By Rick Hynum
What happened when the most famous pizza critic in the USA reviewed the country’s most famous independent pizzaiolo? Long story short: Tony Gemignani reverse-engineered Dave Portnoy’s pizza brain and sent in the perfect pie by remote control.
Portnoy, the social media personality behind Barstool Sports’ One Bite Pizza Reviews, visited two Gemignani-owned pizzerias over the past year. His review of Tony’s Pizza Napoletana dropped on February 17, 2026, while a review featuring Slice House by Tony Gemignani, a rapidly growing franchise brand, was released on October 16, 2025.
Portnoy’s arrival at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco this past winter could have been a meeting of giants, except the other giant, Gemignani, was out of town. Even so, the latter was paying close attention, calling the shots from a distance as his team scrambled to build a coal-fired pie that would leave a lasting impression.
But we’ll get to that. First came Portnoy’s visit to a Slice House location in Salt Lake City back in the fall. Portnoy knew Gemignani’s reputation as a pizza-making legend (although he mispronounced the Italian name). Even so, he wasn’t exactly wowed by the classic cheese slice and tomato pie slice he tried there. Satisfied, yes, but not overwhelmed.
The cheese slice, he said, reminded him of an NYC classic. “This is the most…I say this in a nice way…it’s the most boring New York-style slice you can ever eat.” To Portnoy, however, “boring” still added up to a respectable score of 7.4, the same score he gave to the tomato pie.
So far, so good. Good, but not great.
But Portnoy’s subsequent visit to Gemignani’s most renowned pizzeria, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana, in San Francisco went a little differently. And on this occasion, Gemignani heard Portnoy was coming, although Gemignani wasn’t at the restaurant himself—he was in Los Angeles on business at the time.
As Gemignani explained in an article posted on his website, he knew Portnoy was making the rounds in the Golden Gate City and was likely to drop in at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana.
Gemignani recounted the story: “So I went to my team and told them, ‘Hey, he may order a cheese pizza, plain. I want him to have one of two: either the High Five, or even better would be the Tomato Pie. Make sure you cook it like I like it, because that’s how he likes it. Well done, no Romano, no basil, upside down pizza, tomato pie. Make it how I taught you guys, and don’t be in a hurry to take it out early.
“I briefed my team like 150 times: If he orders a cheese pizza, give this to him regardless of what he orders. I don’t care. We’ll give him what he orders but also give him the pizza I want him to have.”
When Portnoy showed up, he walked back out again with the whole coal-fired tomato pie that Gemignani had in mind.
“He knew what I’d like,” Portnoy said, after several bites. “This is great. This is right up my alley. I love thin. I love charcoal. I like it crispy.”
Portnoy compared it to a pizza from DeLorenzo’s Tomato Pies in Trenton, adding, “I love this pie. It’s got everything I want. 8.2. Legit great pizza. Worth all the hype.”
Leaving nothing to chance, Oscar Venegas, a renowned pizzaiolo in his own right who has racked up several major competition wins, made both pies personally. “[Tony] was pretty much training me over the phone,” Venegas said in the article. “He wants that pizza to be cooked slow, he wants it pushed out super thin. He reminded me to make sure it was rested. And I just made sure to follow every single sentence. And I’m over here panicking, freaking out, and just trying to stay cool for the rest of the staff.”
In addition to a rave review from Portnoy, Venegas had a cash incentive to shoot for.
“I told Oscar, ‘I’ll give you $1,000 cash if we get an eight or over,’” Gemignani said. “So we got an 8.2. Oscar made two pizzas, and he’s getting $2,000. It was for whoever [made] it. I thought it was a combination of guys, but he’s like, ‘I made both pizzas, because I wanted to make sure they were perfect. I did exactly what you told me to do.’”
Evidently, Gemignani has watched a lot of One Bite Pizza Reviews and studied Portnoy’s tastes carefully.
“He likes what I like, honestly: coal fire, crispy, cooked well, pushed out perfectly, tomato upside down pizza,” Gemignani said in the article. “Typically, he doesn’t like a lot of shaved Parm or Romano or grana padano, which a lot of people do. And I’m okay with that, but I’m more about the pizza itself. So you better believe we were working on it, working on it, working on it.”
