Meeting with Scott from NY Pizza tour

I met with Scott Wiener this afternoon. Scott is the founder and tour guide of Scott's Pizza Tours of NYC. After a few days of playing phone tag, we were finally able to meet up and discuss our mutual enthusiasm for pizza. We met at John's pizzeria on Bleecker street and split a delicious sausage pie (Scott's recommendation). We talked for over an hour about different pizza styles, pizza's origins,  its cultural relevance, and of course, our personal history and connection to pizza. Scott possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of not only how pizza evolved (and still is evolving) but is also able to accurately and clearly define the many different styles of pizza (neapolitan, chicago-style, roman etc). He knew, for example, that mozzarella comes from the italian word mozzare, which means 'to cut' while also being able to tell me exactly which type of canned tomato we were eating at John's. 

What a pleasure it was to finally meet and talk with someone who loves pizza as much as I do. Scott, while very passionate, is not overbearing in his expertise. This was a nice contrast to the pizzaioli I worked under in Naples. I'm very excited to explore and learn about pizza with Scott. For those of you who want to really learn about NYC pizza you need to go on his tour:

http://www.scottspizzatours.com/