Scott Wiener’s career started with a journal — a pizza journal.

As an undergraduate at Syracuse University,he traveled across the country with his college band, Highjack Jupiter, during school breaks. He always made sure to organize trips around famous pizza places in each city they would play at. Any observation he made about the pizza, he wrote in the journal.

‘One of my friends made me this diary. I could fill in dates, times, location, toppings, any comments I had. It had a whole rating system. I’d fill in the blanks,’ said Wiener, a 2004 alumnus with a degree in television, radio and film. ‘That pizza journal really translated.’

Wiener converted his love of storytelling and his passion for pizza into a full-time job with Scott’s Pizza Tours. He travels around New York City on tour buses and on foot, taking tourists and native New Yorkers alike to famous pizzerias and related landmarks.

He believes pizza has a history most people don’t understand.

‘I found there was such an amazing story that wasn’t really being communicated,’ he said. ‘A whole story that’s so dense and incredible.’

At SU, Wiener said the pizza disappointed him. He said it was never ‘destination pizza,’ the kind people would travel miles to eat.

Wiener’s roommate at the university for three years, Drew Silverman, always sensed Wiener’s passion for a good slice of pizza — and knew he couldn’t find it in Syracuse.

‘Normal college students get pizza late at night,’ Silverman said. ‘You’d order Domino’s or Papa Johns, and when you’d pick up the box, you could see the look of disappointment on his face.’

Wiener created the idea for a pizza tour when he planned an event for his 26^thbirthday. He rented a tour bus and invited his friends on a tour of New York’s pizza parlors.

‘When that ended, they wanted to sign up and do it again,’ he said. ‘That immediately became the pizza tour. People wanted to do it more.’

Dan Wiener, Scott’s brother, said that experience is still alive in Scott’s tours today.

‘He makes everyone on that bus feel like his pal,’ Dan said.

Dan occasionally visited various shops with Scott before the tour kicked off. When they’d stop at a pizzeria, it was never just to get a slice of pizza pie.

‘He’d start asking questions: Can I see the oven? How do you make your dough? Where do you get your cheese? What kind of tomatoes would you use?’ Dan said.

Instead of just guiding people to several parlors in the Brooklyn area, Scott wanted to provide an extensive background to the 16 pizzerias featured on the tours. Walking tours start off at the site of the original Lombardi’s, the first pizza store in North America. The group then stops at an artesian Italian cheesemaker’s shop, where tourists taste fresh, handmade mozzarella. At Bleeker Street,they discuss tomatoes’ role in a pizza before heading to a restaurant equipment store for a lecture on brick ovens.

Scott’s only co-worker, JoAnne Ling, ties the tour back to her Italian-American roots. Her grandmother came from Italy the same time Gennaro Lombardi walked off the boat into New York City. Ling said she and most pizza tourists usually connect with Scott’s endeavor.

‘Pizza’s relevant to the way they grew up,’ she said. ‘It’s very resonant with everybody, the same way they’re interested in themselves and their own history.’

Scott found Ling after placing an advertisement on Craigslist, asking for a hand with his tours. He required all the applicants to tell him their favorite pizza shop and why. Ling picked Pepe’s in New Haven, Conn., for its clam pizza covered in garlic and Romano cheese.

The love Scott has for a good story reflects in the enthusiasm and passion he holds for his job, Dan said.

But Scott didn’t always pursue the perfect slice. For two years,he held a steady job in a recording and TV production studio. Realizing he would rather focus on pizza, he took a financial leap and quit. Scott lived on a friend’s boat for three years, where he continued to develop his tour idea.

‘My parents had a lot of questions about me starting this tour thing,’ Scott said. ‘I was going completely on my own, and my parents always told me, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’ No one in my family had ever been a tour guide before.’

Scott’s passions and sacrifices have paid off since the business started in 2007. The tour currently ranks at No. 1 for New York City tours on yelp.com, a website that judges businesses. In 2008, the tour ranked one of the Top 10 in the country, Scott said. He has made appearances on the Cooking Channel and the New York Daily News. This Tuesday, he started judging for the three-day International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas.

Though the business has been steadily successful, Scott said he doesn’t want it expanding too much.

‘I never want to have a situation where I’m not doing any tours,’ he said. ‘It kills me when I can’t do them. I don’t ever want to think of myself as sitting behind a desk.’

His friends and family believe he makes the tours fun. No one else could do what he does, said Silverman, Scott’s roommate.

‘Anyone could throw someone in a bus and walk them around the city. The places he goes to are online. We don’t need a tour to do this,’ he said. ‘The whole energy of the tour, he has unbelievable knowledge and passion for this.

‘Scott is more passionate than anyone I know is about anything.’

smtracey@syr.edu

Published on March 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm