By Charlie Pogacar
It was 11:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and Sean Jefairjian was squatting in his pizzeria’s kitchen, face resting in his hands. The owner of A Slice of New York in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, had dreamt of this moment for years. But would it turn into a nightmare?
Jefairjian is not usually at a loss for words. The chatty New York native has forged a reputation on high quality New York-style pizza, bravado and occasionally dunking on trolls online. For once, Jefairjian was quiet, silently awaiting his fate.
“I’m like: right now, this is it,” Jefairjian said on the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast. “This is make or break for my entire career. It’s all of the [smack] talk, all the stuff I’ve ever said over the past four years defending my product—this is going to be the moment where either I win—or the haters win.”
Related: “Cool Stuff Is Only Cool Until You Show Your Friends” with Sean Jefairjian
Outside of Jefairjian’s pizzeria, which opened in 2020, Barstool’s Dave Portnoy held a box of pizza. Jefairjian had long been a fan of Portnoy’s, and, having caught wind of Portnoy’s impending trip to Pittsburgh at the beginning of September, had spent the previous week campaigning for Portnoy to visit A Slice of New York. Jefairjian was well acquainted with the way Portnoy, an opinionated, if controversial figure, could influence an entire city’s feeling about a pizzeria. A good score from Portnoy can send business into overdrive for months, if not years, to come. A bad score can have the opposite effect.
“There definitely is common thread people wonder of like, ‘Hey, what makes this guy the expert?’” Jefairjian said on the podcast, in response to a question about how Portnoy came to have such an outsized influence on the pizza industry. “But there’s no disputing the fact that he has eaten more pizza at more individual pizza places than probably any single individual in the history of pizza… and I think also, if you look at the ones he has ranked the highest, they’re often in line with what most food critics would also call the [best].”
On the podcast, Jefairjian dove into the nuts and bolts of what a Dave Portnoy One Bite Review looks like from the perspective of the pizzeria. He detailed some of the immediate actions he took after Portnoy’s visit, based on feedback he had received from other industry friends who had gotten reviewed by Portnoy. The first order of business? Cutting the menu down in a big way—the impending bump in foot traffic would leave no room for anything that took extra time.
“I limited everything to one topping and I also cut out anything that required additional prep,” Jefairjian said. “Because the way that we [normally] do things here is a little bit nontraditional in the fact that, as a zero food waste operation…say, if somebody ordered a pizza with mushrooms, we would hand slice a whole Portobello mushroom for that pizza right then and there while we’re making that pizza. Well, those are all things that would take time. So we cut our menu down to regular pies, pepperoni pie, sausage pie, and margarita, and that’s it.”
These were actions Jefairjian took before Portnoy’s review had been released online. Word traveled fast—thanks in part to Jefairjian’s numerous social media posts about Portnoy’s visit—and the foot traffic followed. When the review did air and the local community found out that A Slice of New York had scored (spoiler!) an 8.2—which placed A Slice of New York in the top 100 pizzerias Portnoy has ever reviewed—things ramped up even higher.
To hear the full story, check out the latest episode of Peel: A PMQ Pizza Podcast.
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