The Pittsburgh Dish
Do you really know the food scene of Pittsburgh?! The Pittsburgh Dish introduces you to the people, places, and recipes that make our regional cuisine so special. By sharing personal stories, weekly recommendations, and community recipes, we aim to inspire you to connect with local taste makers and experience the unique flavors that shape our city.
The Pittsburgh Dish
060 Pizza Masters - Patrick Elston and Pete Tolman
What makes a truly extraordinary pizza? It's a question that Pittsburgh pizza masters Patrick Elston of Gus Franco's and Pete Tolman of Ironborn Pizza have spent years perfecting—crafting distinct styles that have earned them regional championships and devoted followings.
(00:52) Patrick's journey began with a mobile wood-fired pizza trailer in 2018, eventually establishing Gus Franco's brick-and-mortar location in Lower Burrell. His "American baker style" pizza represents a careful evolution from Neapolitan traditions, with meticulous attention to dough fermentation and bread-making techniques. The result? A perfectly crispy yet light crust that recently earned him recognition as the Northeast Region champion for traditional pizza at the International Pizza Expo.
(22:59) Meanwhile, Pete Tolman transformed a chance encounter with Detroit-style pizza during a Colorado ski trip into Ironborn Pizza, now thriving with locations in Millvale and the Strip District since 2017. His distinctive inch-plus-high crust with a lacy cheddar cheese edge has gathered its own accolades, including multiple Northeast regional championships. Beyond pizza, Ironborn's Strip District location showcases handmade pasta, fresh meatballs, and a full bar experience.
What truly sets these pizza makers apart is their dedication to craft. Patrick describes the intense relationship with his wood-fired oven—moving pizzas through five different "spots" during busy service, constantly managing heat, and treating each pie as an artistic creation. Pete reveals the science behind his dough, which rises higher than traditional Detroit-style, creating Ironborn's signature airy texture. Both prioritize quality ingredients, including non-bromated flours and proper fermentation, challenging the notion that pizza is merely "junk food."
(32:27) Their friendship exemplifies Pittsburgh's collaborative food scene—they attend pizza competitions together, celebrate each other's successes, and even share monthly dinners with their families. Their approach to business growth remains deliberately measured, with Patrick slowly introducing Sicilian pizzas and Pete focusing on strengthening operations at his existing locations.
Whether you're craving Patrick's "Hot Dad" pizza with sopressata and hot honey or Pete's white pie with garlic cream and roasted tomatoes, these pizza masters prove that Pittsburgh's pizza scene has evolved into something truly special. Visit them soon to taste what championship-level dedication to pizza craft really means.
Welcome to The Pittsburgh Dish. I'm your host, Doug Heilman. What's your favorite style of pizza or do you have that special spot? This week we sit down with two master pizza makers that have not only crafted incredible pizza and thriving businesses, but also lasting friendships. All that ahead, stay tuned. Thank you, guys, so much for coming over and for being on the show. Would you introduce yourselves to our listeners and what you have going on right now in the world of food?
Patrick:Sure, yes, I'll go first. My name is Patrick Elston. I co-own Gus Franco's Pizza in Lower Borough with my wife, Mandy. It's a family-run establishment. We do wood-fired pizzas. We've been doing them in our shop for just under four years. Before that, we were a mobile unit traveling around town and making wood-fired pizzas on the road. We liked that so much that we ended up purchasing a building and pursuing our pizza dream in Lower Borough, which is not too far from Pittsburgh for any of you guys out there.
Doug:No, not at all. I've been there, yeah. And so, Patrick, I'm just doing math real quick. I don't think I knew you had the mobile unit. So about seven or eight years now total.
Patrick:Yeah about. Well, we started in 2018, taking years now total. Yeah about. Uh, well, we started in 2018, taking it pretty serious, bought our trailer uh, sight unseen used from a gentleman in maine and uh had it towed here. We were saving up some money to buy a camp at the time and decided that the pizza thing was something that we wanted to try. So, instead of relaxing during the weekend, we uh now work every weekend. Yeah, but it's worth it. We love it. We absolutely fell in love with the service side of things, the hospitality side of things, making friends, making people smile and they make us smile right back. So it has been quite the ride. It really, it truly has changed who we are and everything about our daily lives. It's made me a much happier person. The service industry, in providing things for people, has really allowed me to open up and let the true me kind of come out, and whatever is feeling good is kind of just how we roll with it at our place.
Doug:I love that, Patrick. Thank you so much, and since you mentioned making friends, let's introduce our other guest.
Pete:Hi, my name is Pete Tolman. I am the owner of Ironborn Pizza. We have two locations One is in the Strip District and the other is in Millvale across the river. The thing that I'm kind of excited about right now is I was featured in a book called the Pursuit of Pizza as part of a member of the World Pizza Champions, so it's pretty exciting something I've never done. It has our dough recipe in there as well as our sauce, so if you're interested in trying to make it at home.
Pete:That's where you can find it.
Doug:This is the newest thing for the Ironborn legacy.
Pete:Yeah, correct. So we opened in June of 2017 at Smallman Galley, yes, and then we moved across the river to Millvale. We closed the Smallman location from there and then opened our strip district location in December 2019.
Doug:My goodness, I'm just doing quick math here too. So you're coming up in June, you're coming up on an anniversary, then Will that be eight years?
Pete:I believe it's eight years. Sometimes I'm except dates. I'm pretty sure it was June 2017.
Doug:So we have two very different pizza styles in both of your businesses, and if we have some listeners out there that haven't visited either location, let's describe to them a little bit of what you're serving up in terms of pizza style, and I know there's more on the menu, so I want to get to that too. Pete, I'll go back to you. Will you tell listeners what is the pizza that you guys are dishing out?
Pete:So we specialize in Detroit style pizza. Detroit style pizza is kind of popular for a style of pan with sloping shoulders, so it builds this cheddar cheese crust around the outside. It's a pan style pizza.
Doug:It's amazing that crust is everything.
Pete:That edge. Yeah, there's something exciting about just that little crispy corner that you want, but the dough is light and airy. Detroit style pizza also has sauce on top, so that's a little different than some styles of pizza, but it's just a really good light, airy pan style pizza that people really like.
Doug:I had never experienced it before. Until you opened in Smallman I did not know about Detroit style and that lacy edge it got me for sure.
Pete:Yeah, we were really fortunate to be one of the first ones to do it and really tried our best to focus on the dough, working on the procedures, making sure that we do it consistently every day. I love it.
Doug:Patrick, back to you. You mentioned to us that you got this wood-fired oven. How do you describe your pizza style at your shop, Gus Franco's?
Patrick:Yeah, so over the years our pizza style has adapted. We were early days we focused on a couple of different styles when we were playing around with pizza at home. I started getting some higher temperatures with a charcoal grill actually that. I got up in the mid-700s and I started to see some changes in in how the dough was reacting, started to tinker around with different types of flour and uh and and it was more of a neapolitan kind of inspired pizza at the time uh, we referred to it as neo-neapolitan. That was kind of the the catchphrase at the time where you were making a 12-inch round, you know semi-soft pizza that had the leoparding around the outside, and the more we did it, the more I wanted to kind of crispify that pizza. So I guess I refer to it these days as an American baker style pizza we do a lot of. I mean, our dough recipe is basically a bread recipe in a lot of ways, so I studied a lot of different bread styles and fermentations and the deeper I went down that hole.
Patrick:The changes that came along with that journey have been really cool and it changes all the time. We've lowered our temperature a lot that we bake at. We're in the low to mid 700s most night. Temperature-wise, on the top we like our floor to be around 600 degrees and that allows that pizza to cook for about three, three and a half minutes. That makes that bottom crisp up just enough to keep, uh, the Pittsburgh crowd happy. That's kind of used to that type of pizza, but also allows the crust to be delicate and light and airy and with a nice chew to it that just kind of uh is almost buttery in a way with the fermentation. So long story short, yeah, American baker kind of New Yorkish wood-fired style pizza.
Doug:Are you creating a whole new term, American baker style?
Patrick:Let's do that, I've kind of seen people use that term, and I like that because it is not a true Neapolitan style. It is not a Roman Neapolitan style. It is not a Roman style, it really is.
Doug:It's breaking from Italian traditions so much, because you're really creating something that doesn't fit in any box, but it's relying on those roots, those roots of that traditional type of wood-fired pizza that got us kind of there.
Patrick:And then we, as the pizza scene in America, which is outstanding, I mean it's uh, it's really truly fascinating to see the growth of pizza in the types of different styles and the regional styles. Man, it's that's kind of where we're focused at right now, although we do tinker on Tuesday nights with Detroit style I'd call it a grandma.
Patrick:Detroit because it's about maybe a third as thick as Pete's, which is the true definition of Detroit. So ours is a little thinner with the cheese crust, and so we do that on Tuesdays. We're playing around with the Sicilian. Now we're getting some electric upgrades. A gentleman named Steven that works for me has taken on the Sicilian project and we've been having some great results and we're really excited to possibly be releasing that on a limited basis coming up. But our bread and butter is still the 12-inch round pie that we sell every day.
Doug:I love it. You mentioned a couple of things and I just want to break down for people out there. I love educating people on some things, so we have said Pete's doing a Detroit-style Pete how thick is the typical Detroit style crust.
Pete:So the typical Detroit style crust I would call over an inch high, but under an inch and a half. So let's call it an inch and a quarter. I would say that, ironborn, if we are docked anything against Detroit style pizza, it's because we lift it almost too high pizza. It's because we lift it almost too high. So true, if you look at True Buddies or Cloverleaf, their pizzas are generally just a little bit shorter than mine.
Doug:But once we started at Smallman, everybody kind of got used to that tall lift and we just couldn't take it away. And what's the difference between that and then what we would call a grandma style pie? Grandmas are thinner.
Pete:Grandmas are a little thinner. There's no cheddar cheese crust. It's in a grandma style pie. Grandmas are thinner, grandmas are a little thinner. There's no cheddar cheese crust. It's in a different style pan, um, generally one you have at home, so like a half sheet pan right or a quarter sheet pan.
Doug:Yeah, exactly this is what people could do at home, because they probably don't have the detroit style pan, unless they use like a cake right yeah, you could either order a true detroit style pan.
Pete:But even if you use a cast iron, not a pot like a cast iron saute pan right, exactly, or just take that half sheet pan, oil it down.
Doug:Take your favorite, come to one of our shops, get, get dough off of one of us, tap it out and bake it off, you know we want people to go to your shops, but pete is giving mad skills on how to do some things at home. I love this, yeah, even if it's like giant eagle dough go ask him for it, slap it into a pan, put your favorite sauce on it and it'll turn out to be pretty good and so many people actually will sell you their dough if you stop in yeah, absolutely one more that patrick mentioned was leopardized, and you mean the spotty browning, leoparding, leoparding.
Patrick:I love that At least that's the way I say it Well, I've never heard that before.
Patrick:Yeah, so yeah, when you get those little dark spots all along the crust in a pizza cooked at a higher temperature and it doesn't have to be wood fired A lot of people consider that a wood fired trait and that's probably where they get that flavor, where they think the smoke is affecting it. When you're running an oven above 700 degrees there's really not a lot of smoke and what smoke there is is living up in the ceiling of that oven. So unless I pick that pizza up on purpose and put it in that smoke, you're not getting a true smoke flavor. You're getting a char flavor from that high temperature. That's making the leopard spots on that crust.
Patrick:A lot of really good electric ovens that are out there now. Pete actually uses a pizza oven called a Pizza Master that can reach temperatures the same as my wood-fired oven can reach over 900 degrees. So you can take my dough and go to a place like Pete's and crank that oven up and really make the same looking pizza that you would in my shop. I think the wood brings a lot of things to the table. I think it's just a sexier way to cook a pizza. To be honest with you, I think it's every pizza that goes in there.
Patrick:I have to watch the entire time. Every pizza is customized. If I walk away from it for more than 30 seconds, I have to make a new pizza for somebody. So it requires your full attention. There's no just popping it in, closing the door, coming back in a couple minutes, spinning that thing one time and going. You're moving it from spot to spot. Sometimes on a busy Friday night you're chasing heat that floor. If you think of every pizza that goes into, that oven is sucking heat out of that floor and you need to replenish that as much as you can. On a busy night there's no downtime to really let that heat pump back up. So so it's six o'clock to eight o'clock on a Friday night. If you come watch me cook, you're going to see a man in motion.
Pete:I mean cooking in that oven.
Patrick:Literally, you are going, you're searching and you're trying to.
Patrick:In my oven, in my head, I have five different spots in there that I cook pieces on, so I'm trying to only have three, maybe four, in there at all times and then having one spot that I'm kind of letting recharge and then I'll start to use it and let another spot recharge. So when you're trying to get that top finished at the same time that the bottom finishes, so that fire is always going to be raging, you can keep loading logs in there and that top heat is always there on demand when you want it, but the bottom heat is really where you have to play catch up sometimes. That's what separates a lot of people in the wood fired oven to when they get gas. We just had our floor replaced and there was this little corner of the floor that had its own little brick. It was a solid floor except for this little brick and I never knew why.
Patrick:Four years I never asked the question why that was. So when they broke that floor out to put a new one in, I saw that piece and I'm like what is this? And they said we put that in there because so many people buy a wood-fired oven and realize in a couple months how hard it is and how intense it is. I mean, it's you're in a relationship with that thing. That's my second wife, to be honest with you like I mean you have to understand and work with each other and compromise like there's it's.
Patrick:It's insane, but they said that little. That plug allows them to pop that out of there, drill a hole in the bottom and put a gas line in there to allow that gas assist to kind of help regulate that heat, because if you're blasting too much, too little, I mean you're worried as much about the fire in that oven as you are the actual pizzas in it. So it's quite a dance and it's definitely something that I still learn. Every shift I work and make pizzas I learned something that I shouldn't do or something that I should do and just yeah, it's an absolute. So every day is a journey, but it's so worth it.
Patrick:When they come out looking pretty and I mean I have an art degree. I didn't go to college, I went to a two-year art school and I haven't been super creative after I graduated. I never had a job in art, I never got to use that to earn a living. But making these pizzas allows me to create a little something, you know, a whole bunch of times at night and then serve it to somebody and get a reaction. So I still get that, that feeling that I chased when I would paint or when I would sketch something up. So that allows uh it hits a whole bunch of uh feels with me to uh to make a good pizza for somebody. Not only feeding somebody something that I consider fairly healthy for something looked at as junk food, but to give them something that we created with our hands, that we cared about, that we put three or four days into that dough is super satisfying, so it's the coolest thing I've ever done.
Doug:I mean, all of that kind of goes back to and in fact you said something that I will disagree. I don't usually disagree. I don't think of pizza as junk food well, yeah, it certainly can.
Doug:Well, it can, I mean I've seen some of the loaded pies, but like you are putting so much care in, like the flour and the processing and the, I don't, I mean, I think it's a good quality, it, yeah, and it it can be, you know you get you know and Pete will agree with me we the further down the pizza journey you get, you learn what's good and what's bad.
Patrick:You learn that there's no need for bromated bleached flours, like people are so concerned. Like bromate does a lot of things. One thing it does is give more oven spring to your dough. So if you're using the same amount of flour and you're making one loaf of bread, that's 100% its size, and if you don't use that bromated, it might be 80%.
Patrick:So a lot of bakers are like, well, I want mine to be bigger, I can get more money for it. So they use bromated flours, which allows that, and they're bleached. You don't need that. It's not even legal in certain states around the world, like they're banning bromated flowers. So I know Pete uses non-bromated and unbleached flowers in his stuff, but not everybody does. I mean a lot of the.
Patrick:You know the pizza shops that are chain pizzas like the bigger guys. Bigger guys are, you know, probably. You know their. Their margins are really small, yeah, and they need to use value products. So they're probably using, you know, things that are giving bigger results.
Patrick:And uh, and by no means am I a doctor, but the more you hear about gluten intolerance and things like that, I have a lot of. Personally, I have a lot of customers that are gluten sensitive not celiac, but gluten sensitivities that can eat our pizza because we're not using flours that have that stuff in them. We're fermenting them properly over time. That allows that yeast to go in there and break down all the simple sugars and all the things that are in there and kind of do half the digestion for you. So it's much easier on people's guts and there's a lot of places throughout Pittsburgh and in the United States that are doing it that way, that are trying to promote a bit of a healthier way. But I know, growing up like by no means if somebody in my family was on a diet were they like, oh yeah, we're eating good tonight. You know we're going to save some calories and go grab a pizza, you know what?
Patrick:I mean. So that's what I mean when I say you know it's never. You know it's kind of considered junk food because you sit down and you gorge yourself on a greasy pie and do your thing. But yeah, the more people learn about that and the more people like that care, like Pete and a bunch of other pizza makers throughout the city and around the world are trying to change that. Look on pizza. I think yeah.
Doug:Well, thank you for that. Yeah, Pete, I want to come back to you too, because at Ironborn, in the Strip District location, you're doing even more than just pizza, right?
Pete:Yeah, we have a full menu, full bar as well, 42 seats or so, so you can dine in straight out of the oven, the great oven that we were just talking about. We make everything that we can there other than like sliced frozen chips, but we deep fry those and season them ourselves.
Doug:Potato chips.
Pete:Yeah, yes, house chips that's pretty much all we have in the freezer. But we make our own meatballs by hand. We hand cut pasta. It's usually like a one to two aged, uh, drying process to kind of firm up the noodles for a day, kind of set the shape of the noodle. Um, so you're making the noodle in-house? Yep, yeah, we have a full extruder, so everything's made by hand and sliced right through the extruder. Um, rigatoni spaghetti orecchiette extruder rigatoni spaghetti orecchiette.
Doug:Don't you have a bolognese on?
Pete:the menu.
Doug:Yep, we always have a bolognese marinara and then the meatballs are really, really popular right now. I also want to just add you not only have ranch and hot sauce, you bottle it yeah.
Pete:That was one of my sous chef's ideas, or kitchen managers. I'm sorry, but he said hey, people love the ranch. Why don't you just bottle it eight ounces at a time and sell it?
Doug:And you're making that in-house too right?
Pete:Oh yeah, we make all our own dressings and everything else as well.
Doug:Let me ask, going back to the pizzas, maybe just right now, what are some of the bangers, the ones that everyone that you think you sell the most?
Pete:So normally our most popular are the white pie, which is a garlic cream, roasted tomato, caramelized onions, ricotta, arugula, lemon oil and then a little bit of Parmesan. Or probably the spicy pie, which is hot soap, risotto, house-made banana peppers, Iso pepperoni.
Doug:I love Iso pepperoni. Oh, it cups beautifully right, it's so good.
Pete:It chars up in the oven. Yes, gives you everything you want. Pretty much, but uh, and then pretty much from there, just herbs and romano, but those are probably our top two. Okay, I'll be down later.
Doug:yeah, we'll be open, I'll be there too. I think the thing I love about that pie is it has that sweet. It has that little tang from the pickle, it's got it all.
Pete:Yeah, sweet salty, a little bit of pickle to it. It's really really good.
Doug:Patrick, if we go to you and you think about the pizzas you're slinging out right now, do you have a couple that are the top movers right now for folks?
Patrick:Yeah, I mean over the years since 2018, we've been making the hot dad pizza, which is our version of, all the way back, probably, to a place called Polly G's in New York City. The gentleman named Mike that used to work for Polly developed Mike's Hot Honey, which Pete and I are both big fans of and we continue to use on a daily basis. He got the hat on yeah, it's my daily driver up there, but uh, so they make a they. He made a pizza with hot, so prosada mike's hot honey on their regular cheese pie that has some, you know, mozzarella blend and crushed tomatoes and sea salt and a little bit of olive oil and parmesan on there. So that pizza I always say that that our pizza shop is the.
Patrick:You know it was built by the hot dad it was literally yeah, that's, that's always been our number one seller. What a great name. And a couple years ago, uh, we started. I reached out to a chef in in california named daniella uditi that uh owns. Uh, I don't I'm blanking on on the name of his spot at the moment, but he makes a cacioacio e pepe pizza and I reached out to him and asked him for some pointers and asked if he minded if I would make my version of that and with his blessing, we started to. We did that as one of our pizza maker specials and it's super creamy and delicious and it's just a seasoned heavy cream and mozzarella base. We cook it like that, we pull it out, we make a Parmesan cream that gets piped on afterwards and, as I tell the people that work for me, I'm like put on fresh cracked black pepper till you think it's enough and then put a little bit more on there.
Patrick:Yeah, because that's the shining star. That pizza has become an everyday pizza on our menu and is slowly climbing the charts to challenge the hot dad. The most popular two-pizza order by far on a given night is a cacio and a hot dad Wow.
Doug:I kind of like that both of your locations have sort of a white-style pie as a top seller. That wouldn't have been a guess for me.
Patrick:We have a classic, we call it the Bianca, yeah, and it has shaved, fresh shaved garlic, whipped ricotta, has cherry tomatoes, a little bit of fresh basil, olive oil, sea salt and parm and that and that is another one that we always surprises me, for whatever reason, that we just sell a ton of that pizza. That's likely. Ton of that pizza, that's that likely is a little still higher than the cacio pepe, but the the cacio is quickly. It's catching up, it's clay, it is catching cacione up.
Doug:So, uh, yeah, absolutely all right. Guys, you've already dropped like a ton of knowledge and skill just by like what you're saying, but I want to know a little bit more about like your background and how you became like this. Uh, pizziolo master, that you both seem to be pete, why don't we go back to you detroit style like in fact, I'll take you guys a little further back is there? Is there a pizza from like your growing up? That was like the pizza and then it led you to the love of pizza uh, to me there kind kind of is.
Pete:I grew up in Kittanning Pennsylvania, oh.
Doug:I know it.
Pete:Oh, I know you do Serena's, I love Sirena's, so there's something reminiscent to my pizza and Sirena's as a kid. They're two different styles. They really don't associate, but in my mind they do somehow.
Doug:Sirena's pizza Serena pizza.
Pete:Sirena's pizza sirena sirena's, I call it. I have no idea, though it's in the Franklin Village Mall in Kittanning yep, I grew up maybe half a mile or a mile from there, so it's been open as long as I can remember that whole plaza.
Doug:I think opened in the 80s, so yeah I've had multiple friends work there.
Pete:I think it's changed hands a few times, but it's still there. And from there I went to IUP culinary school and then I externed at Nemecolin Woodlands, probably stayed there four or five years, worked my way up to the five-star kitchen, went to Chicago, worked at Alenia, which is a three-star Michelin restaurant. Came back home worked for Giant Eagle, worked up to Executive Chef.
Doug:I think Paul Abbott and Eric White have mentioned you. Yes, exactly.
Pete:Yeah, Paul and Eric I know very well. From there, I went on a trip to Telluride, Colorado, which I went to Brown Dog Pizza, Jeff Smokovich, who is on the world pizza champions. We had friends that gave us a place to stay, which was very gracious of them, and they're like you got to go to this pizza shop. You got to go to this pizza shop.
Doug:I'm like really Telluride Colorado really small ski town.
Pete:Um. So I was snowboarding and the friends were like you got to go eat there. So I was like I don't even know what Detroit style pizza is like. Are we really going to be in Colorado and go eat at a pizza shop? Um, I was. I went there. I was blown away, super excited, never tried anything like it and I kind of said at the table why is?
Doug:nobody in Pittsburgh doing this right now.
Pete:So from there I kind of worked on the recipe and I had already known how to bake bread and learn my way through the ropes of kitchens at that point.
Doug:What year was that that you were in Telluride and experienced Detroit-style pizza there?
Pete:I think it was 2016, because it was one full year. I had to try out for Smallman Galley and I was prepared at that point and then, I think, like four months after that, we opened my goodness, what a transformation yeah, it was a wild year.
Patrick:This is Pete Tolman with Ironborn Pizza and I'm Patrick Elston with Gus Franco's pizza and you're listening to The Pittsburgh Dish, patrick, what about you?
Doug:you said you had had a different life before Gus Franco. Where did the pizza making and pizza learning start to happen or come from?
Patrick:So my early culinary training as well as my early life pizza are intertwined. My grandfather owned a diner with his brother for over 50 years in the city of New Kensington and downtown New Kensington. So at the age of eight or nine I would wash pots and pans in the back to earn the right to cook my own burger and make my own fries. Oh my gosh. So that's my formal training.
Pete:What was their?
Patrick:diner's name. It was called Andy's Restaurant.
Doug:Andy's.
Patrick:Restaurant On Fifth Avenue. I remember it on Fifth. It spent some time in the 50s and 60s, I believe, on 9th Street, New Kensington, and then I grew up with it being on 5th Avenue, New Kensington. My whole family worked there aunts, uncles, my mom. So it was yeah, that was my early culinary experience was getting to cook some burgers and fries after I washed some pots and pans. Now next door was Egidio's. Egidio's was the pizza that, if we were getting pizza, that's what we got. Because it was right next door, it was easy to grab.
Patrick:This is your Sirena pizza.
Doug:This is my Sirena pizza, right so?
Patrick:Egidio's was in New Kensington on Fifth Avenue. They were a staple there. It was the first white pizza I ever had and I still wish I could recreate that pie somehow. It and, uh, and I still wish I could recreate that pie somehow. It was probably much more simple than I'm that. I'm trying to make it in my head, but, uh, that pizza was, was really great. Had sliced red tomatoes on top of it, uh. So, but my early pizza days yeah, that was it.
Patrick:Agitios was was my spot, uh. And then throughout my life, uh, I I had a couple part-time jobs. When I would get laid off in the winter time from a seasonal job that I had, that I would cook at a local bar in New Kensington called the Blind Pig. I did that for a season making some simple stuff for them, but it was mostly just cooking at home for my family with my wife. The whole pizza thing started because of my wife wanting to do a pizza project, and then I started to get more interested in it because it was like a science project and for some reason that intrigued me and, uh, and it kind of frustrated her at the time. So she was the more creative side of flavors and whatnot, and I was working on on building that foundation.
Doug:Yes, you also sparked another question, since you were talking about your wife wanting to do this pizza project. Can you share with our audience, uh, where the name of your shop comes from?
Patrick:Yeah, absolutely so. Gus Franco's is nicknames we have for our children. Francis and August go by Gus and Franco. Francis is named after my grandfather who owned Andy's restaurant with his brother, Fran Datris, and then August is named after my wife's grandfather's, Augustine, known as Gus Franco. So when we were naming the pizza shop I was literally trying to Pete and I he was a little ahead of me but when I was talking some names over in the early days because I was working with wood, I think it was like steel brick, something like that. And then somebody was like I think there's a place called Iron Something in Pittsburgh. That's good and I'm like what?
Doug:How dare?
Patrick:they. I'm going down there and giving them a piece of my mind. So my wife and I went to Smallman not to give them a piece of my mind. We were just down there wanting to eat and we ate the pizza and I'm like, oh, they can have this name, we're going to think of something else if we end up doing this and then Gus sounded way more pizza-y than Patrick Elston pizza?
Doug:It definitely does. It sounds super Italian to me.
Patrick:Half my customers call me Gus, and I don't mind it at all.
Pete:I called him Gus the first week I met him. No joke.
Patrick:Even Heather Abraham. Sometimes I'll Talk Pittsburgh like you do PTL, and every now and again she'll still slip up and call me Gus sometimes, and I don't mind at all, because Gus is named after one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life. He's the greatest kid. You know both of my children. I love them dearly and I couldn't imagine it being named anything else at this point. So people can call me whatever they want, as long as they come, get a pizza every now and again and throw a smile our way like we're doing all right.
Doug:It totally works. Yeah Well, now you have me thinking. Pete, I have to ask you where did the Ironborn name come from?
Pete:So Ironborn is supposed to mean steel city.
Pete:born because I grew up in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, so I wanted a way to associate the steel pans that we cook in. We use a lot of steel tie-ins in our ambiance in the restaurant, let's call it. And then we did happen to be watching Game of Thrones and my wife was smart enough to say why don't you just name the pizzeria Ironborn Pizza? I was like, wow, that's such a great name. So I've told Patrick this story. The original name for Ironborn was going to be Baker's Table Pizza and I'm very glad it's not.
Doug:Ironborn is much better. I love it. Yes, I love how we come to things. This podcast was going to be named something completely different.
Pete:That's a story for another day I was going to say you've got to tell us now.
Patrick:Pete has the best branding. I mean he puts so much time, effort and thought and money into his merchandise and branding. I mean Steven that works for me literally half the time has an Ironborn hat on because it's so sweet, it's great merch he has great merch. He has great everything about his branding I'm super jealous of, so I just want that to be out there.
Pete:My wife, Carrie, is a marketer so she, after we knew Ironborn, I was like, wow, we can do all these different tie-ins and we used Top Hat Marketing back in the day. Currently we use Aaron Eastler and he does a lot of the t-shirts and the cool merch. You're sporting one right now, right, so we made these really cool pizza hats with a small Ironborn emblem that kind of look old-timey.
Patrick:That's the one I look at all day long Right.
Pete:People love that hat.
Patrick:So if you're looking for cool hats, they're at both stores. I did try to get a little merch recently. We got some stuff done, but by no means is it on that tier.
Doug:Okay, you'll have to talk to Pete's wife.
Patrick:No no.
Doug:I like being the underdog anyway. I don't know if I've asked this question yet. We've been going for a while. How did you two meet and become friends, Patrick? You just said you guys went down and had the pizza. How did the friendship and camaraderie happen?
Pete:I want to say maybe Eddie I don't know, eddie, I don't know it could have been eddie, uh, eddie from eddie's pizza 412.
Doug:Yes the instagram personality he has the most excellent pizza maker uh, pepperoni roses is yes claim to fame. In my mind, that's that's his signature.
Patrick:Topping, no doubt, I think eddie probably introduced us maybe in vegas.
Pete:Uh, we go to las vegas each year for the Pizza Expo.
Doug:Let's talk about that. So Vegas has the World Pizza Expo International.
Pete:Pizza Expo in Las Vegas every third week in March.
Doug:How long have you two been going out to the Expo?
Pete:I think I've been every year, except for my first year, so probably six years, and you Patrick, I've been there four times.
Patrick:Yeah, I've been there, I think, four times. And you, patrick, I've been there four times, yeah.
Doug:I've been there, I think, four times, and you both have come back with some recognition let's just say yeah, patrick, most recently. Recently, 2025. What did you achieve?
Patrick:Yeah, 2025,. I competed in the traditional category, which is generally the first one to fill up. It's the biggest field generally and has the best prize money. So I said, well, let's just go for the Swing for it.
Patrick:Yeah, let's go. If we're doing it, we're doing it. So that was the first one that I ever competed in three years ago and I came in somewhere in the top 30. So I was super proud of that. The next year, I said let's try something a little different in the non-traditional, and one judge absolutely despised my pizza. That's all right, though. I was super happy with it, uh, but this year I went back to traditional. I'm like look, this is my, this is this is my wheelhouse, this is what I make every day. I'm gonna make our red sauce cheese pie.
Patrick:Uh, the traditional category only allows you to use two of, like, the most common type of toppings, so you can do like sausage, pepperoni, peppers, onions, mushrooms, stuff like that. So I made some, uh, some house-made pickled peppers and and I use these, uh, pepperoni as well. Yes, I say iso sausage because they call it sausage for pizza, uh, so I slip up, but it is pepperoni uh for you out there, um, so we use that. And, uh, we came in, uh, top 20 and, but we did, uh, I, I came in the best in the entire northeast. So I won the northeast region, which is all pennsylvania, new jersey, new york, and, and all the way up through the new england states, the best traditional, best traditional pizza.
Doug:Yeah, pizza, oh my goodness, in the northeast is uh yeah, and I didn't even realize it.
Patrick:um, I was happy, you know, coming in the place, but I figured somebody had to come in higher than me from this region Does this include New York Includes New York. Yeah, new York, new Jersey, connecticut, so New Haven's in there. So anybody that was competing from any one of those states, as the kids say, you slayed it.
Patrick:Yeah it was pretty cool. So I didn't even know that I had won that. And in the next day, uh, rico, who had an amazing trip out there, rico Lunardi, from slice on Broadway, sent me a text and said you know, oh, congratulations, man, I can't believe you won. And I'm like I didn't win anything. Like I came in you know top 20, I'm really happy with it. And he sent me a picture of this like giant board that they have there that showed me number one. He's like your last name's, elston, right. And I'm like, oh my God.
Patrick:I turned to my wife. I'm like I won the Northeast. Like this is crazy. So that whole, yeah, that was a pretty exciting stuff, but the best thing about it, it truly.
Patrick:I mean, I wasn't out there to try and take over the world and claim to be the best of anything, but it validates my customers. Like I don't advertise. I don't have an advertising budget other than the crazy wrap that I put on my van that I drive around every day. That's been my entire advertising budget for the last four years but it validates the people that continually tell their friends and their neighbors and their family to come buy pizza off of us. So it gives them a chance to puff out their chest a little bit and say I told you, you know what I mean. Why haven't you gone there yet? And it allows that word of mouth, which we've been very lucky to have, that the people that, like us, are really passionate about it.
Patrick:I mean, I grew up playing in bands. I was a front man for so many bands that nobody would ever remember, but I loved being up there on stage and I can remember being young and liking a band and telling everybody about it and then they got super popular. But it was nice to be able to say I was one of the first ones I told you about that band. You know and we feel that way about our customers now that they can kind of say, hey look, they got a little recognition and you should go try it. So it allows that grassroots kind of marketing thing to continue to help us out.
Doug:Well, I love that you're throwing it out to your customers, but it's really validating your skills too. When you were talking earlier about the experimentation and the best flower, it really also goes back to all the things you're doing.
Patrick:When it happens to you, it's so strange that it doesn't feel like that, uh, but uh, yeah, it's, uh, it really yeah, I mean the, the bigger part of it that I get a kick out of. I don't even like when people ask me how it went. I'm it's not the first thing I bring up.
Patrick:I generally usually somebody that's working with me will say oh, he won this, look at that black you that plaque, but it's not something that I try to throw out there and brag about, because, again, I could have done better and I plan on doing better. I got a little taste of a little bit of success in there and Pete has the same, I think you won.
Doug:Remind us, what else have you guys achieved with Ironborn out at the Expo?
Pete:So, just like Patrick getting first in Northeast in the International Pizza Expo, I also I believe in 2019, again, I'm bad with dates I got third overall and first in Northeast non-traditional pizza. And then my GM won third place in the Caputo Cup in Atlantic City, maybe the year after that and then 2023. I want to say she won first in northeast, third overall again. So we've been third overall three times and first in northeast three times, but sarah has the hot man shout out to Sara Sara.
Doug:Sara Boyer, yeah, okay, she's come up on the podcast before. Yeah.
Pete:So she placed third this year. Then they made everybody re-compete, which was very confusing. Then she got fourth, so she got knocked out, otherwise she would have three.
Patrick:Three third places in a row?
Doug:Oh my goodness, well, still I mean, yeah, she's doing great. You guys are competing against how many other pizza locations in the country, I have to say, like mad props, and I know that there's a huge contingent of Pittsburghers that go out to the expo. We always come back with a lot of wins. So thank you guys so much for representing.
Patrick:Yeah.
Doug:Our pleasure. I'd love to know, as we kind of move forward in your businesses, do you guys have anything coming up in the near or long term? I know we're just past the expo, pete probably has more going on than I do.
Pete:So he should probably go first, are you?
Patrick:doing Picklesburgh again.
Pete:No oh never mind. Yeah, we unfortunately are going through some staffing issues. So if anybody's searching for a job and would love to come work for a great staff, please call us. But I had multiple managers leave for one reason or another Everybody on good terms, which is great, but just kind of lost some heavy hitters there for a second and we're ramping back up. But I wouldn't say Sara's talking to me much about Picklesburgh.
Pete:I wouldn't say Sara's talking to me much about Picklesburgh,
Pete:so I mean so just to reframe that, like Pete, you're in a place where you are staffing up the team just to do more at the two locations right now. Correct, yeah.
Pete:We have a brand new manager starting in Millvale. That's super excited right now, so we're hoping to revamp that menu and freshen it up quite a bit, all right, All steady and good stuff.
Doug:Thank you, Patrick, what about you? Any events happening, any new things happening for the shop?
Patrick:Yeah, so I'm getting some electrical upgrades because I purchased a small double deck electric oven. Oh, okay, this is going down the Sicilian path that we were talking about the Stephen project, Sicilian path that we were talking about the Stephen Project. And so once we get our amperage up from 100 service to 200 service, we're going to be able to get those ovens cranking and start to learn the way to cook them in that oven. We've been doing them in the wood-fired oven because that's our one and only cooking utensil in the entire building. So we've been doing the Sicilians in there, but they're much too big and they cook at a little bit lower temperature than our round pies, so it's tough to do them at the same time. So we're hoping to start to have at least 10 to 15 Sicilians available each day, which are going to be a 12 by 12 inch thicker crust kind of a pan fried super crispy bottom.
Doug:Expanding the menu with this new oven, trying what?
Patrick:kind of oven uh, it's, it's, uh, it's a advanco oven which is a a a bit of a bargain basement brand through uh, through a webster on store, because, uh, if it doesn't work out well, I didn't want to overinvest.
Pete:Is it just a standard?
Patrick:It's a standard. It has two 18-inch decks. It's a double deck. Top and bottom heat are separate, kind of like the a la Pizza Master. So we'll be able to play around with what the heat is coming from the top, so the cheese isn't getting overcooked or the bottom's well done and whatnot. So it is going to allow us to to practice and dial that in. I do nothing very fast, I don't take a lot of risks that aren't overthought a million times slow and steady slow and steady, and that's the way I do it too, yeah, I can't.
Patrick:Uh. So even like detroit's, we still only do detroit pies, quote unquote, detroit inspired pies, uh, on tuesdays, because we just don't have the time, energy and and to do it every day you don't want to disappoint the people that are coming back, you're like this is an experiment.
Doug:This isn't something we're ready to weave in all the time.
Pete:But he also doesn't roll it out until he's totally confident that he's happy with it.
Doug:That's right, right I think slow and steady for both shops success. You guys have both been around well over seven years now, going strong.
Patrick:Everyone loves it, I mean it's not I, I'd like making. I like earning a living making pizza, but I'm not just doing it to make as much as I can in the shortest amount of time which right which would make me rush things and make me put out product.
Patrick:I mean I I can't even imagine how much more money I would have made if I allowed people to order extra cheese on a on our one or a round pizza. I mean every other person until they kind of learned that we don't do that would would get extra cheese. So the amount I mean just in extra cheese, it w ould have been. But I know that extra cheese on our pizza does not cook properly by the time that crust is starting to Brown and be ready to go.
Patrick:All that cheese pot up and there's still going to be raw on the bottom side, the middle of the pizza is going to be soggy.
Patrick:The experience won't be the same. We don't have dine-in. We have some outdoor seats for people to sit when it's nice outside. Three, four top tables and a little bistro table. So it's not a lot of room. But that pizza is not getting any better.
Patrick:In a box we use perfect crust pizza liners, which go inside of every box that are kind of this waffled type of paper that the pizza sits on. That allows airflow to go under there so it doesn't just sit in its own moisture and just steam the bottom of it. So by the time you get it home it's like a wet noodle. So we do everything we can to make that experience good when you get it home, because you're most likely taking it home to eat it. So you know we don't want to rush anything. We don't want to put something out until it's ready. We want every pizza to to be, uh, you know, the highest quality that we can make it. So yeah, if this point, we're testing. So there's going to be more testers right now.
Patrick:On Fridays and Saturdays we open up for lunch and dinner, uh, and we've been doing slices of Sicilian, so we'll make one or two of those Sicilians and sell them by the slice to allow people to try them, and the amount of people that are still calling every Friday and Saturday and, once they're gone and sold out, that are still asking for them is a great sign that they're being well-received. So we're really excited to get the electrical work done and start to tinker with that new little oven, which will allow us to learn a lot, and if that works out in fact, then we've got some real rearranging to do, Because we're under 600 square feet. Yes, I have a big old wood-fired oven in the corner and there's not a lot of real estate, but one day it would be nice to have an oven similar to pizza in there, to where we'd be able to do a couple different styles at the same time and up the amount of pizzas that we're doing. So Friday nights and Saturdays and some Tuesdays don't get so backed up with longer wait time.
Doug:It's exciting. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just going to reel back again as someone sitting here watching you two and listening to this. You're talking about the type of oven, Pete. You're talking about the paper. You guys are obsessed in the best way. And I have said this before, I don't have the bandwidth for it, but if somebody wants to create a pizza-only Pittsburgh podcast, you can do it.
Patrick:I mean, there's so much to talk about with pizza and all of that sort of fine-tuned things.
Pete:Yes.
Doug:What's your daily dough? When you want to take daily dough to the next level.
Patrick:There you go.
Pete:Bring one pizza maker on like a Zoom and do your Daily Dough.
Patrick:I actually so I did that. I promoted it, have an actual Instagram account called the Daily Dough Show and started. I did a couple interviews live stream. Interviews about 15 minutes like short, little compressed podcasts. Interviews about 15 minutes like short, little compressed podcasts. I did one with my dear friend, tony Jarmita, who used to own Talio Pizza in East Liberty, who's still a dear friend of mine. I got to cook with him a couple months ago when he was in town at his dad's restaurant, La Tavola, up in Mount Washington.
Pete:He recommended the mixer that I still use to this day, and I love him for that.
Patrick:Yeah, thank you, tony, I love you. Tony's a g. So actually, tony and I, something to look forward to is a uh is possibly a live uh, duo, uh instagram with tony. He just recently got a new uh gosney arc oven, which is a home pizza makers oven, a little higher end, and I just upgraded mine as well, because we're doing a little more catering over the summer months and so we're gonna we want to cook pizzas together, and he's in Brussels and I'm in lower borough, so, uh, the only way to do that is going to be with with the power of Instagram.
Patrick:You can do it and uh, so we're gonna, we're gonna get together and we're gonna live broadcast. Uh, tony and I hanging out making some pizzas together and hopefully sharing a few laughs, and so that's, that's what I'm looking forward to.
Doug:I'm looking forward to that, yeah yeah, that should be fun why don't we give our listeners your social handles and, as well, remind us of your current hours at the shop?
Patrick:absolutely so. Biggest thing we're closed Sundays and Mondays. I promised my kids when I opened this place up that I was going to be there a lot that Sunday was their day. So we open for dinner service from 3 to 8, tuesday, wednesday, thursday and then from 11 to 8 on Friday and Saturday. So we do lunch and dinner those two days.
Doug:And you're located in Lower Borough.
Patrick:Located in Lower Borough, at the corner of Leachburg and Michigan, and we're one block from Pizza Hut in lower borough, at the corner of leachburg and michigan, and uh, we're one block from pizza hut. So if you see a pizza hut, just follow your nose to the smell of uh, wood fire and you'll find us at the peak of the hill. No, no, nobody out pizzas the hut, haven't you heard wow?
Doug:wow, that is so retro nobody out pizzas.
Patrick:I'm not trying to out pizza anybody, I'm just trying to make a nice pizza at the corner of Leachburg and Michigan. And Instagram, facebook, those are all the same. Just at Gus Franco's pizza Franco's with an S. At Gus Franco's pizza. The website is Gus Franco's pizzacom. It'll take you to like a square Gus Franco's pizza site, don't be afraid.
Patrick:That's the real one.
Patrick:I just refuse to pay their crazy uh hosting fees and I don't think I don't have online ordering, so I don't need it to be crazy intuitive uh yet. But uh, yeah, we're phone call or walk-in only on, uh, on on tuesday, wednesday, thursday, it's generally about four, maybe five pizzas every 10 minutes. On friday, we're doing around six average every 10 minutes, uh, and and we're thumping in there. That allows us to not guess when your pizza is going to be done, because we're not delivery, we're not, you know, we're pickup only. We don't have a ton of parking space, uh, so we want the customers to come in and get their pizza as it's coming out of the oven, like I want to. I want it to be getting cut while they're paying so they get it as fresh as possible. That pizza doesn't get any better in a box, no matter what high end products that we put in there with it. That pizza is not going to get any better. So, but that allows us to not guess. Uh, you know, I can always remember, you know, ordering pizza and they would say you know, I have 25 minutes. Depending on the night, it was either 25 or 45 minutes, and sometimes your pizza would be sitting there for 20 minutes on top of the oven Cause it got done way sooner than it was. We don't do that, but it's not some formal.
Patrick:We still have people that, um, that think we're, you know, like uh. I always quote Braveheart when uh William Wallace gets in front of the army and he goes I'm William Wallaceace and the guy goes no, you're not. You know, william wallace is eight foot tall and shoots uh lightning bolts out of his arse or something like that. So we have this stigma around us because when we opened it was so busy that we would sell every dough ball that we had before we even opened. They would all be claimed. So if you didn't call, it was like winning a radio show for the first month. It was insane the amount of uh. I mean you would set the phone back down and it would pick up. We have two lines and you would just tap it down and pick it back up and there was a customer on the phone.
Patrick:So we still have a stigma around us that people like they're like I hear you got to call three days ahead. I got, you got to make a reservation. I'm like look, you don't have to make a reservation, you don't have to call three days. You call when you, we'll probably get you in within 40 minutes and it's not any crazy inclusive. You know, like deal, here, we're a regular pizza shop. We were just busy three and a half years ago and it got written about in newspapers and now everybody believes that they can't do it.
Patrick:So once or twice a week people are like, oh, this was really easy. And I'm like, what do people think? We are out there, you know what I mean? Like, like, we're just over here making pizzas, hanging out. Just give us a call or stop in and we'll get you a pizza. So, uh, but that's how we break down our night and that's, uh, that's the hours that we have. We're only open what is that? 30 some hours a week, so it's not a ton of time. And, uh, I would open more during the week for lunch, but we burn wood to keep that oven hot and if it's not going on, we're just in there, just wasting away wood.
Patrick:And again the romantic side of me like that wood serves a purpose. That wood was a tree that soaked in the energy from the sun for years and years and years and then blazes up in my oven for 10 minutes and cooks somebody their food, like I feel bad wasting that resource. So at this point we don't open up for lunch, but we might at some point gotcha yeah, pete.
Doug:What about, uh, the hours at ironborn?
Pete:I think they're close at both locations, right, yeah, each restaurant's a little bit different, but millvale is a little bit easier. Um, ironborn millvale is open every day of the week, other than major holidays or events that we take off because we need to have a team building event. The Strip District is open every day, but Tuesday Both stores are open 11 to 9, on the days they are serving food. And then, of course, the Strip District has a bar as well as five booths to sit in, has a bar as well as five booths to sit in and, uh, your handle is ironborn pizza pretty much on all the handles.
Patrick:we don't really do facebook, and then I'm pizza pete on instagram. Oh, and I'm the pizza bear.
Doug:I don't think I follow you as the pizza bear. Yes, new information, right, guys? It's been so great to talk with you. I have one more question for the both of you. The name of the show is the Pittsburgh dish. What's the best dish you have had to eat this past week?
Patrick:I feel like I'm ready for it.
Patrick:So so once a month, myself and my wife Mandy, uh Pete and his wife Carrie and uh Eddie, eddie from Eddie's pizza and and his wife carrie and uh eddie eddie from eddie's pizza, him and his wife jen we get together generally on the first uh monday of the? Uh of the month. We uh we went to taipei in fox chapel uh last week and uh gorged ourselves on some some lovely sushi and in a few other dishes and uh, by far that would have probably been the best meal that I've had recently uh at the Taipei in Fox chapel with some friends All right, best bite.
Doug:Yeah, pete, would you share this or do you have a different best bite for the week?
Pete:That is probably the correct answer, for sure, one that we're looking forward to. Actually, it's not one I ate yet, but we are going to see Kevin Kahn, who's at Italian Village in Fox Chapel and he's putting out some of the best pizzas that I've seen on the internet and I haven't been yet, so I'm really excited about it. But my wife made a really good short brie, short rib cauliflower gnocchi last night. That was pretty good as well. Home food's always good too, and it counts.
Patrick:My wife made a great birthday cake for my son, Gus, who turned eight years old on Memorial Day, and she did a beautiful marshmallow buttercream icing.
Doug:And boy, I tell you what I wish I had a little bit of power with that, I would go for that any day of the week as well. Oh, those are some best bites. Thank you both. Absolutely All right. Patrick Elston, pete Tolman, thank you both so much for being on the Pittsburgh Dish. Thanks for having us.
Patrick:Oh God, yeah, Doug, it was great time. We'll see you next week. Same time. We got more to talk about, I think we do.
Doug:I don't run out of words. I mean, if you watch the Daily Dough.
Patrick:I have to shut myself off sometimes, so we'll be here next week. It wasn't a bad drive. The traffic on 28 was good and he gave me a nice little water, which is quite quenching.
Doug:So thank you. Doug for having me. Thank you guys. Thank you, I love it. If you enjoyed the show, consider buying us a coffee for this episode or supporting the show monthly. You can find links to those options at the bottom of our show description and if you want to follow my own food adventures, you can find me on social media at Doug Cooking. That's our show for this week. No-transcript.
