Remember When Eddie And I Kidnapped Portnoy And Drove Him Around Chicago For Pizza Reviews?
Two and a half years ago, Dave Portnoy was in town doing Dave Portnoy stuff. I got a text from Eddie asking if I wanted to do some pizza reviews with him after Dave sent out this tweet:
I thought to myself, "yeah sure, why not?" and we embarked on what was about 3 hours of driving around Chicago's city limits. The funniest part of the trip was that it was cold as fuck outside and Eddie's heat was broken... but not broken like it didn't work or broken like it failed to turn on or some shit... broken like it only cranked at 100 degrees and full blast so we also had to have the windows open simultaneously.
As anyone who knows Portnoy through reading Barstool for the last 15+ years, he didn't like this. It was his own personal hell on earth and wouldn't stop talking about it. Eddie and I though? We are blue collar MEN and dealt with that minor annoyance just fine. Portnoy brought it up every 2 seconds though to the point where he couldn't wait to get the fuck out of the car and back to the hotel.
~anyways~
We went to a bunch of different spots: Geo's Pizza on the NW side, Armand's Pizza on the NW side, Spizzico's Pizza on the NW side, Johnnie's Beef on the NW side, Gene and Jude's on the NW side and then Palermos on the south side. Here are all of the videos:
Geo's and Johnnie's
Armand's and Gene and Jude's:
Palermo's on 95th St.:
The funny thing about this is that the Spizzico's review was so bad from all of us that it never even made the cut. I remember saying on camera, "I wouldn't feed this shit to my dog" and to anyone who's ever stopped there after getting a beef at Johnnie's, you'd agree.
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DISCLAIMER
We did these reviews last minute at a later time at night and couldn't hit the spots that everyone knows are best of the best outside of Palermo's which I think is "eh". I would have taken him to Vito and Nick's or Phil's 100% if we had the chance to.
There was a lot of hilarity that was bred from these videos. I'll list them out 1x1:
1. After we reviewed Gene and Jude's hot dogs, Tony Da Mimbo dropped the funniest video of all time:
2. Both Portnoy and later on Dante had a mafia hit out on them for giving one of the places above too low a review. I knew the owner of one of the spots we hit and he was so pissed off at the score and Portnoy subsequently talking shit that he said the next time he's in Chicago he's going to have Portnoy's ass kicked. Ironically enough Portnoy hasn't been back since (I don't think, don't quote me). Dante got into it on Twitter with the same guy and Dante also had a hit out on him. This is 1000% a true story and anyone at Barstool Chicago will corroborate it. The guy absolutely snapped on me, Portnoy and Dante. Fucking SNAPPED.
We didn't tell Portnoy we almost got him murdered by a pizza guy until a few years later because we wanted to get hired as full time employees first.
3. We actually were hired full time! I got a text from Dave the next morning asking if I wanted to go full time with Eddie. I said, "no I love dealing with asshole truck drivers from 7am-5pm every day and also in the middle of the night". A few convos here and a few convos there and Barstool Chicago was re-consecrated with myself, Ed, Chief, Sterk and eventually that Twink Danny the intern come New Years 2019.
The pathos of the blog is this - if Ed and I didn't kidnap Portnoy and take him around the city with hot and cold air piping on his face in the middle of winter 2 and a half years ago, I'd still prolly be pushing freight and wanting to kill myself every day. It was worth it to listen to a few hours of his complaining about the heat in Eddie's car and I am grateful every single day because this place rocks to work at.
Oh and Portnoy is back in town right now and will be for the launch of the Barstool Sportsbook app in Illinois for the next handful of days. If I have a chance I fully plan on kidnapping him again and taking him to Al's Pizza in Warrenville and then Vito and Nick's on the south side. Ya know why I want to take him to those two places? Because they're two of the best pizza places in the metro Chicago area and those are my choices. If we don't hit your favorite pizza spot, I'm sorry. This is how I plan to roll though.
Speaking of the app, GO AND DELETE ANY AND ALL COMPETITOR APPS AND DOWNLOAD OURS!!!! This is of the utmost importance and if you won't do it for me, do it for the affable Eddie: