# Frank Pinello - The Mafia, Wall Street Scams & Why Dave Portnoy Knows S**T About Pizza!

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-go-to-food-podcast-6768885/frank-pinello-the-mafia-wall-street-scams-why-dave-portnoy-knows-s-t-about-pizza
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-go-to-food-podcast-6768885/frank-pinello-the-mafia-wall-street-scams-why-dave-portnoy-knows-s-t-about-pizza.md
Podcast: [The Go To Food Podcast](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-go-to-food-podcast-6768885)
Published: 2026-05-14T04:15:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/the-go-to-food-podcast/episodes/frank-pinello-the-mafia-wall-street-scams-why-dave-portnoy-k
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/67cb0e5722c74795c356299d/e/6a04a5e80cdbf0d1ff7868ee/media.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-go-to-food-podcast-6768885/episodes/frank-pinello-the-mafia-wall-street-scams-why-dave-portnoy-knows-s-t-about-pizza
Duration seconds: 3556

## Resource

This week on The Go-To Food Podcast , we’re joined by one of the most important voices in pizza culture: Frank Pinello . The founder of Brooklyn’s legendary Best Pizza , host of The Pizza Show and now Pizza with Frank , Frank joins us fresh from a huge week eating across London — and gives an unfiltered verdict on why the city has quietly become one of the great pizza destinations in the world. From Vincenzo’s and Dough Hands to New York aesthetics taking over London, Frank explains why British pizza makers are now genuinely earning respect from New Yorkers. But this episode goes way beyond pizza rankings. Frank tells the unbelievable story of almost becoming a stockbroker straight out of school — working in a real-life Wolf of Wall Street-style boiler room on Long Island, standing all day cold-calling strangers about fake IPOs while managers shouted slogans like “motion creates emotion.” He talks about turning up in suits thinking he’d made it, only for the entire operation to eventually get raided by the feds. Before pizza fame, before Vice, before Williamsburg — there was Frank trying to survive among future federal inmates. We also go deep into old New York food culture: growing up in Bensonhurst, the smell of Sunday sauce hitting the hallway before you even reached his grandmother’s basement, annual tomato canning traditions, animal heads in the kitchen, Sicilian cauliflower pasta with cinnamon breadcrumbs, and learning early that food meant love. Frank opens up about his first pizzeria jobs, burning his leg so badly on his first day in a serious kitchen that the skin peeled off — but hiding it for 12 hours because he didn’t want chefs to think he was weak. He talks about culinary school feeling like military training, becoming obsessed with Thomas Keller and Ferr…

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## Transcript

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