Pittsburgh classic
The story
Ron Molinaro is a Pittsburgh native who had a bite that changed his life in 1990, at Patsy's under the Brooklyn Bridge.
He ate his way through the pizzerias of New York and New Haven, built an oven in his parents' yard to practice, and in 1996 opened Il Pizzaiolo in Mt. Lebanon. He made his first trip to Naples the next year. For years he drove to New York every week for mozzarella, and today the kitchen uses DOP buffalo mozzarella from Caserta, Italy.
That devotion made Molinaro one of the pioneers of real Neapolitan pizza in Pittsburgh, and there are now Il Pizzaiolos in Warrendale and Glenshaw too.
The original is Il Pizzaiolo, 699-703 Washington Road in Mt. Lebanon.