Ugly Delicious (2018) s01e01 Episode Script
Pizza
1 How often do you come to Brooklyn? Honestly, the only time I come to Brooklyn is to eat at this neighborhood.
Frankies, Pok Pok, and if the line is not too long, Lucali's.
But the main reason I come is to eat at Lucali's.
My favorite time to come here is the summer or spring, when you can bring your own beer, if the line's long, you put your name down - You hang out.
- Hang out.
Sometimes I get a couple spicy tuna rolls at the sushi place on the corner.
- Really? - Yeah! When I first opened, I made the dough one night and I didn't put enough water in it.
I couldn't stretch it.
So, I called my brother.
He lives right around the block.
I was like, "Yo, bring Grandma's rolling pin in here.
" The line was crazy and I couldn't make pizza.
He took too long.
I just grabbed a wine bottle, started doing it, the pizzas came out better.
When you roll it, you get more of a flat, crispier pie.
How did you end up with that dough? It's what I made.
You know, it's like I says, I thought, "Yeah, it's dough.
" I didn't know the whole process and everything.
You're not opening a pizzeria, are you? In the kitchen, I love the camaraderie of being able to work with other people.
I looked at it as this band of outsiders.
One reason why I got into food was because it was exactly that.
It was, I guess, a form of rebellion and badass, right, and badass through your food That had this crazy dichotomy of personality where they could barely take care of themselves outside the kitchen, but inside the kitchen, they were like special forces, highly trained assassins.
A little light on the sauce, but other than that - I thought it was good on the sauce.
- Eh.
So why pizza? Why pizza for you? Growing up as a kid, I was like, "If I was making pizza, I'd do it this way.
" A friend of mine opened a pizzeria.
I said, "I wanna try making a pie," and, like, I did it my way.
And, he was like, "Wow, that's a pretty good pizza.
" Mark Iacono in Lucali, I went to it when it was not open yet.
It's part of his shtick that they're not fully open.
And hearing the story of growing up there, in the candy shop, and he'd gone there when it was closing.
He couldn't bear to see that, so he left his job as a marble cutter to open this pizzeria for his neighborhood.
See the difference when you cook it slow? Wow.
Totally.
This is my favorite pie.
- I tell everyone.
- This, as far as my pie, - or just - This is my favorite pizza.
I voted for this on the top 50 restaurants in the world.
- Again.
Yeah! - Again? Thank you.
You would wish that on him? He's such a nice man.
- I have to be truthful.
- I'm here just making pies, I don't even pay attention to what goes on out there.
But then it's a debate of what is actually pizza? If we were in Naples, would they consider this pizza? - I can care less what they consider.
- Thank you.
Right.
What if you put barbecue chicken and cilantro on top of it? You've had a barbecue chicken pizza in your day.
- No, I haven't.
- Really? I stick to the traditional New York toppings.
- Here - I try to do them really well.
Is there, so Where is the outer limit of toppings for you? You can throw ramen on top of pizza dough.
- Is it pizza? - Please, don't.
Nah.
What is that? This is Maguro tuna.
Hmm.
Wow.
Please just separate it a little like this and try it.
A little wasabi and soy sauce.
Oh, we're gonna get destroyed with food, aren't we? Delicious.
- You want a fork? - No.
That was mean.
That was mean of me, Aziz, I'm sorry.
Uh, please come here.
What is going on? Where did you come from? I dunno what's happening.
We're supposed to be talking about pizza.
That's right.
That's right.
That's a Japanese tip.
If you don't know what's going on, you just say We're going to surprise you, Chang-san.
Maybe life is a computer simulation.
This is us Vanilla Sky-ing ourselves.
First, please eat this meaty red tuna with white vinegar.
- He wants you to - I am perplexed.
What does he wanna make with this? I'll be making pizza with this.
Pizza? Yes, pizza.
I used to make a tuna-wasabi pizza, believe it or not.
- Where was that? Wow.
- At The Mercer Kitchen.
I don't even, I'm not going I thought that was about some dark days at CPK.
- Yeah.
- California Pizza Kitchens.
Every day, the taste of tuna from the Japanese sea can change every day.
Can we get to the pizza though? All right, let's cook the pizza.
So the pizza we're about to have is all Japanese.
Every element is from Japan.
Now what else is special about this pizza isn't the tomato sauce.
It's mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise? What? What's going on? The sauce is original mayonnaise and, uh, corn.
Corn? Pizza, but sushi.
This is this one.
This is this one.
Please, together.
Oh, my God, that's fucking delicious.
A lot of wasabi, okay? I didn't even know, like, that you had this stuff.
But I also understand, that this is a very different Japanese mentality - of you wanting to do more, different.
- Yes, I know.
I don't like fusion.
Separate.
How you can say that's not fusion Wait, what's happening? I really don't consider this fusion.
This uses Japanese ingredients.
I like this.
Very Donald Trump of you.
Alternative facts.
The reason he combined this is 'cause it's, like, for you, you're eating sushi.
Yeah.
When I thought about how to eat tasty tuna on a delicious pizza, I thought about sushi and made it that way.
You realize that every pizza is a living thing.
Each one is different.
Yes.
Like snowflakes.
But you can eat them.
Can we just draw the line right now? So you For all of America - It's that sauce and cheese.
- Sauce and cheese and dough.
Let's nip it in the bud.
I'm tired of the arguing.
So let's just say this.
Anything else that's not sauce and cheese is flatbread.
- Yeah.
- What about for you? The first time you ever made me a pizza, it had mapo tofu on it.
- It did.
It was delicious.
- It was delicious.
I know you'll say it's not a pizza, but one of those places that put salad on a pizza.
They cook the dough Seems like a great thing to eat salad on top of.
When you say salad, are you talking about arugula sprinkled on the How about Chicago? Have you done Chicago-style pizza? I like it.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Deep dish pizza? - Yeah.
It's a casserole in a baked edible crust.
I think New Haven pizza, as a community, has the best pizza in America.
Have you spent time up there - I still have not made it there.
- Oh, my gosh.
It's a surprising statement.
I understand, but you gotta check it out.
You know what? All right.
I'll take your word for it.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Brooklyn was an amazing place to grow up.
There was just so much to do.
It was very adventurous, believe it or not.
As a young kid, going into all the neighborhoods, it was like Tom Sawyer.
Like we were running away from home.
I'm so closed-minded, you know, New York, New York, New York.
A lot of people recommend pizzerias to me and, for the most part, they fall short.
So now I'm a little leery about making these trips.
I gotta step up my pizza game, my travels.
When people speak of Connecticut pizza, they only mention two places: Pepe's and Sally's.
My grandfather, he had this headdress, and he would have his pizzas on his headdress, and he would go around selling his pizzas.
Wait, he'd transport pizzas on his head? - On his head, yeah.
- Okay.
My grandfather was the first one in New Haven to have a dine-in pizza restaurant.
Frank Pepe's.
- This is a coal fire.
- Yep.
This is open hearth.
It's all open inside.
- Wow.
- This oven was actually a bread baker.
- This was a bread oven? - Right.
- You could fit a lot of pizzas in there.
- Oh, yeah.
- We're gonna make some pizza? - We're gonna make some pizza.
All right.
It looks like you guys use a really wet dough.
It is.
My grandfather, back in the day, he never had refrigeration.
- Right.
- So the dough was out all the time.
I love the rustic look of it.
- It's not cookie-cutter perfect.
- It shouldn't be.
We use imported tomatoes from Italy.
- You season them at all? - Uh, I can't tell you that.
All right.
You'd have to kill me.
- How many locations are you at? - Currently eight.
Stay out of Brooklyn.
I don't want no competition.
Wow, look at that.
I'm starting to believe the hype.
- What are we making now? - I think we'll make the white clam.
I've been hearing so much about this pie.
As the story goes, there used to be two houses in front, so there was a little alleyway to get back here.
There was a guy in the alleyway, he used to cut clams on the half-shell, called Nick, he was a bookie.
He came in, he goes, "Do you ever think of putting them on a pizza?" Really? Put them on the pizza and that was the end of that.
All right.
You put a lot of clams on the pie.
No, it's about normal.
A little oregano, grated cheese, fresh garlic.
- And that's it? - That's it.
- Stand back.
- Yeah.
- You gonna start with the clam? - Yeah.
I'll start with the plain.
I think my favorite so far is the clam pie.
I really couldn't envision how it would taste and I'm really surprised at how good it is.
One guy once told me, uh, anyone who puts seafood on a pizza should get slapped in the head.
- I disagree.
We all - I'd like to slap him in the head now, after eating that.
So how do you feel about pizza now? Do you think it's more of an Italian thing or an American thing? Back in the day, this was a very strong Italian - Predominantly Italian? - Predominantly Italian neighborhood.
A lot of the older ones passed on or moved to Florida.
How the Italian culture evolved over the years It really kind of morphed into something.
It's kind of losing its - It's watered down.
- Yeah, it's watered down.
- It's losing its - It has, yeah.
- We're probably, like, the last - Of the Mohicans? Yeah, the last breed, you know? We're no longer Italian-Americans, we're American-Italians now.
I agree, I agree.
Uh We are the oldest pizzeria in the world by the same family.
And we look it.
92 years.
My grandfather, Anthony Pero, brought pizza to America.
It's been the same recipe from day one.
You don't fix something that isn't broken.
What could I Cookie, could you get a good pizza in California? No.
No! That's kinda what I thought she'd say.
How do you feel about a Chicago pie? No! No! No! You see, you're asking these questions and you haven't even eaten our pizza.
If you ate the pizza, you wouldn't ask these questions.
See what I'm saying, why you have to talk to her.
I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where it is known to have the best pizza, Pepe's.
And I will say Totonno's is by far the best pizza.
You should come here in the summer.
You have to wait an hour and a half around the block in a line to get here.
- What topping you should never put on? - Pineapple and chicken.
Pineapple! Pineapple! Ham, pineapple and chicken.
- And clams.
- Why no clams? You want clams? Have spaghetti and clams, that's where it belongs.
That's where clams belong, on spaghetti.
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Order now! I think New York is pizza.
It became a food for the world when it came to New York, right? I think it went from Italian to Italian-American, and now it's at American, you know.
I think there's all three of those things.
Question I have is, what's the best pizza? Right? I would rather eat this than Neapolitan style, so Just because it's from Italy - doesn't mean it's better.
- Thank you.
And that's what I say about pizza.
They invented it, we Italian-Americans perfected it.
I am Antonio Pace.
The President of the Association Verace Pizza Napoletana.
Our association was founded 32 years ago with a specific purpose: Guaranteeing the authority of pizza to the City of Naples.
And to spread all over the world the right way to make a Neapolitan pizza.
For us, Neapolitan pizza is a philosophy of life.
When we were making pizzas, you were still fighting with Indians.
- So, you've been to Italy before? - Never in Naples.
Never in Naples.
It's this way.
We're in the back streets of Naples.
- I love this.
- I know.
I can't quite get over how pretty it is.
I feel like there's an almost obsession with the idea of Neapolitan pizza being the first pizza or the place that pizza comes from.
- It's a romantic story.
- Yeah.
I don't buy so deeply into the idea of bread topped with things came from one place, one time.
I feel as soon as humans figured out how to mix wheat and water, they probably started putting shit on it to try to make it taste better.
- But it is their culture.
- Right.
So, I guess we have to respect it.
Wish I'd taken the line of respecting it, but now I'm the asshole criticizing it.
Look at this.
- Look at these.
- They look like heirlooms.
- Give me one basket.
- One basket? Yeah, and two of these.
- No.
Two, no.
- No? Two basket.
It's a particular tomato.
- All right, two baskets.
- Yeah.
Our region made tomatoes an element of gastronomic culture.
So San Marzano tomato is the ideal one.
The Neapolitan pizza came together in its glorious state with the use of tomato as food.
That is the mark of Verace Pizza Napoletana.
It certifies the quality of our pizza.
That mark certifies that our product is made with mozzarella fior di latte Campana.
Our dough is made according to regulation.
- It looks super wet.
- Yes, very delicate.
You just need 3 or 4 ingredients for Neapolitan pizza.
Those are the tomatoes you bought across the street.
This is classic Margherita.
- Parmigiano.
- Parmigiano.
Makes everything delicious.
Is it okay to put parmesan cheese on a Neapolitan pizza? In every pizza, parmesan, yes.
How long does it take you to cook a pizza? 50 or 60 seconds.
- Wow, that's fast.
- That's fast.
Wow.
Just like that.
We start a visual check.
The first thing is breaking the crust and see if inside there is an alveolar structure.
In this case, the pizza has fairly risen.
We're about to eat our first pizza in Naples.
Then we should smell it, even if it is not really polite.
The smell of the crust should be a fragrance of fresh bread, without strong smell of yeast.
So, if you smell the yeast or the fermentation, it's no good? Right! If it has a sour smell, it is not good.
The way to eat pizza is fold it like a wallet.
After the first bite, you feel the dough melt in your mouth.
I love the pizza.
I'm very into this.
I tried a lot of Neapolitan pizza.
I've never had anything this good.
Maybe we should get another pie? - Margherita? - Yeah.
All right, great.
Can we get one more? Pizza, I'm in love with pizza All I think is pizza A piece of pizza And I don't care what they say I'm gonna eat it anyway 'Cause it's pizza Superstar celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.
Now, he has restaurants all over the world.
This guy is crazy successful.
He is such a mogul.
- Oh, my God! - Hi, Chef.
- How are you? - Sorry, I'm so late.
We can make pizza at midnight, for breakfast, anytime.
You don't make pizza yet in your restaurant? No.
I want to, but I think a lot of my friends would be upset at me.
You know how upset they were at me.
They say, "An Austrian making pizza? What the heck?" If we wanna make pizza the way they did in Naples 300 years ago, it's okay.
I'm not saying it's not good or whatever, but it's just not our style.
So, do you think authenticity is overrated in certain things? Authenticity, I love it when you go to a place.
You know, when I'm in Italy, I wanna taste Italian food.
But America is a melting pot of cultures.
So, I think there's nothing wrong with melting some of the cuisines together.
So, in the old times, there was a guy named Johnny Carson.
- He was what Jimmy Fallon does today.
- Yeah.
- I'm not that young.
- Okay.
- I remember Johnny Carson's last episode.
- Oh, yeah? Little something here, it's nice.
Can I try it, if you like? Please sit down, and we'll give you a Pinacolonic.
Johnny Carson used to come on Friday nights and order 10, 12 pizzas to go.
Sit in the sun today? - We're going to Spago.
- Spago! After the third or fourth time, I said, "Johnny, you're having another pizza party.
" He says, "No, I put them in my freezer.
" I said, "What the hell? You put my pizzas in the freezer? I'm not gonna make pizzas anymore for you.
" He says, "No, it's as good as the regular one here.
" I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
" I was so upset.
Finally, I tried it myself, and I said, "You know what? Maybe it's not quite as good as ours we have at Spago, but it's pretty good.
" - So, we started doing - Johnny Carson is behind Behind the frozen pizzas.
But he didn't sign a deal with me so he didn't get any royalties, thank God.
- Let's do our smoked salmon pizza.
- I wanna see that.
Yeah.
You think we've lost craftsmanship though? If we're sacrificing creativity? Creativity is good by somebody who is a good craftsman.
If you know the basics, if you know your profession really well, then you can navigate and try other things.
If you were from Italy, there is no way you could have done this.
I know.
Because you're an outsider, you're allowed to do this.
Exactly.
My Italian friends would have come and said, "What the heck is that?" You have to put a little caviar on top.
But it makes people upset when you change and challenge convention.
You know, people hate change.
- Aren't you tired of pissing people off? - No.
- Never? - As long as I live, I always will do that.
And at the end of the day, as long as you get enough other people to come who'll say, "Wow! This is really interesting," it's fine.
I mean, just talking to you now, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh! There's so many similarities.
" Part of it is there's a rebellious streak in you.
Right? Yeah.
No, totally.
Still today, still today, I think, in a way, for me, I'm more like the coach now than the player.
No matter how good you are, you won't wanna play basketball when you're 45 or 48 or 50 years old.
I use the same analogy for myself all the time.
Yeah? Yeah.
I can't believe it.
I'm a Korean-American version of you.
Really? Pizza is a disk of dough.
Toppings must be picked with a gastronomic culture and sense of taste.
When we wrote our guidelines, fior di latte cheese was having a decline.
That's why I, when I wrote the first guidelines, I added buffalo mozzarella as an option.
Wow! What makes the buffalo milk from Campania so special? In Campania, we started breeding buffaloes around the years 1000-1100.
In 1000 A.
D.
? Yes.
The animals came from Northern Africa and Asia, brought to Italy by the Normans.
We are those who know how to make the real mozzarella di bufala.
There are good industries, of course, but artisans have something more.
- You good? - Okay.
All right.
- Don't fold.
- I'm trying.
Around the year 1000, the monastery of Capua tried to curdle their milk and make cheese.
They tried to cook it and noticed that it started straining.
And they found that the product was tasty.
Easy, just twist it up into a perfect braid.
Go for it.
I think I'm gonna leave that to the professionals.
Authenticity, in terms of storytelling, is important to me, but authenticity in food is not a thing.
And it's like, whoever gave you that authentic food experience, probably has never thought about themselves as authentic.
There's a reductive quality to saying that something's authentic.
Some things become special when you try and find your own way.
The starting point was to do something authentic by not trying to be authentic.
I think that's a big flaw in the world of pizza, particularly.
That is the most Italian thing, but if you only look at how it used to be done, or how it's supposed to be done, you don't allow yourself to move it forward.
If you do an authentic Neapolitan pizza, you must import buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region.
Now, who makes these rules has an obvious interest in the export of buffalo mozzarella.
So, how is it that you can be told that freshness is everything? That in Naples, they say you have 24 different mozzarellas for every hour after it's been produced.
But you still you need to buy it in import, and it's gonna take you seven days to get it to Copenhagen.
It didn't make sense to me.
If I need freshness, we'll need to make it ourselves.
You taught yourself how to make it? - YouTube.
- YouTube? - Amazing.
- A lot of YouTube, a lot of research, a lot of experimenting, a lot of shit mozzarella.
Then, last year, we got cows.
We got our own milk from our own herd of Jersey cows.
The mozzarella just Like magical dust on it.
It was crazy.
Much, much better.
- You're a big-ass dreamer.
- Yeah, I am.
That's what I've always admired about you.
You just fucking go for it.
I always make fun of my friends that are Italian chefs that you can't fuck with anything that's Italian.
And that tradition, that, like, fear of doing something that is not really Italian, which, as an immigrant, for me was a big deal.
I so wanted to be Italian, wanted to feel Italian.
I want I was like, "You know what? I'm mixed.
My mom is Norwegian.
- I'm born in Italy, my father is Italian.
" - Yeah.
I'm a big mix.
I don't care.
This idea of everything is in a certain way and it should be kept that way, has really been, like, provoking me to tinker, to say, "I think this can be done better.
" I hate being on camera, and being like, "Oh, that's so delicious.
" I'm like 'cause it seems so lame, - but it's fucking delicious.
- Right.
Our pizza is sourdough-based.
Like, the traditional pizza is on yeast, and it is a fast fermentation, it's a fast food.
If you do a real Neapolitan pizza, you will probably have the outside, the crust on it, be bigger - More bubbles.
- more open.
Yeah.
But what I think is a huge factor is when you open this, if you smell this, it doesn't smell of yeast.
And there is no pizza that has yeast in it where you cannot smell the yeast.
And for me, it's like, you put a you put a cap on it.
It's not possible to, flavor-wise, develop something that is not that thing.
It's funny to me because Italians should be proponents of the sourdough method, and not the yeast method.
- That doesn't make sense.
- Yeah.
But in that trade-off between flavor and texture, this is our choice.
Think about all the bad Italian restaurants in America.
- Yeah.
- Think about all the restaurants that open up in New York City to this day.
How many are Italian? Just, Italian never goes out of style.
I think that Italian-American food is a source of anger for you.
You're jealous of the success - Yes.
Jealous.
- and acceptance that Italian-American cuisine receives in America.
And it's not really anger, it's just sort of rage that, uh I don't understand why Italian food, Italian-American food, is so beloved in this country, - more than anything else.
- Have you ever had it? - Of course I've had it.
- It's very delicious.
What about bad pizza? What about Domino's Pizza? Did you ever have I grew up in the suburbs and Domino's was the pizza of my youth.
It's good.
It's pretty good right now.
What? - No? - Not the one I had.
Is it because you know more about pizza now? No, no.
I was really, really disappointed.
Don't be upset at me.
- No, I'm not.
- But I order Domino's, you know, occasionally, once a couple of months.
I'll send you pies more often.
Delivery.
What do you want on your pizza, man? - Why don't you get - Get a plain pie.
You get a plain pie and then make one of your insane creations.
Don't be jerks.
We'll wait till the pizza's here to be jerks.
Do you want hand-tossed, thin crust, Brooklyn style? - Brooklyn style? - Yeah, thin crust one.
Let's go with the thin-crust Brooklyn style.
Hi.
I'm Walter Green, a New York City-based human, who sometimes eats unhealthy food and then writes about it for small amounts of money.
I also happen to enjoy eating unhealthy food in my personal life.
So, when this production offered me the opportunity to attend the world-famous Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, I jumped at the chance.
Please, sit down, strap in, and join me as I dive directly into the heart of the pizza industrial complex.
I took a hit of acid.
I've been awake for 24 hours straight.
We have some food professionals, some pizza inventors.
Pizza! Is the goal just to find more customers? Stuff like that? That's the game.
- Amazing.
- Sales.
We got people going up for deals, talking price per unit.
Where it really became as big as this is in the mid '80s, when pizza, really, as an independent group, really took off.
One order of tomato sauce coming up! Fun to play with, not to eat! Mmm, you're delicious! There's a rat in there.
Just kidding.
There's not a rat.
But it could fit a human.
It could definitely fit a human body.
David Chang.
Yeah, two pies.
Thank you, sir.
Man, you got something This is my Domino's order.
Do you offer free points for free pizza? Just Hey.
Just stop with your fucking jokes.
So, this is a thin crust pizza with alfredo sauce, onions and bacon.
It's like an Alsatian pie.
Let's go for it.
- Oh, squares, they've cut it into.
- Really? Come on, you don't like it? It's not bad for eating.
- No.
No, I like it.
It's not pizza.
- Yeah.
- It's not pizza.
- What do you mean? It's not pizza.
- I wanna try the pizza.
- All right.
Wow, look at that.
This is the Brooklyn-style Domino's.
You've just done a side-by-side.
And? No.
No, no, no.
I mean, I'd much rather have your pie.
I'm not trying to be disgraceful here.
I don't think the appeal of this pizza has to do with its flavor, or its texture, or its composition.
I think it has to do with its availability and its price point.
Again, it's like, it's what you grew up on.
I went to a real, authentic Chinese restaurant.
And I found it terrible.
To me it was that, it wasn't something that I was used to.
This is what they grew up on.
This is what they had access to.
But I still, sort of, weirdly, celebrate this too.
It's pretty weird.
No, no.
I wanna do it in I'm not gonna do this.
I'm one of the biggest snobs you've ever met.
But I hate elitism.
And snobs in general.
I guess what I hate is being told that I can't like something.
"Oh, you can't do this.
" "Fuck you, I'm definitely gonna do this.
" I think the main reason I like Domino's is because I'm being told by the culinary snob patrol that I can't like it.
It's not something I eat all the time, but it reminds me of, like, growing up, 'cause this is literally the pizza that I grew up eating - you know? - Mmm-hmm.
Are you from Alexandria? Yeah.
- Northern Virginia.
Yeah, Vienna.
- Yeah.
One pepperoni topping goes 30.
Two toppings go 24 pepperonis.
- Twenty-four? - Yeah.
Three toppings go 18 pepperonis.
So, as more toppings you add, less quantity you have to put in.
How many combinations can you make? Thirty-four million.
- Thirty-four million? - Pizza combinations.
This is, like, very exciting for me to see.
'Cause this is years and years and years of a lot of people's efforts to make it as streamlined as possible.
I can no longer taste anything.
You'll probably like this.
Look how this comes in.
It's already cut.
We don't have to cut anything.
That's wild.
So Can you even eat your product anymore? I can, but I'd rather go to your restaurant.
This right here, on a Super Bowl Sunday, probably 300 come out per hour.
Wow! I love the app.
I love tracking where it's at.
So, how Are you pressing so it updates on the app continuously? No.
When the pizza's loaded in the oven, we kill it on that, so it comes off the screen, so it's made.
The computer's gonna add the time that you have the oven setting at to it.
Oh, that's crazy.
And then, when you dispatch there, it knows that it left in 12 minutes.
So, it sat here for three minutes.
That's what's crazy to me is, I don't even think that Domino's is a food company anymore.
- I think of you as a tech company.
- We're technology? - You wanna get driver training? - Yeah.
You're gonna be with Bill, delivering pizzas.
- How are you? Good? - Very good.
First thing you do, you get the order in the bag, get it set, ready to go.
We'll head out the door and take a slight jog to my truck.
All right.
You here.
Oh, my God.
Seat belts on first.
Safety first.
Can you talk about Franco Pepe, who broke off from your association? It is a pleasure for me to answer this question with this nice story.
Of course, Franco Pepe, okay.
All the famous pizza makers today started with us.
So I love to say that they are all our children.
Even if some of them were not my best work.
We could spend our entire trip walking on these little streets.
I know.
What do you think of Naples so far? I'm loving it.
And now we're in Caiazzo? "Caiazzo?" My Italian.
I gotta work on it.
Yeah.
You and me both.
Many people don't believe me, but I had dreamed of this place.
- Where is everybody? - I don't know.
- They're all at his pizzeria.
- They're all yeah.
Many pizza makers just add toppings to pizza.
No, in my opinion, it's in the simplicity that makes a difference.
- Oh, this is it? - Yeah.
We're here.
This place gotta be good.
When I opened my business in this alley, the city center was almost abandoned.
All small shops were closing down.
Everyone kept saying to me, "He's crazy! He's crazy!" And now, after four years, many shops have opened again.
Many people have come to eat my pizza.
So, you cook the pie first? Well, instead of putting tomato, I only put mozzarella.
Then, when it comes out of the oven, I put the tomato and a basil reduction.
This was my intuition, an idea of mine.
So when you eat the pizza, you totally feel the taste of tomato, mozzarella, basil and of olive oil.
This is the Mistaken Margherita! It tastes like a traditional Neapolitan pie.
With everything amped up a little bit.
There's our address.
234.
Very simple, very easy.
This is surreal.
So, is there a greeting? Can we say anything? First, let's run to the door.
Let the customer know we're - You gotta hustle.
- You gotta hustle.
You run to the door 'cause you never know if they're standing there looking at you.
- Hello.
- Hi, how are you? - Hello.
- Hello.
You ordered two medium pies.
- One with cheese, one with black olives? - Yes.
Let me get you your change.
It's all right.
- You sure? - Sure.
Oh, thank you very much.
You have a wonderful day.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- Take care.
- Bye, guys.
And, basically, that's it.
That was weird.
I got this one.
Wait for the car.
Go, run across.
I give him the receipt? Uh, no.
Receipt's just for us.
Everything's attached to the box for them.
Hi, Ricardo.
This is your You gotta take it out of the bag.
We don't wanna give him that.
Sorry, my first day on the job.
Those who are eating pizza here can watch my team working downstairs, making pizza.
You stream this on the Internet? It's the new open kitchen.
I created a corner, three tables.
A sommelier matches pizzas with wine and champagne.
This is the champagne room we're going into now.
Wow.
Look at that.
You ever thought about, like, buying the apartment upstairs above Lucali, and doing a little bit of this action? Put a pole where I could slide down.
Wow! Wait till you see this.
These are reserved tables.
I have created this corner for people who want to eat pizza.
On their own, in silence.
I could get I would charge $1,000 for it.
- Just to sit there.
- Yeah.
Pizza extra.
This is pizza heaven.
Yeah, I don't know that you can do better.
No.
We need to take video for Dave.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, if Dave was here, he'd be ordering Domino's.
He would be on his app, trying to figure out if he could get 'em to send one up here, his favorite pizza.
Has anyone offered you anything other than money? Like a favor? We do have a regular customer in our Patterson store.
She always comes to the door wearing a negligee.
Very see-through, and nothing at all underneath it.
- Does she tip big? - No, I think that is the tip.
Who doesn't wanna be a pizza man? It does come from my grandmother's kitchen and her palate.
When you're in my restaurant it's like, you're not coming there to eat pizza, you're going there to visit Mark.
Kind of, like, every Sunday, going to her house to have dinner.
So what do you make of, like, the Neapolitan pizza consortium? The people who give out the stamp that say it's DOC or DOP.
Is that a shakedown or is there some merit to it? For me, only good pizza exists.
Again, we wanna jog up and make sure that if they're looking at us, or anyone else is looking, we're representing who we are.
So I tell the new pizza makers, look inside yourself to create an identity for your pizza, and try to offer it to people in the best possible way.
Okay, I have no idea how to get in this door.
Have you ever just eaten the pizza? - No, never done that.
- Can we do that now? - Salute! - Salute! I'm at the door downstairs.
Looks like the machine, I don't know if it's not working or not.
Is there any way you can buzz me in? Thank you, bye.
Do you think Domino's - What? - is the best pizza in the world? Not to put you on the spot, but I am.
It's very good.
It is very good pizza.
When done correctly, our pizza is, it's up there with anybody.
And I've been to I actually went to Italy to look for the right pizza, the perfect pizza.
And I gotta tell you that, went to four cities, and in those four cities, I could have made a better pizza than every one of them made.
If people that like Domino's, and only like Domino's, but they haven't had any other pizza Right, it's a different product.
- Correct.
- It's I now have a wealth of pizza knowledge.
I'm not saying Domino's is not delicious, but I'm - I love Domino's.
- Yes.
But I'm not saying it's the greatest pizza in the world.
Okay.
Is that the guy? A Netflix documentary on delivery and pizzas.
Pizza delivery.
All right.
Thank you very much.
That's it? We're done? I'm not doing another delivery.
I view authenticity like a totalitarian state.
It's something that, I think, has been overvalued.
But reality is, it hasn't been scrutinized enough.
If you really boil it down to why food in Italy is gonna be so good, it's because you're there, the terroir makes a big difference.
There's microorganisms.
There's the people there, there's the smells.
It's what makes it.
It's not that I hate authenticity.
I hate that people want this singular thing that is authentic.
There are people that are making Italian food that are more Italian in its idea and thesis than anyone in Italy is making, because they're not using anything that's imported.
They're using everything that's around them.
Last year in Japan, I told our Japanese members that I was pleased for the extremely high level of their product.
Then I said, "No, please stop improving.
Because, if you make pizza better than we do, I'd get really angry.
" You think that we can do anything better in America than the Japanese do here? Japanese are so dedicated in a way that Americans are just not.
This is true.
Konnichiwa! I love this restaurant because it embodies everything I love about what I think authenticity should be.
I went to Naples 23 years ago.
It was just for fun, but not to study.
Basically, I just went there to eat.
Learn through eating.
Very funny.
Very funny.
When I first started at a pizzeria, everything was imported from Italy, but it wasn't of good quality.
Everyone thinks that delicious pizza is made from Italian flour, but I think that's wrong.
Fresh flour is best.
So if you're in Japan, it's Japanese flour.
Everything was imitation at first.
Everything.
The music, the food, everything started as a copy.
But I think Japanese people are good at taking something and making it their own, making it original.
That's true in a lot of art forms.
If you watch the progression of people that are great, they often start just imitating things they like.
And then, over time, they develop their own style, and then they evolve beyond it.
When I tell people I think the best pizza in the world's in Tokyo, - they get really upset, you know? - I see.
Yeah But people get upset.
They don't get upset when I say the best sushi, the best ramen, - the best French restaurant - I think, on first hearing it, their gut reaction is just one of shock.
Or are they not believing it because people believe it's gotta be this Italian, Italian-American thing? What Naples has given me is pizza, which I make in the image of myself.
This is, to me, the best way to show homage to something you love the most.
By not replicating it with the exact ingredients.
What did I know about pizza? But I care.
Whether I was Italian, Asian, as long as I care about what I'm doing, and wanna put the best product out there.
Is it so cheesy to say that as long as you care, or if you put love into the food, - it's gonna be delicious? - No.
No, no, no.
No.
You still need to know what you know, good pizza tastes like.
I liked the way you tried to tightly wrap that up, though.
That was good.
- Like that? - Yeah.
Little warm swell of violins at the end.
If you ever send Domino's to my pizzeria again, we're gonna be rolling around on the sidewalk.
Wow.
Whoa! What? - Oh, my God.
- This is amazing.
What! Okay.
- That was cool.
- I thought you were gonna sing.
No, no, no, no.
Chang's gonna sing next time.
Next time.
Frankies, Pok Pok, and if the line is not too long, Lucali's.
But the main reason I come is to eat at Lucali's.
My favorite time to come here is the summer or spring, when you can bring your own beer, if the line's long, you put your name down - You hang out.
- Hang out.
Sometimes I get a couple spicy tuna rolls at the sushi place on the corner.
- Really? - Yeah! When I first opened, I made the dough one night and I didn't put enough water in it.
I couldn't stretch it.
So, I called my brother.
He lives right around the block.
I was like, "Yo, bring Grandma's rolling pin in here.
" The line was crazy and I couldn't make pizza.
He took too long.
I just grabbed a wine bottle, started doing it, the pizzas came out better.
When you roll it, you get more of a flat, crispier pie.
How did you end up with that dough? It's what I made.
You know, it's like I says, I thought, "Yeah, it's dough.
" I didn't know the whole process and everything.
You're not opening a pizzeria, are you? In the kitchen, I love the camaraderie of being able to work with other people.
I looked at it as this band of outsiders.
One reason why I got into food was because it was exactly that.
It was, I guess, a form of rebellion and badass, right, and badass through your food That had this crazy dichotomy of personality where they could barely take care of themselves outside the kitchen, but inside the kitchen, they were like special forces, highly trained assassins.
A little light on the sauce, but other than that - I thought it was good on the sauce.
- Eh.
So why pizza? Why pizza for you? Growing up as a kid, I was like, "If I was making pizza, I'd do it this way.
" A friend of mine opened a pizzeria.
I said, "I wanna try making a pie," and, like, I did it my way.
And, he was like, "Wow, that's a pretty good pizza.
" Mark Iacono in Lucali, I went to it when it was not open yet.
It's part of his shtick that they're not fully open.
And hearing the story of growing up there, in the candy shop, and he'd gone there when it was closing.
He couldn't bear to see that, so he left his job as a marble cutter to open this pizzeria for his neighborhood.
See the difference when you cook it slow? Wow.
Totally.
This is my favorite pie.
- I tell everyone.
- This, as far as my pie, - or just - This is my favorite pizza.
I voted for this on the top 50 restaurants in the world.
- Again.
Yeah! - Again? Thank you.
You would wish that on him? He's such a nice man.
- I have to be truthful.
- I'm here just making pies, I don't even pay attention to what goes on out there.
But then it's a debate of what is actually pizza? If we were in Naples, would they consider this pizza? - I can care less what they consider.
- Thank you.
Right.
What if you put barbecue chicken and cilantro on top of it? You've had a barbecue chicken pizza in your day.
- No, I haven't.
- Really? I stick to the traditional New York toppings.
- Here - I try to do them really well.
Is there, so Where is the outer limit of toppings for you? You can throw ramen on top of pizza dough.
- Is it pizza? - Please, don't.
Nah.
What is that? This is Maguro tuna.
Hmm.
Wow.
Please just separate it a little like this and try it.
A little wasabi and soy sauce.
Oh, we're gonna get destroyed with food, aren't we? Delicious.
- You want a fork? - No.
That was mean.
That was mean of me, Aziz, I'm sorry.
Uh, please come here.
What is going on? Where did you come from? I dunno what's happening.
We're supposed to be talking about pizza.
That's right.
That's right.
That's a Japanese tip.
If you don't know what's going on, you just say We're going to surprise you, Chang-san.
Maybe life is a computer simulation.
This is us Vanilla Sky-ing ourselves.
First, please eat this meaty red tuna with white vinegar.
- He wants you to - I am perplexed.
What does he wanna make with this? I'll be making pizza with this.
Pizza? Yes, pizza.
I used to make a tuna-wasabi pizza, believe it or not.
- Where was that? Wow.
- At The Mercer Kitchen.
I don't even, I'm not going I thought that was about some dark days at CPK.
- Yeah.
- California Pizza Kitchens.
Every day, the taste of tuna from the Japanese sea can change every day.
Can we get to the pizza though? All right, let's cook the pizza.
So the pizza we're about to have is all Japanese.
Every element is from Japan.
Now what else is special about this pizza isn't the tomato sauce.
It's mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise? What? What's going on? The sauce is original mayonnaise and, uh, corn.
Corn? Pizza, but sushi.
This is this one.
This is this one.
Please, together.
Oh, my God, that's fucking delicious.
A lot of wasabi, okay? I didn't even know, like, that you had this stuff.
But I also understand, that this is a very different Japanese mentality - of you wanting to do more, different.
- Yes, I know.
I don't like fusion.
Separate.
How you can say that's not fusion Wait, what's happening? I really don't consider this fusion.
This uses Japanese ingredients.
I like this.
Very Donald Trump of you.
Alternative facts.
The reason he combined this is 'cause it's, like, for you, you're eating sushi.
Yeah.
When I thought about how to eat tasty tuna on a delicious pizza, I thought about sushi and made it that way.
You realize that every pizza is a living thing.
Each one is different.
Yes.
Like snowflakes.
But you can eat them.
Can we just draw the line right now? So you For all of America - It's that sauce and cheese.
- Sauce and cheese and dough.
Let's nip it in the bud.
I'm tired of the arguing.
So let's just say this.
Anything else that's not sauce and cheese is flatbread.
- Yeah.
- What about for you? The first time you ever made me a pizza, it had mapo tofu on it.
- It did.
It was delicious.
- It was delicious.
I know you'll say it's not a pizza, but one of those places that put salad on a pizza.
They cook the dough Seems like a great thing to eat salad on top of.
When you say salad, are you talking about arugula sprinkled on the How about Chicago? Have you done Chicago-style pizza? I like it.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Deep dish pizza? - Yeah.
It's a casserole in a baked edible crust.
I think New Haven pizza, as a community, has the best pizza in America.
Have you spent time up there - I still have not made it there.
- Oh, my gosh.
It's a surprising statement.
I understand, but you gotta check it out.
You know what? All right.
I'll take your word for it.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Brooklyn was an amazing place to grow up.
There was just so much to do.
It was very adventurous, believe it or not.
As a young kid, going into all the neighborhoods, it was like Tom Sawyer.
Like we were running away from home.
I'm so closed-minded, you know, New York, New York, New York.
A lot of people recommend pizzerias to me and, for the most part, they fall short.
So now I'm a little leery about making these trips.
I gotta step up my pizza game, my travels.
When people speak of Connecticut pizza, they only mention two places: Pepe's and Sally's.
My grandfather, he had this headdress, and he would have his pizzas on his headdress, and he would go around selling his pizzas.
Wait, he'd transport pizzas on his head? - On his head, yeah.
- Okay.
My grandfather was the first one in New Haven to have a dine-in pizza restaurant.
Frank Pepe's.
- This is a coal fire.
- Yep.
This is open hearth.
It's all open inside.
- Wow.
- This oven was actually a bread baker.
- This was a bread oven? - Right.
- You could fit a lot of pizzas in there.
- Oh, yeah.
- We're gonna make some pizza? - We're gonna make some pizza.
All right.
It looks like you guys use a really wet dough.
It is.
My grandfather, back in the day, he never had refrigeration.
- Right.
- So the dough was out all the time.
I love the rustic look of it.
- It's not cookie-cutter perfect.
- It shouldn't be.
We use imported tomatoes from Italy.
- You season them at all? - Uh, I can't tell you that.
All right.
You'd have to kill me.
- How many locations are you at? - Currently eight.
Stay out of Brooklyn.
I don't want no competition.
Wow, look at that.
I'm starting to believe the hype.
- What are we making now? - I think we'll make the white clam.
I've been hearing so much about this pie.
As the story goes, there used to be two houses in front, so there was a little alleyway to get back here.
There was a guy in the alleyway, he used to cut clams on the half-shell, called Nick, he was a bookie.
He came in, he goes, "Do you ever think of putting them on a pizza?" Really? Put them on the pizza and that was the end of that.
All right.
You put a lot of clams on the pie.
No, it's about normal.
A little oregano, grated cheese, fresh garlic.
- And that's it? - That's it.
- Stand back.
- Yeah.
- You gonna start with the clam? - Yeah.
I'll start with the plain.
I think my favorite so far is the clam pie.
I really couldn't envision how it would taste and I'm really surprised at how good it is.
One guy once told me, uh, anyone who puts seafood on a pizza should get slapped in the head.
- I disagree.
We all - I'd like to slap him in the head now, after eating that.
So how do you feel about pizza now? Do you think it's more of an Italian thing or an American thing? Back in the day, this was a very strong Italian - Predominantly Italian? - Predominantly Italian neighborhood.
A lot of the older ones passed on or moved to Florida.
How the Italian culture evolved over the years It really kind of morphed into something.
It's kind of losing its - It's watered down.
- Yeah, it's watered down.
- It's losing its - It has, yeah.
- We're probably, like, the last - Of the Mohicans? Yeah, the last breed, you know? We're no longer Italian-Americans, we're American-Italians now.
I agree, I agree.
Uh We are the oldest pizzeria in the world by the same family.
And we look it.
92 years.
My grandfather, Anthony Pero, brought pizza to America.
It's been the same recipe from day one.
You don't fix something that isn't broken.
What could I Cookie, could you get a good pizza in California? No.
No! That's kinda what I thought she'd say.
How do you feel about a Chicago pie? No! No! No! You see, you're asking these questions and you haven't even eaten our pizza.
If you ate the pizza, you wouldn't ask these questions.
See what I'm saying, why you have to talk to her.
I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where it is known to have the best pizza, Pepe's.
And I will say Totonno's is by far the best pizza.
You should come here in the summer.
You have to wait an hour and a half around the block in a line to get here.
- What topping you should never put on? - Pineapple and chicken.
Pineapple! Pineapple! Ham, pineapple and chicken.
- And clams.
- Why no clams? You want clams? Have spaghetti and clams, that's where it belongs.
That's where clams belong, on spaghetti.
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Order now! I think New York is pizza.
It became a food for the world when it came to New York, right? I think it went from Italian to Italian-American, and now it's at American, you know.
I think there's all three of those things.
Question I have is, what's the best pizza? Right? I would rather eat this than Neapolitan style, so Just because it's from Italy - doesn't mean it's better.
- Thank you.
And that's what I say about pizza.
They invented it, we Italian-Americans perfected it.
I am Antonio Pace.
The President of the Association Verace Pizza Napoletana.
Our association was founded 32 years ago with a specific purpose: Guaranteeing the authority of pizza to the City of Naples.
And to spread all over the world the right way to make a Neapolitan pizza.
For us, Neapolitan pizza is a philosophy of life.
When we were making pizzas, you were still fighting with Indians.
- So, you've been to Italy before? - Never in Naples.
Never in Naples.
It's this way.
We're in the back streets of Naples.
- I love this.
- I know.
I can't quite get over how pretty it is.
I feel like there's an almost obsession with the idea of Neapolitan pizza being the first pizza or the place that pizza comes from.
- It's a romantic story.
- Yeah.
I don't buy so deeply into the idea of bread topped with things came from one place, one time.
I feel as soon as humans figured out how to mix wheat and water, they probably started putting shit on it to try to make it taste better.
- But it is their culture.
- Right.
So, I guess we have to respect it.
Wish I'd taken the line of respecting it, but now I'm the asshole criticizing it.
Look at this.
- Look at these.
- They look like heirlooms.
- Give me one basket.
- One basket? Yeah, and two of these.
- No.
Two, no.
- No? Two basket.
It's a particular tomato.
- All right, two baskets.
- Yeah.
Our region made tomatoes an element of gastronomic culture.
So San Marzano tomato is the ideal one.
The Neapolitan pizza came together in its glorious state with the use of tomato as food.
That is the mark of Verace Pizza Napoletana.
It certifies the quality of our pizza.
That mark certifies that our product is made with mozzarella fior di latte Campana.
Our dough is made according to regulation.
- It looks super wet.
- Yes, very delicate.
You just need 3 or 4 ingredients for Neapolitan pizza.
Those are the tomatoes you bought across the street.
This is classic Margherita.
- Parmigiano.
- Parmigiano.
Makes everything delicious.
Is it okay to put parmesan cheese on a Neapolitan pizza? In every pizza, parmesan, yes.
How long does it take you to cook a pizza? 50 or 60 seconds.
- Wow, that's fast.
- That's fast.
Wow.
Just like that.
We start a visual check.
The first thing is breaking the crust and see if inside there is an alveolar structure.
In this case, the pizza has fairly risen.
We're about to eat our first pizza in Naples.
Then we should smell it, even if it is not really polite.
The smell of the crust should be a fragrance of fresh bread, without strong smell of yeast.
So, if you smell the yeast or the fermentation, it's no good? Right! If it has a sour smell, it is not good.
The way to eat pizza is fold it like a wallet.
After the first bite, you feel the dough melt in your mouth.
I love the pizza.
I'm very into this.
I tried a lot of Neapolitan pizza.
I've never had anything this good.
Maybe we should get another pie? - Margherita? - Yeah.
All right, great.
Can we get one more? Pizza, I'm in love with pizza All I think is pizza A piece of pizza And I don't care what they say I'm gonna eat it anyway 'Cause it's pizza Superstar celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck.
Now, he has restaurants all over the world.
This guy is crazy successful.
He is such a mogul.
- Oh, my God! - Hi, Chef.
- How are you? - Sorry, I'm so late.
We can make pizza at midnight, for breakfast, anytime.
You don't make pizza yet in your restaurant? No.
I want to, but I think a lot of my friends would be upset at me.
You know how upset they were at me.
They say, "An Austrian making pizza? What the heck?" If we wanna make pizza the way they did in Naples 300 years ago, it's okay.
I'm not saying it's not good or whatever, but it's just not our style.
So, do you think authenticity is overrated in certain things? Authenticity, I love it when you go to a place.
You know, when I'm in Italy, I wanna taste Italian food.
But America is a melting pot of cultures.
So, I think there's nothing wrong with melting some of the cuisines together.
So, in the old times, there was a guy named Johnny Carson.
- He was what Jimmy Fallon does today.
- Yeah.
- I'm not that young.
- Okay.
- I remember Johnny Carson's last episode.
- Oh, yeah? Little something here, it's nice.
Can I try it, if you like? Please sit down, and we'll give you a Pinacolonic.
Johnny Carson used to come on Friday nights and order 10, 12 pizzas to go.
Sit in the sun today? - We're going to Spago.
- Spago! After the third or fourth time, I said, "Johnny, you're having another pizza party.
" He says, "No, I put them in my freezer.
" I said, "What the hell? You put my pizzas in the freezer? I'm not gonna make pizzas anymore for you.
" He says, "No, it's as good as the regular one here.
" I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.
" I was so upset.
Finally, I tried it myself, and I said, "You know what? Maybe it's not quite as good as ours we have at Spago, but it's pretty good.
" - So, we started doing - Johnny Carson is behind Behind the frozen pizzas.
But he didn't sign a deal with me so he didn't get any royalties, thank God.
- Let's do our smoked salmon pizza.
- I wanna see that.
Yeah.
You think we've lost craftsmanship though? If we're sacrificing creativity? Creativity is good by somebody who is a good craftsman.
If you know the basics, if you know your profession really well, then you can navigate and try other things.
If you were from Italy, there is no way you could have done this.
I know.
Because you're an outsider, you're allowed to do this.
Exactly.
My Italian friends would have come and said, "What the heck is that?" You have to put a little caviar on top.
But it makes people upset when you change and challenge convention.
You know, people hate change.
- Aren't you tired of pissing people off? - No.
- Never? - As long as I live, I always will do that.
And at the end of the day, as long as you get enough other people to come who'll say, "Wow! This is really interesting," it's fine.
I mean, just talking to you now, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh! There's so many similarities.
" Part of it is there's a rebellious streak in you.
Right? Yeah.
No, totally.
Still today, still today, I think, in a way, for me, I'm more like the coach now than the player.
No matter how good you are, you won't wanna play basketball when you're 45 or 48 or 50 years old.
I use the same analogy for myself all the time.
Yeah? Yeah.
I can't believe it.
I'm a Korean-American version of you.
Really? Pizza is a disk of dough.
Toppings must be picked with a gastronomic culture and sense of taste.
When we wrote our guidelines, fior di latte cheese was having a decline.
That's why I, when I wrote the first guidelines, I added buffalo mozzarella as an option.
Wow! What makes the buffalo milk from Campania so special? In Campania, we started breeding buffaloes around the years 1000-1100.
In 1000 A.
D.
? Yes.
The animals came from Northern Africa and Asia, brought to Italy by the Normans.
We are those who know how to make the real mozzarella di bufala.
There are good industries, of course, but artisans have something more.
- You good? - Okay.
All right.
- Don't fold.
- I'm trying.
Around the year 1000, the monastery of Capua tried to curdle their milk and make cheese.
They tried to cook it and noticed that it started straining.
And they found that the product was tasty.
Easy, just twist it up into a perfect braid.
Go for it.
I think I'm gonna leave that to the professionals.
Authenticity, in terms of storytelling, is important to me, but authenticity in food is not a thing.
And it's like, whoever gave you that authentic food experience, probably has never thought about themselves as authentic.
There's a reductive quality to saying that something's authentic.
Some things become special when you try and find your own way.
The starting point was to do something authentic by not trying to be authentic.
I think that's a big flaw in the world of pizza, particularly.
That is the most Italian thing, but if you only look at how it used to be done, or how it's supposed to be done, you don't allow yourself to move it forward.
If you do an authentic Neapolitan pizza, you must import buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region.
Now, who makes these rules has an obvious interest in the export of buffalo mozzarella.
So, how is it that you can be told that freshness is everything? That in Naples, they say you have 24 different mozzarellas for every hour after it's been produced.
But you still you need to buy it in import, and it's gonna take you seven days to get it to Copenhagen.
It didn't make sense to me.
If I need freshness, we'll need to make it ourselves.
You taught yourself how to make it? - YouTube.
- YouTube? - Amazing.
- A lot of YouTube, a lot of research, a lot of experimenting, a lot of shit mozzarella.
Then, last year, we got cows.
We got our own milk from our own herd of Jersey cows.
The mozzarella just Like magical dust on it.
It was crazy.
Much, much better.
- You're a big-ass dreamer.
- Yeah, I am.
That's what I've always admired about you.
You just fucking go for it.
I always make fun of my friends that are Italian chefs that you can't fuck with anything that's Italian.
And that tradition, that, like, fear of doing something that is not really Italian, which, as an immigrant, for me was a big deal.
I so wanted to be Italian, wanted to feel Italian.
I want I was like, "You know what? I'm mixed.
My mom is Norwegian.
- I'm born in Italy, my father is Italian.
" - Yeah.
I'm a big mix.
I don't care.
This idea of everything is in a certain way and it should be kept that way, has really been, like, provoking me to tinker, to say, "I think this can be done better.
" I hate being on camera, and being like, "Oh, that's so delicious.
" I'm like 'cause it seems so lame, - but it's fucking delicious.
- Right.
Our pizza is sourdough-based.
Like, the traditional pizza is on yeast, and it is a fast fermentation, it's a fast food.
If you do a real Neapolitan pizza, you will probably have the outside, the crust on it, be bigger - More bubbles.
- more open.
Yeah.
But what I think is a huge factor is when you open this, if you smell this, it doesn't smell of yeast.
And there is no pizza that has yeast in it where you cannot smell the yeast.
And for me, it's like, you put a you put a cap on it.
It's not possible to, flavor-wise, develop something that is not that thing.
It's funny to me because Italians should be proponents of the sourdough method, and not the yeast method.
- That doesn't make sense.
- Yeah.
But in that trade-off between flavor and texture, this is our choice.
Think about all the bad Italian restaurants in America.
- Yeah.
- Think about all the restaurants that open up in New York City to this day.
How many are Italian? Just, Italian never goes out of style.
I think that Italian-American food is a source of anger for you.
You're jealous of the success - Yes.
Jealous.
- and acceptance that Italian-American cuisine receives in America.
And it's not really anger, it's just sort of rage that, uh I don't understand why Italian food, Italian-American food, is so beloved in this country, - more than anything else.
- Have you ever had it? - Of course I've had it.
- It's very delicious.
What about bad pizza? What about Domino's Pizza? Did you ever have I grew up in the suburbs and Domino's was the pizza of my youth.
It's good.
It's pretty good right now.
What? - No? - Not the one I had.
Is it because you know more about pizza now? No, no.
I was really, really disappointed.
Don't be upset at me.
- No, I'm not.
- But I order Domino's, you know, occasionally, once a couple of months.
I'll send you pies more often.
Delivery.
What do you want on your pizza, man? - Why don't you get - Get a plain pie.
You get a plain pie and then make one of your insane creations.
Don't be jerks.
We'll wait till the pizza's here to be jerks.
Do you want hand-tossed, thin crust, Brooklyn style? - Brooklyn style? - Yeah, thin crust one.
Let's go with the thin-crust Brooklyn style.
Hi.
I'm Walter Green, a New York City-based human, who sometimes eats unhealthy food and then writes about it for small amounts of money.
I also happen to enjoy eating unhealthy food in my personal life.
So, when this production offered me the opportunity to attend the world-famous Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, I jumped at the chance.
Please, sit down, strap in, and join me as I dive directly into the heart of the pizza industrial complex.
I took a hit of acid.
I've been awake for 24 hours straight.
We have some food professionals, some pizza inventors.
Pizza! Is the goal just to find more customers? Stuff like that? That's the game.
- Amazing.
- Sales.
We got people going up for deals, talking price per unit.
Where it really became as big as this is in the mid '80s, when pizza, really, as an independent group, really took off.
One order of tomato sauce coming up! Fun to play with, not to eat! Mmm, you're delicious! There's a rat in there.
Just kidding.
There's not a rat.
But it could fit a human.
It could definitely fit a human body.
David Chang.
Yeah, two pies.
Thank you, sir.
Man, you got something This is my Domino's order.
Do you offer free points for free pizza? Just Hey.
Just stop with your fucking jokes.
So, this is a thin crust pizza with alfredo sauce, onions and bacon.
It's like an Alsatian pie.
Let's go for it.
- Oh, squares, they've cut it into.
- Really? Come on, you don't like it? It's not bad for eating.
- No.
No, I like it.
It's not pizza.
- Yeah.
- It's not pizza.
- What do you mean? It's not pizza.
- I wanna try the pizza.
- All right.
Wow, look at that.
This is the Brooklyn-style Domino's.
You've just done a side-by-side.
And? No.
No, no, no.
I mean, I'd much rather have your pie.
I'm not trying to be disgraceful here.
I don't think the appeal of this pizza has to do with its flavor, or its texture, or its composition.
I think it has to do with its availability and its price point.
Again, it's like, it's what you grew up on.
I went to a real, authentic Chinese restaurant.
And I found it terrible.
To me it was that, it wasn't something that I was used to.
This is what they grew up on.
This is what they had access to.
But I still, sort of, weirdly, celebrate this too.
It's pretty weird.
No, no.
I wanna do it in I'm not gonna do this.
I'm one of the biggest snobs you've ever met.
But I hate elitism.
And snobs in general.
I guess what I hate is being told that I can't like something.
"Oh, you can't do this.
" "Fuck you, I'm definitely gonna do this.
" I think the main reason I like Domino's is because I'm being told by the culinary snob patrol that I can't like it.
It's not something I eat all the time, but it reminds me of, like, growing up, 'cause this is literally the pizza that I grew up eating - you know? - Mmm-hmm.
Are you from Alexandria? Yeah.
- Northern Virginia.
Yeah, Vienna.
- Yeah.
One pepperoni topping goes 30.
Two toppings go 24 pepperonis.
- Twenty-four? - Yeah.
Three toppings go 18 pepperonis.
So, as more toppings you add, less quantity you have to put in.
How many combinations can you make? Thirty-four million.
- Thirty-four million? - Pizza combinations.
This is, like, very exciting for me to see.
'Cause this is years and years and years of a lot of people's efforts to make it as streamlined as possible.
I can no longer taste anything.
You'll probably like this.
Look how this comes in.
It's already cut.
We don't have to cut anything.
That's wild.
So Can you even eat your product anymore? I can, but I'd rather go to your restaurant.
This right here, on a Super Bowl Sunday, probably 300 come out per hour.
Wow! I love the app.
I love tracking where it's at.
So, how Are you pressing so it updates on the app continuously? No.
When the pizza's loaded in the oven, we kill it on that, so it comes off the screen, so it's made.
The computer's gonna add the time that you have the oven setting at to it.
Oh, that's crazy.
And then, when you dispatch there, it knows that it left in 12 minutes.
So, it sat here for three minutes.
That's what's crazy to me is, I don't even think that Domino's is a food company anymore.
- I think of you as a tech company.
- We're technology? - You wanna get driver training? - Yeah.
You're gonna be with Bill, delivering pizzas.
- How are you? Good? - Very good.
First thing you do, you get the order in the bag, get it set, ready to go.
We'll head out the door and take a slight jog to my truck.
All right.
You here.
Oh, my God.
Seat belts on first.
Safety first.
Can you talk about Franco Pepe, who broke off from your association? It is a pleasure for me to answer this question with this nice story.
Of course, Franco Pepe, okay.
All the famous pizza makers today started with us.
So I love to say that they are all our children.
Even if some of them were not my best work.
We could spend our entire trip walking on these little streets.
I know.
What do you think of Naples so far? I'm loving it.
And now we're in Caiazzo? "Caiazzo?" My Italian.
I gotta work on it.
Yeah.
You and me both.
Many people don't believe me, but I had dreamed of this place.
- Where is everybody? - I don't know.
- They're all at his pizzeria.
- They're all yeah.
Many pizza makers just add toppings to pizza.
No, in my opinion, it's in the simplicity that makes a difference.
- Oh, this is it? - Yeah.
We're here.
This place gotta be good.
When I opened my business in this alley, the city center was almost abandoned.
All small shops were closing down.
Everyone kept saying to me, "He's crazy! He's crazy!" And now, after four years, many shops have opened again.
Many people have come to eat my pizza.
So, you cook the pie first? Well, instead of putting tomato, I only put mozzarella.
Then, when it comes out of the oven, I put the tomato and a basil reduction.
This was my intuition, an idea of mine.
So when you eat the pizza, you totally feel the taste of tomato, mozzarella, basil and of olive oil.
This is the Mistaken Margherita! It tastes like a traditional Neapolitan pie.
With everything amped up a little bit.
There's our address.
234.
Very simple, very easy.
This is surreal.
So, is there a greeting? Can we say anything? First, let's run to the door.
Let the customer know we're - You gotta hustle.
- You gotta hustle.
You run to the door 'cause you never know if they're standing there looking at you.
- Hello.
- Hi, how are you? - Hello.
- Hello.
You ordered two medium pies.
- One with cheese, one with black olives? - Yes.
Let me get you your change.
It's all right.
- You sure? - Sure.
Oh, thank you very much.
You have a wonderful day.
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- Take care.
- Bye, guys.
And, basically, that's it.
That was weird.
I got this one.
Wait for the car.
Go, run across.
I give him the receipt? Uh, no.
Receipt's just for us.
Everything's attached to the box for them.
Hi, Ricardo.
This is your You gotta take it out of the bag.
We don't wanna give him that.
Sorry, my first day on the job.
Those who are eating pizza here can watch my team working downstairs, making pizza.
You stream this on the Internet? It's the new open kitchen.
I created a corner, three tables.
A sommelier matches pizzas with wine and champagne.
This is the champagne room we're going into now.
Wow.
Look at that.
You ever thought about, like, buying the apartment upstairs above Lucali, and doing a little bit of this action? Put a pole where I could slide down.
Wow! Wait till you see this.
These are reserved tables.
I have created this corner for people who want to eat pizza.
On their own, in silence.
I could get I would charge $1,000 for it.
- Just to sit there.
- Yeah.
Pizza extra.
This is pizza heaven.
Yeah, I don't know that you can do better.
No.
We need to take video for Dave.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, if Dave was here, he'd be ordering Domino's.
He would be on his app, trying to figure out if he could get 'em to send one up here, his favorite pizza.
Has anyone offered you anything other than money? Like a favor? We do have a regular customer in our Patterson store.
She always comes to the door wearing a negligee.
Very see-through, and nothing at all underneath it.
- Does she tip big? - No, I think that is the tip.
Who doesn't wanna be a pizza man? It does come from my grandmother's kitchen and her palate.
When you're in my restaurant it's like, you're not coming there to eat pizza, you're going there to visit Mark.
Kind of, like, every Sunday, going to her house to have dinner.
So what do you make of, like, the Neapolitan pizza consortium? The people who give out the stamp that say it's DOC or DOP.
Is that a shakedown or is there some merit to it? For me, only good pizza exists.
Again, we wanna jog up and make sure that if they're looking at us, or anyone else is looking, we're representing who we are.
So I tell the new pizza makers, look inside yourself to create an identity for your pizza, and try to offer it to people in the best possible way.
Okay, I have no idea how to get in this door.
Have you ever just eaten the pizza? - No, never done that.
- Can we do that now? - Salute! - Salute! I'm at the door downstairs.
Looks like the machine, I don't know if it's not working or not.
Is there any way you can buzz me in? Thank you, bye.
Do you think Domino's - What? - is the best pizza in the world? Not to put you on the spot, but I am.
It's very good.
It is very good pizza.
When done correctly, our pizza is, it's up there with anybody.
And I've been to I actually went to Italy to look for the right pizza, the perfect pizza.
And I gotta tell you that, went to four cities, and in those four cities, I could have made a better pizza than every one of them made.
If people that like Domino's, and only like Domino's, but they haven't had any other pizza Right, it's a different product.
- Correct.
- It's I now have a wealth of pizza knowledge.
I'm not saying Domino's is not delicious, but I'm - I love Domino's.
- Yes.
But I'm not saying it's the greatest pizza in the world.
Okay.
Is that the guy? A Netflix documentary on delivery and pizzas.
Pizza delivery.
All right.
Thank you very much.
That's it? We're done? I'm not doing another delivery.
I view authenticity like a totalitarian state.
It's something that, I think, has been overvalued.
But reality is, it hasn't been scrutinized enough.
If you really boil it down to why food in Italy is gonna be so good, it's because you're there, the terroir makes a big difference.
There's microorganisms.
There's the people there, there's the smells.
It's what makes it.
It's not that I hate authenticity.
I hate that people want this singular thing that is authentic.
There are people that are making Italian food that are more Italian in its idea and thesis than anyone in Italy is making, because they're not using anything that's imported.
They're using everything that's around them.
Last year in Japan, I told our Japanese members that I was pleased for the extremely high level of their product.
Then I said, "No, please stop improving.
Because, if you make pizza better than we do, I'd get really angry.
" You think that we can do anything better in America than the Japanese do here? Japanese are so dedicated in a way that Americans are just not.
This is true.
Konnichiwa! I love this restaurant because it embodies everything I love about what I think authenticity should be.
I went to Naples 23 years ago.
It was just for fun, but not to study.
Basically, I just went there to eat.
Learn through eating.
Very funny.
Very funny.
When I first started at a pizzeria, everything was imported from Italy, but it wasn't of good quality.
Everyone thinks that delicious pizza is made from Italian flour, but I think that's wrong.
Fresh flour is best.
So if you're in Japan, it's Japanese flour.
Everything was imitation at first.
Everything.
The music, the food, everything started as a copy.
But I think Japanese people are good at taking something and making it their own, making it original.
That's true in a lot of art forms.
If you watch the progression of people that are great, they often start just imitating things they like.
And then, over time, they develop their own style, and then they evolve beyond it.
When I tell people I think the best pizza in the world's in Tokyo, - they get really upset, you know? - I see.
Yeah But people get upset.
They don't get upset when I say the best sushi, the best ramen, - the best French restaurant - I think, on first hearing it, their gut reaction is just one of shock.
Or are they not believing it because people believe it's gotta be this Italian, Italian-American thing? What Naples has given me is pizza, which I make in the image of myself.
This is, to me, the best way to show homage to something you love the most.
By not replicating it with the exact ingredients.
What did I know about pizza? But I care.
Whether I was Italian, Asian, as long as I care about what I'm doing, and wanna put the best product out there.
Is it so cheesy to say that as long as you care, or if you put love into the food, - it's gonna be delicious? - No.
No, no, no.
No.
You still need to know what you know, good pizza tastes like.
I liked the way you tried to tightly wrap that up, though.
That was good.
- Like that? - Yeah.
Little warm swell of violins at the end.
If you ever send Domino's to my pizzeria again, we're gonna be rolling around on the sidewalk.
Wow.
Whoa! What? - Oh, my God.
- This is amazing.
What! Okay.
- That was cool.
- I thought you were gonna sing.
No, no, no, no.
Chang's gonna sing next time.
Next time.