My three days at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS — I woke up in my Vegas hotel room with a swollen face and what you might call “mush brain.” It wasn’t one of my worst hangovers, but it also wasn’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-colored 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.
Some 6,000 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, such as fastest pizza box assembly or dough stretching.
“It’s almost like the pizza Olympics and the Super Bowl of pizza all in one,” said Tony Gemignani, who is like 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 have gotten 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.
Advertisement
Day 1
A pizza conference is no place for hard pants. I changed out of jeans and 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 were a helpful indicator I’d found the expo. I followed them into the main hall, an enormous expanse that smelled like fresh-baked crust and seemed to stretch on in perpetuity.
The first moments were as hectic as getting out of a subway station in Tokyo. Businesspeople everywhere. Bright lights. Futuristic technology. Mascots. Some booths had build-outs with the production value of off-Broadway musicals. There were mini restaurants to woo potential clients. One had a garden terrace for “alfresco” dining where an accordion player and two guitarists played on fake grass surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Many brought massive ovens to bake fresh pizza, meatballs and focaccia, or refrigerators to serve wine and Sicilian soda.
A rookie might be inclined to grab any morsel they could find. But I’d 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, guiding me through the expo with confidence. The only issue would be sticking to his advice.
I was paralyzed with indecision when I stopped to take photos of a guy rolling out pizza dough. It was the booth of Dang Brother Pizza from San Diego, whose specialty is making pizza in vintage firetrucks refurbished with wood-fired ovens.
“Do you want a pizza?” the dough roller asked.
Advertisement
A whole pizza? For me? I was stunned. I’d been expecting samples, and now I had an entire piping-hot Neapolitan-style pepperoni pie. It was impossible to put down after the first slice. I ate a second and forced myself to give the box to a group of people standing nearby. I might as well have been dropping a puppy off at a shelter. What kind of monster gives away a perfect pizza?
I refocused on Wiener’s advice and went 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 could help anyone become a pizza chef.
Ooni had 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 mesmerized 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 said. I swear, his eyes twinkled when he talked about it.
I spent the rest of the day near the pizza competition stage, where Wiener said you could sample prize-worthy leftovers. My notebook was stained with pizza grease. I’d had at least six slices, among other snacks, and not nearly enough water. On my way out, I passed someone with a pepperoni slice and immediately craved more.
Advertisement
Day 2
Bloated and reeling, I peeled myself out of bed to make it to Gemignani’s annual “Making Pizzas With Tony Gemignani” workshop. Attendees pay an extra $250 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 said, going over the art of the grandma pie.
After, a mass of people lined up to get their books signed and take selfies with Gemignani. I noticed one audience member — James Liyu, who owns a takeaway pizza spot in Melbourne, Australia — make a beeline for one of Gemignani’s assistants.
“I was just trying to find out how to tweak my dough a little bit,” said Liyu, who flew more than 18 hours to attend the expo.
“You know going to Mecca?” Liyu said. “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 succeeded in doing both. Gemignani’s workshop had been eye-opening, Liyu said, 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 were a godsend; they were educational, but they were also a time to rest your feet.
I was 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 that the Bronx pizzeria recently made with FILA — told me it was comforting to hear other women’s experiences before she takes over her family’s business. Most of us in the room were women, a departure from the mostly male scene at the expo, although the number of female attendees is growing.
Then there was pizza consultant Scott Sandler’s session on cashew cheese. I’d thrown away samples from vegan cheese companies on my first day, but I ate four of Sandler’s slices. The ricotta-like “cheese” is easy to make at home, and it was fantastic. More bewitching, I didn’t feel worse after eating it.
I couldn’t say the same after my Rockstar energy drink, “pizza cookie” or canned “pizza wine” (not pizza-flavored, just goes with pizza). I broke into an emergency salad I packed.
The only thing that eased my pain was test-driving the Palazzolo Cheese Hog. It’s a some 200-pound commercial cheese grater that can shred 100 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 was a pleasure no kitchen gadget could ever replicate.
Day 2 wrapped up with a “block party” at the freestyle acrobatics finals. A panel of judges — all pizza experts, some master tossers themselves — sat ready with whiteboards to score the competitors on their performance flinging disks of pizza dough over their heads, between their legs and behind their backs.
At least it looked like pizza dough. The disks are inedible. The impostors are made with flour, water and significantly more salt than you’d find in a pie at your neighborhood 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 was Michael Testa, who competed in a “How you doin’?” T-shirt. Back home, in Colonia, N.J., Testa’s day job is working at his family’s two pizzerias: Jersey Pizza Boys 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 7, a video of him tossing dough went viral, and the rest was 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 said.
Testa scored high enough to advance to the finals of the 2023 competition, but didn’t make it to the best of the best finale, where Scott Volpe, 31, of Fiamme Pizza Napoletana in Tucson bested last year’s champion by way of break-dancing. Watching hours of pizza acrobatics turned me into a passionate fan. When the judges didn’t give Volpe 10s across the board, I almost booed.
Advertisement
Day 3
All week, people told me they keep coming back to the expo for the community. While watching people reunite with bear hugs and tease each other during my 24 hours on the expo floor, I got it.
“We look forward to it every year,” said 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 50s, told 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 said.
“I’ve developed so many friends in this pizza community,” said Giannone, 69, a Brooklyn native. “And I don’t call it a pizza business, because it really is a community.”
All that was left was the crowning of winners for the cooking competitions. All I wanted to do was sit in the bleachers and watch. Next to me was Thanwa Ted, 34, the pizza chef of Peppina in Bangkok who flew from Thailand to compete. He said he wasn’t even jet-lagged. I tried to conceal the toll consuming mostly cheese, pepperoni, coffee and bread for three days was taking on my body.
On my last spin of the expo floor, I spotted a French vending machine that promised to produce a “fresh and artisanal” pizza in three minutes. Smart Pizza Julia V2 — a 7½-foot-tall contraption — has an oven capable of reaching 750 degrees. (Not quite as hot as a proper Neapolitan, but plenty for New York style.)
We held up our camera phones as the touch screen counted down, until, voilà! A pizza box emerged like a tape from a VCR. The 12-inch margherita inside had a toasty crust, melty cheese, bright tomatoes and green basil.
What did the robot pizza taste like? I’ll never know. I would have tried a slice if I didn’t have a debilitating pizza hangover.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMGzrdWeo2hqYGeAcHyTaGdqZ5mjwaa%2BzZqroqeelrluvMizsZplla29sHnLmqpmrpWcrrR7