The slice of life: an inside look at the International Pizza Expo
Natalie B. Compton spends three days at the biggest event in the industry’s calendar, where the big cheeses of the community explore new gadgets, compete in ‘pizza Olympics’ and, of course, taste the best of the best
I wake up in my Vegas hotel room with a swollen face and what you might call “mush brain”. It’s not one of my worst hangovers, but it also isn’t the kind you typically wake up with in this city. I had eaten too much pizza. New York slices. Neapolitan. Tavern style. Vegan. Sicilian. Experimental.
How much mozzarella can the human body handle? I’d spent seven hours the day before exploring the question as I walked the marinara-coloured carpet of the International Pizza Expo, the world’s largest convention for the pizza industry. One of the selling points – or perils – is being surrounded by an endless supply of pizza. Delicious, just-out-of-the-oven bottomless pizza made by the most talented names in the business. Unfortunately for me, willpower isn’t my strong suit.
Six thousand miles from Naples, the birthplace of pizza, the expo has brought thousands of people from every corner of the global pizza industry to Vegas for 39 years. They come for typical conference experiences – seminars, networking, gadgets and ingredients from more than 400 exhibitors. Some come to battle in pizza-making competitions or the “World Pizza Games” – everyday pizzeria tasks turned into sports, like fastest pizza box assembly or dough stretching.
“It’s almost like the pizza Olympics and the Super Bowl of pizza all in one,” says Tony Gemignani, who is like the Michael Phelps-slash-Tom Brady of the expo. He’s a restaurateur, author and pizza acrobatics world champion many times over who’s won several Guinness World Records.
For pizza insiders, it’s like summer camp, where they’re guaranteed to see friends from all over the world. People get engaged here. They find inspiration to chase pizza ambitions and learn skills to better pursue them. Or just find a new pepperoni they really like.
Day one
A pizza conference is no place for tight trousers. I change out of jeans into stretchy slacks at the airport before arriving at the 3.2 million-square-foot Las Vegas Convention Center.
The Italians congregating in the lobby are a helpful indicator I’ve found the expo. I follow them into the main hall, an enormous expanse that smells like fresh-baked crust and seems to stretch on in perpetuity.
The first moments are as hectic as getting out of a subway station in Tokyo. Businesspeople everywhere. Bright lights. Futuristic technology. Mascots. Some booths have build-outs with the production value of off-Broadway musicals. There are mini restaurants to woo potential clients. One has a garden terrace for “al fresco” dining where an accordion player and two guitarists play on fake grass surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Many have brought massive ovens to bake fresh pizza, meatballs and focaccia, or refrigerators to serve wine and Sicilian soda.
My Neapolitan-style pizza is impossible to put down after the first slice. I eat a second and force myself to give the box to a group of people standing nearby. I may as well be dropping a puppy off at a shelter
A rookie might be inclined to grab any morsel they can find. But I’ve been prepared for this moment.
“When you are there, you will be tempted by everything,” Scott Wiener, 41, pizza historian and owner of Scott’s Pizza Tours, warned me a week before the show.
In addition to the food tours, Wiener is an award-winning columnist and a regular on TV. He’s been coming to the Vegas expo since 2007, first as a fledgling pizza writer and now as a speaker, judge and tour guide.
“If you’re just looking to have something that tastes good, the best food to eat is always not the companies that are selling a product that goes on a pizza,” he said. “It will be the companies selling flour or ovens.”
He was my pizza North Star. The only issue would be sticking to his advice.
I’m paralysed with indecision when I stop to take photos of a guy rolling out pizza dough. It’s the booth of Dang Brother Pizza from San Diego, whose speciality is making pizza in vintage fire trucks refurbished with wood-fired ovens.
“Do you want a pizza?” the dough roller asks.
A whole pizza? For me? I’m stunned. I’d been expecting samples, and now I had an entire piping-hot Neapolitan-style pepperoni pie. It’s impossible to put down after the first slice. I eat a second and force myself to give the box to a group of people standing nearby. I may as well be dropping a puppy off at a shelter. What kind of monster gives away a perfect pizza?
I refocus on Wiener’s advice and head for the oven makers.
Civilians can’t attend the expo, but one of the hottest booths was for the home cook: Ooni pizza ovens, the petite, portable ovens that can help anyone become a pizza chef.
Ooni has some big names to demo its ovens at the show, such as Dan Richer, 42, an expo regular and owner of Razza – the Jersey City pizzeria that led the New York Times to question whether New York’s best pizza was actually in New Jersey.
Richer’s first expo was right out of college. He hoped to open his own pizzeria one day and was mesmerised by the equipment and demos. He’d tasted every tomato and investigated every flour. Now 20 years into his pizza career, he comes back to the expo with that same sense of wonder.
“I just feel like a kid in a candy store,” Richer says, eyes twinkling as he talks about it.
I spend the rest of the day near the pizza competition stage where Wiener said I could sample prize-worthy leftovers. My notebook becomes stained with pizza grease. I’ve had at least six slices, among other snacks, and not nearly enough water. On my way out, I pass someone with a pepperoni slice and immediately craved more.
Day two
Bloated and reeling, I peel myself out of bed to make it to Gemignani’s annual 8.30am “Making Pizzas with Tony Gemignani” workshop. Attendees pay an extra $250 (£200) to get a crash course from the legend in dough making, sauce 101 and the differences between popular pizza styles.
“I like my grandma a little bit fried,” he says, going over the art of the grandma pie.
After, a mass of people line up to get their books signed and take selfies with Gemignani. I notice one audience member – James Liyu, who owns a takeaway pizza spot in Melbourne – make a beeline for one of Gemignani’s assistants.
“I was just trying to find out how to tweak my dough a little bit,” says Liyu, who flew more than 18 hours to attend the expo.
“You know going to Mecca?” Liyu says. “This is like going to the Mecca of pizza.”
His goals were simple: Liyu wanted to make his pizza better and find a mentor. In a day and change, he’s succeeded in doing both. Gemignani’s workshop had been eye-opening, Liyu says, and he had already met someone who’s been in pizza for 40 years that would fly out and help him at the shop.
The seminars are a godsend; they’re educational, but also a time to rest your feet.
I’m elated to sit for an hour at a panel discussion on women-owned pizzerias. Victoria Tiso of Louie and Ernie’s Pizza – wearing a pair of custom shoes the Bronx pizzeria recently made with Fila – tells me it’s comforting to hear other women’s experiences before she takes over her family’s business. Most of us in the room are women, a departure from the mostly male scene at the expo, although the number of female attendees is growing.
Then there’s pizza consultant Scott Sandler’s session on cashew cheese. I’d thrown away samples from vegan cheese companies on my first day, but I eat four of Sandler’s slices. The ricotta-like “cheese” is easy to make at home and fantastic. More bewitching, I don’t feel worse after eating them.
I can’t say the same after my RockStar energy drink, or “pizza cookie” or canned “pizza wine” (not pizza flavored, just goes with pizza). I break into an emergency salad I packed.
The only thing that eases my pain is test-driving the Palazzolo Cheese Hog. It’s a 200lb commercial cheese grater that can shred a hundred pounds in minutes. The machine was invented in the 1980s by Pete Palazzolo, an engineer and son of Sicilian immigrants who usually got stuck on shredding duty when his nonna made pies. Now it’s a pizza prep game changer. You haven’t lived until you’ve pressed against its stainless steel handle and watched a brick of mozzarella turn into confetti. It’s a pleasure no other kitchen gadget can replicate.
All week, people tell me they keep coming back to the expo for the community. Watching people reunite with bear hugs and tease each other during my 24 hours on the expo floor, I get it
Day two wraps up with a “block party” at the freestyle acrobatics finals. A panel of judges – all pizza experts, some master tossers themselves – sits ready with whiteboards to score the competitors on their performance flinging discs of pizza dough over their heads, between their legs and behind their backs on stage.
At least it looks like pizza dough. The discs are inedible. The impostors are made with flour, water and significantly more salt than you’d find in a pie at your neighbourhood pizzeria. The salt bomb beefs up the dough’s density so it doesn’t tear as easily – important for the pizzaiolo-meets-flair bartender competition.
The youngest contestant is Michael Testa, who competed in a “How you doin’?” T-shirt. Back home in Colonia, New Jersey, Testa’s day job is working at his family’s two pizzerias: Jersey Boys Pizza and Carmine’s Pizza Factory. He’s been a pizza acrobat for more than a decade – even though he’s only 18. When he was seven, a video of him tossing dough went viral, and the rest is history.
“You know how people go to Disneyland, or they go out to Aruba for the summer? This is my vacation, even though it involves work,” Testa says.
Testa scores high enough to advance to the finals of the 2023 competition, but doesn’t make it to the best of the best finale, where Scott Volpe, 31, of Fiamme Pizza Napoletana in Tucson, bests last year’s champion by way of break dancing. Watching hours of pizza acrobatics turns me into a passionate fan. When the judges don’t give Volpe 10s across the board, I almost boo.
Day three
All week, people tell me they keep coming back to the expo for the community. Watching people reunite with bear hugs and tease each other during my 24 hours on the expo floor, I get it.
“We look forward to it every year,” says Nicole Bean, president of Pizaro’s Pizza Napoletana in Houston and an expo speaker. “It’s kind of like going to see our extended family of pizza friends.”
Paul Giannone, well known in the industry for his move from a career in tech to pizza in his fifties, tells me about the time he almost missed an expo. It was the year after his first; he figured he didn’t need to go two times in a row. Then the Paulie Gee’s owner saw friends posting from Vegas on social media and the fomo kicked in. He got on a flight that night “and I haven’t missed one since,” he says.
“I’ve developed so many friends in this pizza community,” says Giannone, 69, a Brooklyn native. “And I don’t call it a pizza business because it really is a community.”
All that’s left is the crowning of winners for the cooking competitions. I sit in the bleachers and watch. Next to me is Thanwa Ted, 34, the pizza chef of Peppina in Bangkok, who flew from Thailand to compete. He says he’s not even jet-lagged, and I try to conceal the toll consuming mostly cheese, pepperoni, coffee and bread for three days is taking on my body.
On my last spin of the expo floor, I spot a French vending machine that promises to produce a “fresh and artisanal” pizza in three minutes. Smart Pizza Julia V2 – a 7.5-foot-tall contraption – has an oven capable of reaching 400C (not quite as hot as a proper Neapolitan, but plenty for New York style).
We hold up our camera phones as the touch screen counts down, until, voilà! A pizza box emerges like a tape from a VCR. The 12in margherita inside has a toasty crust, melty cheese, bright tomatoes and green basil.
What does robot pizza taste like? I’ll never know. I would have tried a slice if I didn’t have a debilitating pizza hangover.
© The Washington Post
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