Pizza from Fiori’s, to some the best pizza in the city
What is up pizza fans. For a city that loves ranking everything in the city there’s no better time of year than when the Pittsburgh City Paper’s Best Of list is revealed. The foliage begin to turn a nice almond brown, a crispness saturates the air, and we finally know where the public thinks the best Selfie Mirror is (Songbird Artistry). Oddly, the second place spot for best Selfie Mirror (and #1 in our hearts) is Brillobox which is a block away.
Of course one of the categories is for best pizza and you wouldn’t believe who was number one. That’s right, the pizza juggernaut that has been fixing people up since 1979: Fiori's Pizzaria.
Nostalgia very clearly plays a big part in city paper voting. Fiori’s and Mineo’s are different side of the same coin, depending on your region or relationship to pizza these could be what you were told to worship as a kid. This kind of pizza dogma runs rampant across the steel city as we are taught very early to respect the local pizza institutions.
An iconic slice of Iron Born pizza
The same rankings five years in a row. New shops have opened, evolved, and closed. Yet the top three pizza shops according to the public haven’t changed.
I messaged Pete Tolman, owner of Iron Born Pizza, who placed third to Mineo’s and Fiori’s for the fifth year in a row. He said, “W always love to place in these city style competitions that are voted on by the public. It’s tough to beat the OG pizza shops, so it’s reassuring to be in the conversation! “
That type of consistency in a reader poll is more impressive than any other ranking. Iron Born arrived like a deep-dish meteor, crashing into Pittsburgh and leaving a rectangular dent on the pizza culture.
I get Pete’s excitement. That makes sense. But a place like Fiori’s…what do they think of these awards. Do they even register on their radar anymore?
I called up Fiori's Pizzaria to get their take on winning the Best Of Award in Pittsburgh City Paper. I was connected to a manager, Jamie, who has worked at Fiori’s since 1986.
I asked Jamie about their view of awards and competitions and he very confidently said, “We’ve won one or two awards before, but we don’t enter contests. The people that do, enter Hawaiian pizza or Chicken Alfredo pizza, but our plain and pepperoni pizza is the best around in the city of Pittsburgh.” They’ve been making the same pizza since 1979. They use the same cheese they’ve always used that’s imported from Italy and continue to hand make their sausage on premises. They have expertly mastered the fundamentals of pizza making which keeps the public coming back to them.
Jamie did mention one contest they’ve entered: The Star 100.7 Pizza Contest. I got to be a judge on that in 2013. The results are suspect as a dozen pizza fans are reviewing luke warm pizza at 6am. Not exactly pristine pizza conditions.
Jamie says, “We did it one year and we came in third place and the reason we came in third place is the first two actually did a commercial with them. We felt like we won that because they had some specialty pizzas and right after they announced the winners they came out with a Bubba Special - so I thought ‘Oh, we didn’t advertise with them so that’s why we didn’t win.’ I’m not speaking bad about them, I’d give them first place too. We still felt like we won that, but we won’t personally enter any more contests because it’s not worth our time.”
I’ve worked in marketing in the past and there is a pay-to-play aspect to some awards. I don’t know how City Paper or Star 100.7 operates, but in other industry companies will say you won something, but you can only advertise that you won something if you pay an invoice. If a business’s objective is to make money, you have to wonder how these seemingly innocuous awards impact the bottom line. If it didn’t somehow make money through advertising packages, ad clicks or partnerships, why do it at all?
I asked Jamie if winning the City Paper award gets everyone excited. Does it register? They’ve won it five years in a row, and prior to that they placed second. Even Champions get tired of winning after a while.
Jamies paused to think, then said, “So I think that we had a plaque up at one time saying we got the best pizza from the City Paper.” He switched gears saying, “Most of those guys that have been here they know we have a really great product. When you call up and there’s a two hour wait, and I’m not personally waiting two hours for a pizza, but people that call in and wait for two hours, that’s crazy to me, but people wait. It’s pretty cool that people are recognizing us like that, but we know what we have. The product speaks for itself.”
Always working on the pizza fundamentals at Fiori’s
Wow, who doesn’t love pizza awards, contest and rankings? It’s my favorite topic on earth.
Hope you enjoyed this, always intrigued by the best of discourse.
