It never hurts to have famous fans. And when one of those fans is an NFL superstar like Patrick Mahomes, you can even afford to turn customers away occasionally.
That’s what happens when Mahomes, the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, books an evening at Il Lazzarone in St. Joseph, Missouri. The Chiefs have been holding their training camp at nearby Missouri Western State University this month, and when Mahomes craves pizza, he brings his buddies and just takes over the Neapolitan-style pizza shop, which also has a location in Kansas City itself.
Other customers are just out of luck for the night. But you can’t blame Il Lazzarone for giving Mahomes the VIP treatment. He not only led the Chiefs to a win over the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII, he was also voted No. 1 on the NFL’s Top 100 list this week by his fellow players throughout the league.
Related: The hard and fast rules of authentic Neapolitan pizza
So when Mahomes wants pizza and a little privacy, Il Lazzarone co-owner Josh Young makes it happen. According to the Star, Mahomes’ teammates and coaches, including Andy Reid, share their QB’s love for Il Lazzerone’s pies. Fortunately, finding employees for those nights is never a problem, as Young told the Kansas City Star. “My staff, they see these larger-than-life human beings,” Young said.
Il Lazzarone is a real-deal Neapolitan pizzeria, complete with certification from the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN). Every pizza is prepared according to that organization’s specific requirements, which means just four ingredients for the dough—yeast, flour, water and salt—and some strict standards for proofing, stretching techniques, time baked in the wood-fired oven and ingredients fresh from Italy.
According to Young, Mahomes is a pepperoni-pizza guy all the way, but he likes a healthy drizzle of spicy honey, too. “He eats two of them,” Young told the Star. His teammates also like that sweet-spicy kick, he added. “They want spicy honey on everything.”
So where does the pizzeria’s name come from? According to Il Lazzarone’s website, the lazzeroni were the street people of Naples and “the ones who in essence invented pizza.”
“It is said that when a lazzaroni had worked long enough to afford a Neapolitan pizza and a bottle of wine, he is done working for the day,” the website states. “The il lazzaroni embodied the true Italian spirit of relaxation and community, which is what we try to do here.”
