And so here I am a few months later, embarking on a pizza tour around New York City with Scott. Scott’s Pizza Tours (SPT) has tours every day of the week, but the bus tour I’m on only happens on Sundays. During the rest of the week the company runs walking tours through different pizza neighborhoods, including Greenwich Village, The East Village & The Lower East Side, and Downtown Brooklyn & Williamsburg. The walking tours are $40 per person, include three pizza stops, and last for about 3 hours. The bus tour will run you $65 per person, but you’ll get four pizza stops, multiple boroughs, and 4.5 hours of Scott’s infinite pizza wisdom. Plus, you’ll probably be so full that you won’t need to buy yourself dinner.

Each tour is different, but today we’re starting at Lombardi’s, one of the oldest pizzerias in New York City. We enter before it opens, with an entire room at this always-crowded pizza joint dedicated to Scott’s Pizza Tours, and are again treated like family. This tour isn’t just about eating pizza - it’s about understanding pizza and appreciating its complexities - so Scott starts by explaining the history of the pizzeria and then delves into the differences between coal ovens, wood ovens, and gas ovens. I never thought a conversation about ovens could be so riveting, but Scott’s excitement about it is infectious.