CT Bites - Connecticut Restaurant Confidential: Strange Stories, Odd Orders, + Twisted Tales in the Industry Vol. 2: Pizzerias

By: Andrew Dominick

It was about time this ridiculous, limited (but slowly working on more) series returned to bring you more of the weird, bizarre, and funny tales in the restaurant industry.

And while edition number one was a hodgepodge of stories from chefs that you know in the general area, this version has a focus…PIZZERIAS!

This one’s got a few longer stories that I promise are worth reading, a Wu Tang sighting, one video of a chef busting his ass, and plenty of weird customer orders. And if you’re wondering what volume three might look like, we’re hitting up bartenders because we know there’s plenty of tea there. But for now…PIZZAAAAAAA!

“I have so many from my time at Pizza Post. I worked with a crew that was Italians, Guatemalans, and Brazilians. The new guy started out in the dish pit, then you progress to prep person (chicken day I used to clean 400 lbs. of chicken in the basement kitchen and didn’t see the sunlight the whole day. After I progressed to prep guy there was this new Guatemalan guy in the dish pit. His name was Selvin.

The guys gave him a rough time. There was a lot of locker room shenanigans in the kitchen. So Selvin suffered at everyone’s hands. He was smart, though. After about two weeks of putting up with manos in culo and other shenanigans, he started wearing a female thong and everyone could see it when he bent over. Nobody ever played with him again.

After you’re prep, you can graduate to the pasta stove with Pompeo DiMeglio. Pompeo is a legend. He never took days off. On his assigned day off he used to come to the pizzeria and blow leaves and repair stuff outside. I learned how to make pizza sauce and pasta with him. He was this very old man from the island of Ponza. And we had our doubts about his personal hygiene, so we ran tests with him. We would write something on his shirt in the back without him noticing and check to see if the writing was going to be there the next day. One day, he went nine days with the same shirt!

One really funny thing to watch was when a customer would walk in during our family lunch. The pizza man was Daniel, a very grumpy Uruguayan guy. He gave me rides home at night and he had to blow one of those breathalyzers on the car before it turned on. Anyways, anytime a customer walks in around 3 p.m., he would get the wrath of Daniel. He would curse for an hour and the customer many times wouldn’t know why this guy is so upset.

After you’re pasta guy, you have the option to graduate to salad and phone person. That’s kind of frowned upon though in the kitchen because it is normally a job that young pretty girls do, so if you take the spot, you’re relegating the kitchen guys to watch your ass the whole day. I did that for a little while until I graduated to my most favorite job of all time, the oven guy.

Being the oven guy is exhilarating. It is literally the best job I have ever had. When I retire, I will go back to being oven guy. It is awesome to take care of 27 pizzas at the same time and time them for when to turn them and when to remove them. Being oven guy, you’re literally the man in the place. It is so hard. It burns you. It’s hot. You’re working behind the two pizza guys. But it is awesome.

Before I left the place, I was also able to work briefly as pizza helper (opens the dough for the pizza man), pizza man (puts sauce, ingredients and shoves in the oven), and server. But nothing tops being oven guy. Pompeo is such a legend there that many people would come to the back to greet him. The funny part is that nobody understood him. American people would say he’s speaking Italian.

Italian people would not recognize what he was saying either. The guy had been in the country for 40 years from the island of Ponza and has made up his own language. I love Pompeo. And was very special when I left. He actually gave me his 40 year old coffee machine, the little Bialetti that I used to make him coffee in every day.” – Breno Donatti, founder of Winfield Street Coffee, and formerly of Pizza Post

Full publication on CT Bites