“One bite: Everybody knows the rules.”
Millions of Barstool Sports fans know this as the phrase founder Dave Portnoy says before he reviews pizza places around the U.S. and some abroad. He’s reviewed over 3,000 pizzas since starting in 2017, and has given extremely positive reviews to pizzerias in New Haven, Connecticut.
Barstool Sports, a digital media company that produces content related to sports and pop culture, has a massive following. Portnoy’s pizza review videos receive anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million views on YouTube, with even more views on Instagram and Twitter. Barstool has 13.7 million followers on Instagram and 3.6 million followers on Twitter, so Portnoy reaches a large audience.
He’s made two separate trips to review pizza in New Haven, and he rated three places highly –- Sally’s Apizza (9.2 out of 10), Modern Apizza (8.8 out of 10) and Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana (8.5 out of 10). Portnoy’s 9.2 rating of Sally’s Apizza is close to the highest score he’s ever given of 9.4. On Feb. 9, 2022, National Pizza Day, he ranked Sally’s as the No. 1 pizza place in the world.
Sally’s Apizza was first opened in 1938 by Filomena Consiglio, who named the place after her oldest son Sal. Filomena was Frank Pepe’s sister, and because Frank Pepe opened up his place in 1925, the opening of Sally’s meant each sibling had their own pizza place on Wooster Street in New Haven. Sal and his wife Flo then passed Sally’s along to their sons, Rick and Bobby Consiglio, and they’ve overseen it since, even after selling it to Lineage Hospitality in late 2017. Rick has been happy with the management since he and Bobby made the sale.
“Now they got the younger guys in there being checked by management that oversees the quality,” Consiglio said. “They’re flawless on this, continuing the tradition that the family had.”
In the 2019 documentary “Pizza, A Love Story,” New York Times food critic Ed Levine stressed how important Sally’s is to the Consiglio family.
“Flo and the family do not consider their place a restaurant,” Levine said. “It’s an extension of their house. They feel like they’re throwing a party or that they invited you into their house.”
The documentary goes through the history of Sally’s, Frank Pepe and Modern, which all have similar styles of pizza. The New Haven style of pizza is coal-fired, brick-oven, thin-crusted pizza, which is known as “apizza” (ah-beetz.) The pronunciation comes from Naples, Italy, as the style of pizza is Neapolitan.
“If you really want apizza, you come to Sally’s,” Consiglio said.
Portnoy tried the apizza at all three places in December 2018. He talked at length in his review videos about how good the pizza looked and tasted, and after he tried all of them he officially declared New Haven as the “Pizza Capital of the World.”
The first place he went to was Modern Apizza on Dec. 3. Eva Blakeslee, who has waitressed for 30 years at Modern, came into work the evening of Dec. 3, after Portnoy had already eaten, done his review and left. Blakeslee said there was “a big buzz” in the restaurant that night, as all her co-workers were talking about Portnoy coming to review Modern. They told Blakeslee that Portnoy didn’t say who he was. He ordered the pizza, paid and did his review outside.
Blakeslee’s son is 23 years old and is a huge Barstool Sports fan. He was attending the University of South Carolina at the time, and he called his mom as soon as he found out Portnoy was reviewing Modern.
“He had a heart attack when he heard I wasn’t here while (Portnoy) was in the building,” Blakeslee said.
Barstool Sports’ target audience is really young for the most part. According to a CivicScience study, 67% of Barstool users are under the age of 30. Based on that study, it makes sense why a then-teenager would react like that to his mom missing out on Portnoy.
The next day, Portnoy reviewed Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana. Server Charlotte Deleone, who has served at the restaurant for 30 years, remembers coming in at around 3:30 p.m. after Portnoy had already done his review and was in the restaurant talking to employees. Deleone’s co-workers were all coming up to her, telling her why Portnoy’s a big deal.
Portnoy reviewed Sally’s Apizza the day after Frank Pepe. Rick Consiglio remembers the Christmas sweater Portnoy wore while doing the review and the atmosphere being lively inside the restaurant after the review. Portnoy’s gone back several times and has given recommendations to people by telling customers at other pizza places to go there in addition to ranking it No. 1 on the Top Ten list he made on Feb. 9.
You can find specific things Portnoy said about each New Haven place below:
The buzz around Portnoy’s reviews is having an impact on those pizza places and New Haven pizza.
While the pizzeria owners didn’t give their sales figures from the last few years, all three places report customers coming into their restaurants every day talking about Portnoy and/or Barstool Sports.
At Sally’s, anywhere between five and 10 tables daily are filled with people talking about Portnoy, with more than 300 people coming in each day in total. “Every day there’s people that come in that never knew of Sally’s before Barstool,” Sally’s General Manager Mike Gilbert said.
One of those people is Michael Ferdman, 55, who is from Chicago and travels to New Haven occasionally just for the pizza because Portnoy recommends it. He usually goes to New Haven with his family for Frank Pepe, but decided to try out Sally’s instead after Portnoy’s most recent rankings update.
“Portnoy pushing Sally’s as the No. 1 has gotten us back up here,” Ferdman said.
Blake Maynard, a manager at Sally’s, has seen Portnoy’s influence in several instances. In March 2022, a man from Long Island, New York came with his son, a high school senior who persuaded his dad to drive all the way to Sally’s because Portnoy gave it a 9.2 out of 10.
Maynard sees customers watch Portnoy’s pizza reviews on their phones a lot when they’re ordering pizza. He’s also witnessed customers do their own recorded pizza reviews just like Portnoy. One time a little boy stood outside and had his dad record him, opening the box, talking and taking out a slice exactly how Portnoy does it. And another time customers from Spain were eating at a booth and doing reviews with a camera and tripod because of Portnoy.
Maynard also had an interaction with Mache, a shoe designer who has over 500,000 followers on Instagram. Mache made a promo for National Pizza Day on Feb. 9, 2022, and the video was shot at Sally’s. He also made Sally’s cleats for Matt Barnes, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who is another fan of Sally’s Apizza.
“I think Barstool is definitely bringing light to more mainstream or other athletes,” Maynard said. “The guy’s wearing cleats in a baseball game with ‘Sally’s’ on them.”
In addition to making Sally’s more mainstream, Portnoy’s review has helped the restaurant gain patrons from all over the country and world. Wooster Street has always been busy, but now there are people coming from a plethora of places.
“(Barstool) shined a light on it for a lot of people outside of the Northeast that weren’t aware of what New Haven apizza is,” Gilbert said. “So now the line is a more diverse line with people coming from all over the world that may not have heard about us prior to seeing Dave’s reviews.”
Joe Waltman, 35, is from Orange County, California, and goes to New Haven just for the pizza whenever visiting New York or Connecticut with his family.
Waltman uses the “One Bite” Barstool app, which was created to help users find pizza places near them with Portnoy’s review videos and ratings. “One Bite” also lets users order delivery through the app and leave a review when they go to a pizza place. Waltman always tries pizza from places after Portnoy reviews them, so he wanted to get Frank Pepe with his family.
“We’re actually 40 minutes just past Hartford, (Connecticut) right now, and when I looked it up I was like, ‘We gotta go to New Haven. This is where (Portnoy) says the No. 1 pizza town is.’ So I came,” Waltman said after walking out of the restaurant with a Frank Pepe pizza box in his hands.
The geographical diversity is seen all over New Haven, not just on Wooster Street. Blakeslee, the longtime Modern Apizza waitress, encounters many customers using the “One Bite” app and has noticed the impact Portnoy has had on Modern ever since his review.
“The fact that he said New Haven’s the “Pizza Capital of the World” –– it’s bringing people from all over,” Blakeslee said. “He’s got a huge influence on the pizza community, so it’s amazing.”
Oliver Brochu has been working at Modern since August 2021, and he didn’t know about Barstool or Dave Portnoy before then. Since he’s started working at Modern, he’s heard customers talk about Portnoy every day and he sees people wearing Barstool hats and shirts often.
“People come here from North Carolina citing Dave Portnoy, so his influence is wide,” Brochu said. “They’re like: ‘We heard about this place on Dave Portnoy.… Dave Portnoy said this was (great) so here we are.’”
Portnoy’s reviews show popular figures can promote a product, especially when that recommendation is authentic.
“I think it’s a lot more important than actual advertisements,” Maynard said. “Every (sports) game I watch, I’ve never once been like, ‘I’m gonna switch to Allstate,’ but a guy coming out and giving you a genuine 10 cents… there’s nothing more true than that.”
Portnoy has done reviews that have made many small pizzerias popular.
“I think it brings light to the little places and the local places,” Waltman said. “With him bringing light to what it is, it makes people wanna come and try it.”
Even for the New Haven pizzerias that have had popularity for many years, the reviews helped bring people to Wooster Street.
After reviewing the three highly-rated pizzerias and BAR (7.4) in December 2018, Portnoy went back to New Haven in July of 2021 to review three more places –– Zeneli Pizzeria e cucina Napoletana (7.2), Abate Apizza and Restaurant (6.8) and Da Legna at Nolo (7.4).
While the ratings weren’t as high for these places, Portnoy made sure to remind everyone in each video that New Haven is still the “Pizza Capital of the World.”