Pizza Talk

Welcome back to Pizza Quest!  We are joined this week by Charles Wekselbaum, owner and head salumeriest for Charlito’s Cocina, makers of fine charcuterie. Is it salumi or salami? We’ll find out, as Charles guides Peter through a tasting of three of his most popular Spanish-influenced products, and explains how he transforms fresh meat products into cured and fermented dried meats in which his goal is to evoke the full…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! This week’s guest is a long time friend of mine (we go back to 7th grade together, circa 1963), Tim Lorsch, Nashville musician/sideman, who has created a one-man performance piece called, The Suitcase.  The show was inspired when Tim unexpectedly received an old suitcase that had formerly belonged to his great uncle before being sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed by the Nazi’s. The…Read More…

Hi All and Welcome Back, My brother, Harry, was with me the day we discovered Pizzeria Beddia about eight years ago and then, together, we watched as Joe Beddia rocketed to superstardom in the pizza world (not because of us, but our timing was pretty good, as we were just ahead of the masses, reinforcing our belief in our own early detection radar skills about these kind of things). So,…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest. In this episode we welcome back Paul Tiffany, director of product engineering at Lloyd Pans, to update us on the latest new pan pizza products and to explain the unique manufacturing process that allows Lloyd Pans to respond and customize pans so quickly for the pizza and other food service industries. He also shows us a very cool new product for making handheld Detroit-style pizzas,…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! Our guest in this episode is long-time world pizza champion, Joe Carlucci. So, you might ask, how did a nice New York area kid end up running an iconic, destination pizzeria in Madison, Alabama?  It’s a long story and one best told by Joe himself, including the many life lessons that allowed him to crash and burn (and rise from the ashes) many times on…Read More…

Hi All, As many of you have already figured out, not all of the interviews we do here on Pizza Quest make it onto this website. We only post the Zoom video interviews here (and also on YouTube) because they are, well, videos.  But many of our shows are conducted on audio tape only, such as when we go to Pizza Expo and the Atlantic City Northeast Pizza and Pasta…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest! Chef Michael Friedman grew up in a New York area Jewish American household (in Westfield, NJ, to be specific) and, like me, was nourished by lots of Chinese and Italian food. Also like me, he attended Boston University’s School of Communications, so we share a kindred spirit connectivity. After paying his dues in fine dining restaurants around the world (including stints with Rich Melman’s Lettuce…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest!     Our guest this week is Inja Radman, co-founder of New Culture Food, a company with a mission to provide the world with animal-free cheese, beginning with mozzarella, that actually tastes and performs like the milk-based originals. Even those with lactose or dairy sensitivities have a love-hate relationship with the current options of faux cheese, usually made with nut and seed milks. New Culture’s…Read More…

Welcome Back to Pizza Quest! This week’s episode features Jillana Miller and Ahmad Butler who, together, are Miller-Butler, a sizzling-hot mobile pizza and catering company, based in San Pedro, California.  Ahmad competed against me and 10 other finalists at the Real California Pizza Contest in Napa back in August, where we met and became friends. That’s where I first learned how Miller-Butler took on the competitive Los Angeles marketplace, survived…Read More…

Welcome back to Pizza Quest!         Sometimes it just takes moxie. Shannon Mangini (aka @ThePizzaiola on Instagram)  is living proof of that. In just a few short years since graduating from college in 2018 with a degree in economics, entrepreneurship, and finance (Univ. of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where she was also a lacrosse star) Shannon has, among other things, brought DiFara Pizza to the North Fork of…Read More…