Pizza Boat: The End is Nigh

Dang. Just dang. 

Can you believe that tomorrow is the seasonal finale of Pizza Boat? As they prepare to pack up their brick oven and vanish from the pizza landscape (perhaps as pizza ghost?) they’re having one last pizza celebration.

It’s sad when some of the best pizza in Pittsburgh goes into hibernation, but I’m sure they’ll come back stronger, sturdier, and more delicious than ever. 

I was going through my pizza archives when I found some photos I took of a Pizza Boat outing that I never published. My friend Mark wanted to meet me in the Strip District after a morning of tailgating. He was walking from Heinz Field to 20th St in the Strip just for pizza. 

It was the only type of sustenance that could save him at that point in his life. 

We each had our own pie. I defaulted to the classic margherita and he chose the white pizza topped with arugula as green as Kermit’s coat and cheese that spread itself around the pizza without a care in the world. Carefree cheese is the best cheese. It fills your insides with an aura of optimism that makes you feel like you can digest an unlimited amount of pizza.

Here’s Mark who cannot wait to get that pizza in his mouth. He was even willing to meet the slice half-way like estranged parents meet up to exchange kids for the weekend. 

Shouting his name to look at the camera at this point was no good. He was in the zone. Tranced out on pizza. To him he had reached nirvana. And it was only slightly oily. 

After eating his pizza he was out of sorts. He kept mumbling about a higher existence and trailed off mid-thought to look in the distance. Was he seeing a truer reality than the one I’m experiencing? Did the pizza knock something loose in his mind?

Mark was a changed man after his Pizza Boat experience. 

It’s not too late to get on the Pizza Boat and drift off into your own personal pizza nirvana. 

Be in the Strip District tomorrow for one finale pizza showdown. 

Coffee & Pizza at Espresso A Mano

Saturday mornings at Espresso A Mano are hectic. You have everyone in the Lawrenceville area piling in for one of the best cups of coffee in the city. The  line accordions its way out the door, tables are hard to come by. A team of bikers orders 10 cappuccino’s and the espresso machine hisses in excitement.

And what is better than a cup of coffee? Obviously, if you’re reading this you think pizza is great. And it is. But it has its place. Usually in the afternoon or evening. But maybe we should start exploring pizza’s contribution to the world of coffee? 

Coffee spills into my stomach, causing it to grumble with delight. I pour all the coffee down my gullet and while I’m energized to the point that I can see into the future and tab through 30 browser windows, my guts are feeling forgotten. 

A body cannot subsist on coffee alone. The folks at Espresso a Mano realize this after witnessing their customers began to quake. Scones and croissants aren’t potent enough to ward off “Coffee Stomach.” Something had to be done. To steady the human body and soak up caffeine, they summon pizza to their coffee shop. 

The soft dough and oils bring harmony to the digestion tract while the cheese and fresh toppings provide a flavor that complements your cappucino.

The pizza is brought in from La Tavola Italiana in Mt Lebanon. It’s not a place I’ve heard of before, but there’s a reason they import pizza from miles away. If you didn’t know any better you would think it was being shipped in from Rome every morning.

By the time you’re eating the pizza (which arrives by noon on Saturdays at Espresso A Mano) it’s mildly warm, in a comforting way. The quality of the ingredients keep the pizza from fizzling out. Like a great cup of coffee that’s easy to drink piping hot and smooth when it hits room temperature.

The crust is chewy and soft. There’s some tearing that needs to happen and you’re definitely getting your flours worth. If you’re feeling adventurous you’ll grab some of that doughy crust to dip into your coffee. No one will look at you with shame. It’s something we’ve all wanted to every so often, you’re just the brave person who took action.

Sauce is tangy and thick like a pasta sauce. There are swirls of toppings and a layer of cheese as white as the fence Huck Finn painted. 

I’m a proponent of eating pizza from the source—but these large slices delivered to Espresso A Mano hold their own. They’re a tease of the real pizza, the pizza that hasn’t been removed from its natural habitat. The pizza that bursts from the oven and into your mouth is a pizza that you cherish.

Yet, this is amazing. And I cannot wait for their pizza shop to open up in East Liberty. Their shop, Taglio, will specialize in Roman Style pizza. If it’s anything like the pizza I had in Rome, they’ll charge you by the gram. 

These slices were built for endurance and make great traveling companions. Get one to-go with your espresso or save it for later. The genius of this pizza is the minimal toppings. There’s nothing offensive or over-the-top on this pizza. It’s clearly the fundamentals and nothing more. The lack of exoticism acts as its own preservative. There’s no gloopy cheese to erode the pizza and there’s the right amount of oil without becoming slippery.

The this dough soaks up any ingredients that try to escape. The longer you wait, the better this pizza tastes. It’s a functional masterpiece of pizza engineering. 

I’ll be interviewing the owner this Saturday. Stay tuned for more insight about Taglio. Got questions? Get in touch. 

Your Pizza Calendar, Starting With National Cheese Pizza Day →

scottspizzatours:

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This image is from the greatest pizza website ever, Slice!

That’s right. Today is National Cheese Pizza Day. Its origins are unclear, but its meaning certainly is. I know what you’re thinking: “How did National Cheese Pizza Day sneak up on me so fast this year?” Well, we have busy lives…

What kind of world do we live in that every day is not National Cheese Pizza Day?

Pizza Box Art Show at Spak Brothers Pizza with Common Wealth Press

This Friday, August 1, if you order a medium pizza from Spak Brothers pizza you’ll receive a limited edition pizza box with a screen print by one of four Common Wealth Press artists: Mark Bogacki, Everyday Balloons, Dan Rugh, and Keith Caves.

Pizza boxes are unique and the perfect canvas to paint on. Your art reaches nearly everyone, and it provides some joy to the pizza enthusiasts who has something nice to look at in their passenger seat as they drive home to live out their pizza fantasy.

Pittsburgh has been blowing up on the pizza map lately. With Pizza Cono opening earlier this year and the Return to Pizza Dojo taking place just last weekend—there’s no shortage of pizza news and innovation in Pittsburgh. 

I talked with Dan Rugh a bit about this art exhibition. Why pizza boxes? Why now? What is it about pizza that brings worlds together?

PWWM: Why put art on pizza boxes? 

Dan Rugh (DR): well with that kind of attitude, why put anything anywhere. For serious though, it’s a big flat white surface just screaming for artwork. How can’t you just start drawing on it?
Plus you get to flip it open and BAM theres pizza there…and if you’re fast enough you can eat it all yourself. 
PWWM: What is it about pizza that brings communities and cultures together? It’s a universal phenomenon and I’m interested in hearing your take on things.
DR: If you have pizza, people want the pizza and will be nice to you to get the pizza. 
I think what you are saying “brings communities and cultures together” is actually just a larger universal ploy of sneaky individuals gunning for each others food. 
PWWM: What do you think of the Pizza Pittsburgh scene lately? With Pizza Boat and the latest Pizza Dojo event, it’s really blowing up. 
DR: Theres a scene? What does that mean?
Besides that, im cool with the dojo shit talking pizza fight, thats awesome. There should be more shit talking amongst people. Especially sneaky individuals gunning for each others food.
PWWM: Is this about getting your art in front of pizza enthusiasts? Or are you implying that pizza itself is art, the box it comes in should also be art?
DR: We are pals with Spak brothers. You can’t fight the natural flow of events. We are artists, they make pizza. It was inevitable. 
This Friday, remember to call Spak Brothers at 412-362-SPAK (7725) to get your medium pizza decorated by the artists of Common Wealth Press.

Return to Pizza Dojo - Meet the Combatants

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The Return to Pizza Dojo (Why they didn’t spell it dough-jo is beyond me) is this Friday, July 25. I wrote about the feud between Pizza Boat and Bread and Salt last week, but I wanted to get to know the entrants a bit better.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. These are pizzaiolos that are willing to do nearly anything to win this competition. Empires have been won and lost on pizza competition, and this is no exception so you know tensions are high.

Both Pizza Boat  and Bread and Salt’s response to “tell me about your role in the Return to Pizza Dojo” reads like fan fiction from an episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw  but instead of wrestling they’re making pizza.

Too good to edit, here’s what they had to say about the competition.

The “mysterious” Bread and Salt on pizza, pizza dojo, and life lessons

Who I am and my background are of little importance. There is no Pizza but the Pizza. The Pizza is of importance. I serve the Pizza. I pray five times a day with my face turned towards Naples. I only wish to express and share the true nature of the Pizza. Everything else is falsehood and frivolity. I need no strategy. The boys on the Pizza Boat mean well, but do not know the true depth and power of the Pizza. Their boat will sink. Friday, all will bear witness.

Really blows open the whole Return to Pizza Dojo.

Here’s Jeff from Pizza Boat on Bread and Salt and childish antics

Bread and Salt is Rick Easton, a transplant from Virginia and a guy who can bake sometimes, if someone provides him the means. And we can just assume that Joey Hilty is part of his camp at this point too. Joe’s a Livermore henchman who originally came up with the Pizza Dojo concept and pitched it to Rick, Matt, and I as a collaborative project to bring the oft-feuding pizzaiolo community together in order to push each other further creatively. But as the night of the initial Dojo drew closer, Rick and Joe veered off course unfortunately, resorting to the childish antics you’ve been seeing online.


I feel like Matt and I are pretty easy going, and we can take as much trash talk as we dish out, but Rick’s been taking things increasingly further, recruiting help online–essentially Twitter trolls to come up with his retorts. He said he’s even paying for designers to photoshop images for him in order to try and humiliate us that way too. Not sure where he got the money for this… from what I understand he’s been living off of Livermore’s scraps and whatever he can manage to get off of us for free–which we’re about ready to cut him off from.


Not to say that we’re frightened. We’re just annoyed, and it’s kind of sad. I mean this is an adult. At first we kind of looked up to him. But to threaten to poison our starter, sneak salt into our tomatoes, and urinate in our sanitizer bucket, is a little beneath where we thought his constitution lays. I think something must have cracked in his head– from the loneliness, malnutrition, the fact that his bakery STILL isn’t open, who knows. I’m sure his life is stressful, and thank god these nights have been cool so it’s actually probably comfortable for him to sleep out on the street.


Our plan is to take the high road during the Dojo, of course. We’ll plan a couple pizzas that we’ve been testing and hope people will enjoy and respect, hope to gain some respect from Rick and Joey (if they have any at all to give), and have a good time slinging some pizzas, because that’s what’s fun for us, and exhibiting that along with the discipline involved is what Pizza Dojo should be about.

Will there be blood at this event? Steel chairs? A cage to fight in afterwards? I’m sure at least two of those are a certain. 

The Return to Pizza Dojo takes place Friday July 25, at 6pm in the Bar Marco lot in the Strip District. If you enjoy pizza in the slightest you need to be there to witness Pittsburgh Pizza History.