Scott’s Pizza Tours

Just a few weeks before the end of 2015, I squeezed in one of the deliciously fun nerdy things I’ve done, maybe ever. During a holiday weekend in NYC with the aforementioned pizza-loving-man of mine, we bought tickets to a pizza tour in Greenwich Village. I heard about Scott’s Pizza Tours on the first-ever episode of the “An Even Better You” podcast by Mental Floss (read about my semi-newfound 2015 podcast obsession here), and immediately knew that it was the activity for us.

For those of you non-nerdy people out there (I don’t want to generalize by calling those groups jocks or some other stereotype – we all know that jocks can be nerds), yes, pizza can be nerdy! And Scott’s Pizza Tours proves that. I won’t go into too much detail for fear of spoilers. No matter what I explain, it will definitely not be as good as the tour where you can seetouchtaste as you learn; I don’t want anyone to read this blog entry and assume they have it covered. But yes, the pizza tour does not just include delicious pizza, but a few (much-needed, I now realize) lessons in pizza history and pizza chemistry.

We met our tour guide, Joe, along with a few other attendees, on a sunny and chilly Sunday morning. He informed us that on our walking tour we’d be making three stops – and he might even throw in another one for good measure. The stops would allow us to experience different types of pizza, including Neapolitan pizza, New York style pizza, Staten Island pizza, and Sicilian pizza. And learn we did! Joe called it our “pizzacation”. 

We learned about different oven types and how that affects how the pizza turns out. We learned about doughs and cheeses and toppings and how cooking temperatures must differ in order to accommodate them. We learned about the pizza trinity: cheese, sauce, crust. We learned about the history of the pizza, about how it did originate in Italy, but it was a food for the poor people. We learned that it developed out of necessity, as bakers cleaned their ovens and threw scraps of bread, and later rotting grocery items cooked on top of it, to the beggars on the street. We learned about family pizza-maker drama and feuds in New York City, and at what temperature your slice should be in order to prevent the gross strands of burned skin from hanging off the roof of your mouth for the next few days.

We even received tips on how to better our own home-pizza-making skills, which I will most certainly be employing until I can take my next Scott’s Pizza Tour in a different New York borough. Until then, definitely the tour to your own to-do list when you’re next in NYC!