most people would assume like a stereotypical pizza tour guide.

45:01You know, 0 % Italian. Right. Not like I don't look like the caricature of the pizza chef on the box. You don't at all. Yeah. Yeah. So I figured, well, I just have to know everything I possibly can. And pizza boxes are a huge part of the pizza experience. Two thirds of all pizzas in America are out of a pizza box. So I figured I got to learn about them. So I started looking into it. I would collect boxes that I thought looked cool. And 10 turns into 20, turns into 50, turns into 300, turns into... It's rolling. You need this box from Joe's? I have this box. Thank you. You've got Joe's. Thank you.

45:37Thank you, David. You might have just answered my next question, but I'll ask it anyway. what's an obsession in your life that worries you? Yeah, that one that's the one because it's expensive like that storage unit ain't cheap and it's$350 $350 a month to keep your pizza box collection Yeah, it's not good And the floor renovation was pricey? It was$120 That was like vinyl squares off Amazon Don't worry about the floor Well, I have some ideas about putting up this website which will be a portal for pizza box companies to, people call me all the time asking who they should buy their pizza boxes from because I have this collection.

46:19So I might be able to do a sponsorship thing with that so that it's not such a burden. Feels like someone would sponsor your pizza box collection. Yeah. This does not feel like a stretch. But that one's, that's, the collection right now, it's okay. It's like out of the house. It was in the house for a while until we found out we were going to have a baby and then they left. and now I go there like once a month, bring in new boxes that I get, do a little sweepy sweep and then, you know, just bask in it for five minutes and then leave. How old's your kid? Two. Nice. Into pizza yet or not? She is.

46:52She loves it. Today I dressed her so she's wearing a Luigi's pizza onesie and little pizza socks. I can't wait till my wife picks her up from daycare. She'll be like, oh. She doesn't know about this yet. Whatever, she's wearing clothes. That's all that matters. Yeah, I mean, that's really what matters. When I open the drawer, I'm like, oh, pizza action. Because today is Pizza Margarita Day. It is. It's a big celebration in our world. You want to say anything about that holiday to help us? I mean, we are recording this on June 11th of 2025, which is the 136th anniversary of the date on a letter written from the office of Queen Margarita of Savoy to a pizza maker named Rafael Esposito Brandi thanking him for making her pizza.

47:41And we look at this letter as the evidence of the naming of the pizza with fresh mozzarella, basil, and tomato as the pizza margarita. Even though that letter, not only does it not say anything about that topping combination or the fact that she liked that one, it also was proven a few years ago to be a total fraud. So we celebrate today just because it feels good. I love that. Okay, this is the last one. An obsession that you've never told anyone about until right now. I don't think I have one that I've never told anybody about. There are definitely ones that people who come on tours, they know about the pizza boxes.

48:27But I've got a collection, and I guess that's an obsession that doesn't make any sense in the rest of my world. But I collect a very specific series of mostly Cold War era spy novels. That's a great obsession. A very specific series called the Nick Carter Killmaster series. What do you like about it? Dude, they're so terrible. I was going on a trip once with my band. Terrible like evil or terrible like awful writing? Terrible like awful writing. Like they're pulpy garbage. Oh, great. Everyone's 250 pages. It's like bad TV that you love. Totally. And it's like there's such a format, every single one.

49:09Oh, on page 50, the same thing happens. You know what I mean? He always like sleeps with this woman who ends up being the mastermind. They're amazing. And I keep like a spreadsheet of – I buy them everywhere I go because nobody has ever heard of them. So they're dirt cheap. I bought my first one. It was like 50 cents or something to – I think I was getting on a flight and I just needed something. and it was so bad. I think I like collecting things that nobody cares about, like pizza boxes. Yeah. Just because it's, I don't know, it feels interesting. But those books are it. I'm getting on a flight today and I kind of...

49:45You need something. Normally I go for bad horror movies on planes. Like bad, like I want it to be bad. Something that you can't watch when you have other options in your life. Right. Yeah. No, I might pick up these books. I wish I would have brought you one. But then I started, so I started looking into it And just like with pizza, there's a deeper story. This character was like a precursor to Sherlock Holmes, who ended up maybe inspiring the character Sherlock Holmes. He was like this 1880s spy, not spy, like detective. And there were all these like dime novels in the 1880s. So then I started collecting those.

50:23Of course. And I found some from like 1905, 1910. And they are, those are terrible, but some of them are really off. You might need another storage unit. Oh, God. All right, my last, last question. I'm going to make you uncomfortable. I brought you my favorite slice in New York, Joe's. Yeah. What is your favorite slice in New York? I don't have a favorite. That is the diplomatic answer I fully expected. But I'll tell you why. Because as I said earlier, There's not one pizza that fulfills every moment in my life. Joe's is comfortable. I can slip it on any time. It feels good all the time. I really do love Joe's.

51:07I have a preference of Joe's over Bleecker Street Pizza. Thank God. My wife is going to hear about this as soon as we leave the studio. But I also feel like arguing over personal preference is you got too much free time on your hands if you're doing that. That's fair. It's personal preference. But it's a marriage. I mean, you better to argue about pizza than something else. Use it as a distraction from the real stuff. But I like Joe's for its simplicity, and Bleecker Street Pizza is not the same as Joe's. It's a herbaceous slice. It's a heavier in flavor profile, and Joe's is more laid back and simple.

51:39And so if you have a preference for one or the other, it's because she's a chef, right? Yeah. That's – I get that. This is, you know, jeans and a T-shirt kind of food. I think they both kind of are, but this is the simpler one bless you Scott Wiener is the founder of Scott's Pizza Tours he's the author of Viva La Pizza and he also is founder of the non-profit Slice Out Hunger which everyone should check out Scott, you're a joy, thanks for doing this thanks for having me, it's been great talking

52:15David Green is Obsessed is a production of Campside Media It is hosted by me, David Green. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. We are mixed by Ewan Leitramuwen. The executive producers of Campside Media are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Scherr, and Josh Dean. Special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you have an obsession you would like to share, hope you do, you can send us an email. The address is obsessed at campsidemedia.com. That's obsessed at campsidemedia.com. And hey, if you enjoyed the show, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Really appreciate you listening.

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