PATRICK FORT

It’s December 1999 and Brian Yourish is at one of his usual spots, Pizza Mart. 18th Street
in Adams Morgan.

BRIAN YOURISH
And I was standing here eating and I saw her walk through the door.

PATRICK FORT
It was his former coworker, Heidi Eitel.

HEIDI EITEL
My original plan was go to Subway but I changed my mind at the last second. I just looked
in the door and said, “Oh, pizza’s good.”

PATRICK FORT
Heidi and Brian had worked together the past two summers at the Capitol Hill Arts
Workshop teaching kids classes, but now Brian couldn’t recall the most crucial piece of
information about her.

BRIAN YOURISH
I didn’t remember her name, so I kicked her in the butt with my foot.

HEIDI EITEL
I don’t know why that led me to converse with him, but it did.

BRIAN YOURISH
Heidi is not the type of person who would normally respond well to that, but she had seen
me interacting with children for two summers in a row, she knew that I was...

RUTH TAM
Was it like….you turned around and you were like, “Who the?! Who was that?!”

HEIDI EITEL
When somebody kicked me in the butt, I turned around ready to be angry at somebody, but
I saw Brian and it was okay. I didn’t remember your name either I don’t think.

PATRICK FORT
Heidi and Brian sat together at Pizza Mart catching up on each other’s lives. And when
Heidi couldn’t finish her pizza, Brian helped.

BRIAN YOURISH and HEIDI EITEL

H - And then we went ahead down the street to…gosh, where was it?
B - Heaven and Hell
H - Yeah, Heaven and Hell
B - We got some beers.

PATRICK FORT
That was 20 years ago. They got married in 2002. They settled in Cathedral Heights and
live there now with their teenage daughter.
RUTH TAM
Aw, a jumbo slice love story for the ages.

PATRICK FORT
We say thank you, pizza.

RUTH TAM
Pizza Mart had been open for just a couple of years when Heidi and Brian reconnected.

PATRICK FORT
Back in the 90s, 18th Street –Adams Morgan’s main strip– was more than just restaurants
and bars. There were homes, printing places, bookstores.

Brian and Heidi’s chance encounter was exactly the type of thing that would happen over
jumbo slice.

RUTH TAM
Now there are a half-dozen jumbo slice places on 18th Street alone, and a bunch of others
scattered across the city. People love it. It’s part of going out in Adams Morgan.

PATRICK FORT
But the thing is Ruth, jumbo slice is not good pizza.

RUTH TAM
You shut your mouth!

PATRICK FORT
All I’m saying is that eating jumbo slice makes me want better pizza. If you gave me a slice
right now, I’d eat it for sure.

I just want better options.

RUTH TAM
Okay, I feel you. D.C. needs more late-night eateries for sure. But on the pizza front? We
are set.

(Theme music)

PATRICK FORT
This is Dish City.

RUTH TAM
I’m Ruth Tam

PATRICK FORT
And I’m Patrick Fort

Today we’re talking about jumbo slice.

RUTH TAM
As bars in D.C. get fancier and fancier, why is jumbo slice still the reigning king of late-night
food?

PATRICK FORT
I really hope someone will tell me why.

RUTH TAM
It’s great.

PATRICK FORT
It’s not. We’re done.

RUTH TAM
End of story. The episode is over. It’s great.

-----

PATRICK FORT
My biggest problem with jumbo slice is that there are absolutely amazing slices of pizza in
D.C. and I would rather be eating those instead of jumbo slice.

RUTH TAM
Oh my gosh, Patrick Fort, quit being such a pizza snob. All pizza is good pizza and that’s
the law! Jumbo slice rules.

PATRICK FORT
No, you’re wrong.

RUTH TAM
Here to prove me right is WAMU’s own Mikaela Lefrak. We took her out for pizza a few
Fridays ago.

MIKAELA LEFRAK
I feel like a queen. I feel like no one’s ever accompanied me to eat a meal before.

RUTH TAM
Mikaela is a jumbo slice diehard. For five years, she lived in Adams Morgan, around the
corner from Duccini’s, her favorite jumbo slice shop on the south end of 18th Street.

MIKAELA LEFRAK
The only respectable option is cheese. You can get other ones but there’s a wait, people
judge you.

RUTH TAM
We collect our pizza.

PATRICK FORT and MIKAELA LEFRAK

P - Do you eat your pizza on the street?
M - I’m a stoop-eater.
RUTH TAM
And we follow Mikaela into the wild.

MIKAELA LEFRAK
Aw yeah, that’s so good. It’s just a perfect meal.

RUTH TAM
And it doesn’t take long until we start seeing more jumbo slice lovers….

PERSON 1 and RUTH TAM

R - Is your night going to end in jumbo slice tonight?
P1 - You know, I don’t know. I really don’t know. It might. Even the people on a diet, doing
keto, by the end of the night, they’re doing jumbo slice

RUTH TAM
We talked to a whole bunch of people and they had so many good things to say about
jumbo slice.

PERSON 2 and RUTH TAM

P2 - I’ll say this. I was born in...no, my family is from Austria. And then we moved to France.
But Italy is kind of in between. So we’re kind of, we’re a pizza family. We like pizza.
R - So when you go to Pizza Mart, it’s like ‘Oh family’!
P2 - Kind of, yes.
R - Okay, have a good night!

PERSON 3, 4 and PATRICK FORT

P3 - My friends were tired. They went to this one. I’m like, “I’m not buying that one because
I don’t know which one is the best.”
PF - Do you usually go to a regular one?
P3 - No because I don’t know which one-
P4 - Is this an interview?!
P3 - Stop you’re stealing my spotlight!

PATRICK FORT
Ruth, Ruth, none of these people were sober and even with their biased drunk taste
buds, so many people told us they were regretting jumbo slice. As. They. Ate. It.

PERSON 5,6 and RUTH TAM

P5 - We’re pretty f---ed up right now, not going to lie to you.
P6 - And we hate ourselves.
R - So do you always go to jumbo slice when you’re craving jumbo slice pizza, this
particular establishment??
P6 - Honestly, not going to lie to you, I don’t crave jumbo slice pizza.

PERSON 7 and RUTH TAM

R - Have you only ever had jumbo slice wasted?
P7 - Yeah, no, that’s never been a sober move.

PATRICK FORT
We need an objective expert to come in and tell us if the pizza is any good, so I’m bringing
in my own witness: Anthony Falco. His job title is literally “international pizza consultant.” He
helps pizza places all over the world with equipment, to set up the kitchen, design the menu
and fine-tune their recipes.

He came all the way down from New York City to D.C. just to taste jumbo slice. Anthony,
could you please tell the fine people of the jury what goes into a quality pie?

ANTHONY FALCO and PATRICK FORT and RUTH TAM

A - For me the dough starts with good flour. Some level of natural fermentation is super
important, to make it not only to make it more digestible but the number one reason is that it
just tastes better. The sauce is very important.
P - What’s good sauce?
A - Yeah, just really good tomatoes. I like California tomatoes. Maybe seasoned with salt
and olive oil.
P - Alright, and then…cheese?
A - Cheese! Mozzarel! So, a really good mozzarella should have that nice stringiness that
happens there.
P - You want the pull.
A - Yeah you want the pull. It should have that flavor, creaminess.
P - How crispy or robust or strong should it be? Should it be able to hold itself up? Does that
matter?
A - Yeah, I’m an American.
A - I like a…
R - So my pizza needs to stand tall!
A - Yeah it does!
R - And salute me when I eat it.
A - Exactly. I need to hold my pizza with one hand and a remote control in the other hand.
R- Where does the beer go?
A - It’s on my helmet!
P - He’s got his kegerator hat on!
A - Exactly! Come on now, it’s pizza day.

RUTH TAM
Sadly, I did not bring my beer hat to the studio that day.

PATRICK FORT
That’s a damn shame

RUTH TAM
After Anthony laid out the groundwork for the perfect pie, we decided to take him out for
jumbo slice. You know, for a bit of field research.
ANTHONY FALCO
So excited!

PATRICK FORT
We walk towards Adams Morgan, our cheesy, saucy destination.
ANTHONY FALCO
Oh my god I see it. Original Jumbo Slice, which next to another pizza place. There’s a
pizza place. This is like the Ray’s phenomenon that happened in the ‘80s in New York.
There was Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s. There were so many Ray’s that eventually
there was a place called Not Ray’s.

PATRICK FORT
And we enter Pizza Mart.

PATRICK FORT
It’s so strange being here this early.

ANTHONY FALCO
Everything here screams high-volume

PATRICK FORT
We place our order and so we don’t have to wait long.

ANTHONY FALCO
Oh my goodness. It’s kind of cute. The crust is cartoony. I mean it’s a lot of cheese

PATRICK FORT
He takes some paper towels and starts dabbing oil off the slice. And, because he’s a pizza
expert. He doesn’t eat pizza from the pointy end like a normal person. He starts with the
crust.

He rips it open and dives nose-first to get a whiff of the crust at its freshest.

Then he tears off a piece of the slice...and takes a bite.

ANTHONY FALCO and PATRICK FORT

A - It’s not terrible, but it’s not great
P - About what you expected?
A - Better than I expected. It’s like a...it tastes like a dinner roll from a cafeteria.

PATRICK FORT
I think this perfectly explains how I feel about jumbo slice. I know it’s not fancy pizza. It’s not
horrible, but it’s definitely not good.

What I don’t understand is that other cities have pizza that costs the same or even less than
jumbo slice and it’s so much better! Why can’t I have that here?

RUTH TAM
Oh my god! What is it with D.C. transplants who say they can’t find a good slice here?

PATRICK FORT
You’re a transplant too!

RUTH TAM
Patrick, the only way to settle his debate is to move beyond your surface level arguments and
get to jumbo slice origin story. That’s after the break.
-----

RUTH TAM
Okay Patrick I know you have your oppo research against my beloved jumbo slice…

PATRICK FORT
Prosecution never rests!

RUTH TAM
But before you reveal your out of context “evidence,” let’s get some history on the table.

Jumbo slice happened by accident. Shah Chishti –a Pakistani immigrant– opened Pizza Mart
on 18th street in 1997.

One night one of his employees was in a rush to leave and left dough on the counter.

SHAH CHISHTI
When I come the next day, the dough is all fluffy and has risen up. So, I put a couple dough
balls together and make a pizza. Everyone comes. “I’ve never seen pizza like this - it’s jumbo.’”
That’s where jumbo comes from. People gave me the name jumbo.

RUTH TAM
If you haven’t held a jumbo slice in your hands, pictures don’t really do it justice.

It’s huge, obviously. A single, floppy slice is longer than your forearm. 22 inches long.

Some places serve it on two overlapping paper plates, plates that immediately become
translucent because of the grease.

Other places will give you a small, cardboard pizza box, but the slice won’t quite fit all the way
in, so the tip of is always folded over over the rest of the pizza so the whole thing can squeeze
in.

PATRICK FORT
Okay, fine, so it’s giant pizza. What’s your point?

RUTH TAM
My point is, the size distinguished it so much that Shah opened a second restaurant on the
same block. Shah’s brother Mike ran that one. Jumbo slice became such a draw that in 2010,
the travel channel featured Shah and Mike Chishti’s jumbo slice businesses on the show “Food
Wars.”

FOOD WARS
It’s a marinara-soaked battle that has pitted brothers Mike and Shah Chishti against each other
for almost a decade.

PATRICK FORT
But you see in that clip lies my evidence. On the Travel Channel, there was a blind taste test
with jumbo slice super fans, a random tourist and celebrity chef and D.C. resident Carla Hall.
RUTH TAM
In the end, Shah’s brother Mike won the contest.

PATRICK FORT
But what the show didn’t say –or perhaps didn’t realize– is that both brothers’ places were
owned by Shah and they used the same exact pizza recipe.

SHAH CHISHTI and PATRICK FORT

P - You did own both of these, but like was it the same business? Is the pizza the same?
S - Yes.
P - Here and Jumbo Slice?
S - I have the same recipe. Nothing changed.

RUTH TAM
So, you’re saying the regular D.C. jumbo slice aficionado doesn’t have refined taste buds to
distinguish one jumbo slice from another?

PATRICK FORT
Exactly. It’s absolutely a point in my case. The pizza is the same, all jumbo slice is the same. It’s
all the same kind of bland pizza.

RUTH TAM
That clip only proves that Pizza Mart and Jumbo Slice –two out of the many slice shops on 18th
street– are the same. Plus, they may be the same, but they’re still delicious.

I feel like you’re missing the bigger point. What jumbo slice tastes like is only part of the food’s
draw. It’s about the experience. And to spell that out, I’m bringing in Derek Brown, who was a
bartender at Rocky’s in the late 90s and early 2000s, just around the corner from 18th Street.

DEREK BROWN
There would be a time when you’d be hammered, and you’d go to jumbo slice and there’s like a
possibility that you might end up making out with somebody in line. It just got weird.

RUTH TAM
Do you hear that thrill in his voice? For Derek and other late-night partiers, jumbo slice was the
cap to a perfect night.

DEREK BROWN
The next morning, you would see the pizza boxes and crusts invaded by rats. You’d be walking
by and see all these rats carrying off this bounty of food that drunken jerks had just tossed into
the grass. That was gross, actually. When they talked about pizza rat in New York, do you
remember that? I was like man, you all don't even know. You have no idea. You need to go to
Adams Morgan and there were the pizza rats. There was a whole army of rats. It was like The
Nutcracker in there for a while.

RUTH TAM
Ok yes, that’s actually pretty disgusting. And yes, I admit it wasn’t really pretty. There were
fights on the sidewalk and trash all over the street.

PATRICK FORT
The “experience” Derek was talking about? It wasn’t great if you lived in Adams Morgan. Even
Brian and Heidi –the couple that reconnected at Pizza Mart– saw that the neighborhood was
developing a bad reputation

BRIAN YOURISH and HEIDI EITEL

B - For people who lived in Adams Morgan like we did after the weekend scene, the next
morning…
H - Lotta trash
B - A lot of trash, long lines late at night and concentrated centers of noise.

PATRICK FORT
Residents were getting annoyed by the party aftermath and general craziness. In 2011, the
District decided to act.

NEWCAST
Police are launching operation Adams Morgan. Over the next few weekends there will be more
police officers and resources in Adams Morgan than people have seen in many years. Police
say they are going to target underage drinking, drinking and driving, drug offenses and quality of
life concerns.

PATRICK FORT
The District decided to widen the sidewalks. The theory was that if people had more space to
move around, there’d be less congestion, fewer collisions and fewer fights. Overall, a less rowdy
and crowded environment.

RUTH TAM
And, it worked. Reports of violence went down, neighborhood complaints decreased….

PATRICK FORT
And unfortunately for us all, jumbo slice, I guess, is an institution, or something.

RUTH TAM
It is! Now, going out for jumbo slice comes with a certain sense of…. adventure. But now, it’s
slightly safer. As long as no one gets hurt, it’s still really fun to see all the craziness at a jumbo
slice place at two in the morning

PATRICK FORT
I guess I can understand the appeal. Especially if you’re in college or are brand-new to the city.

But if you want that gritty 18th Street late-night experience, you could still be eating better food.
There’s a 24-diner. A late-night empanada place. A Salva Mex restaurant at the bottom of the
block. Even the falafel joint is open ‘til four in the morning!

ARIANNE BENNET
My name is Arianne Bennet, and my husband Scott Bennet and I co-own the Amsterdam
Falafel Shop here in Adams Morgan…

PATRICK FORT
Arianne Bennet lived in Adams Morgan through the neighborhood’s highs and lows. She and
her husband Scott saw an opportunity to get in on the drunk food feeding frenzy, so they
opened up shop in 2004.
ARIANNE BENNET
Initially we thought we would need to rely on the late-night crowd. But I think what ended up
happening is that all those people who were out partying or drinking late at night were either
students or employees in the District somewhere. They began to say, “Wow, whatever I had last
night was delicious” and they would come back again during the day.

PATRICK FORT
Amsterdam Falafel has had tons of success. Now they have three locations in D.C., and one in
Miami.

RUTH TAM
Okay Amsterdam Falafel is good, and it’s popular. They even had a location up in Somerville,
Massachusetts, where I went to college.

But even if people stop there for fries late at night, drunk falafel just isn’t a thing the way drunk
pizza is. Neither are empanadas, or the late-night diners, even if they have lots of customers
after hours.

Those places might even offer a better, more complex meal, but the thing is: your standards are
lower for drunk or late-night food. And that’s what makes jumbo slice so good.

And everyone we talked to kind of agreed with me, including Arianne and Derek.

ARIANNE BENNET
To me it’s almost like carnival food. It’s the extreme form of a food. You always hear people
talking about, “You have to see how big it is. No, one slice.” I really think it’s the carnival,
freakshow novelty of it. And for people who aren’t as adventurous in their palate, it’s cheese,
and bread and they understand it.

DEREK BROWN
It’s perfect after you’ve been drinking at a bar.

RUTH TAM
Derek grew up. He now runs the Columbia Room, which is a fancy cocktail bar, and a number
of other places. But he still loves jumbo slice!

DEREK BROWN
It really tastes delicious. You put all the stuff on it, you put the shakers of parmesan cheese and
the hot peppers and whatever other stuff they had, and it was awesome.

RUTH TAM
Jumbo slice wins the popular vote.

PATRICK FORT
You’re forgetting about Anthony Falco, our pizza expert, who has the most credibility here! He
agrees with me.

ANTHONY FALCO
Jumbo slice, while a noble enterprise of keeping drunk people from having hangovers that
would probably be worse…It could be better. You could do better, you know? I hope that
someone steps in and fills that void for you guys. I hope that one day you guys get the pizza you
deserve.

RUTH TAM
Anthony may be the nation’s foremost expert in pizza. But I like that he appreciates jumbo slice
as like, the lowest common denominator. After all, the drunk food business is where he started
out.

ANTHONY FALCO and RUTH TAM and PATRICK FORT

A - I used to own a french fry restaurant in Seattle
P - What does that mean?
A - We used to sell Belgian fries to drunk people.
R - So you know the drunk people food market?
A - Yeah I commiserate with the jumbo slice guys, they’re doing God’s work.

PATRICK FORT
Will jumbo slice last another 20 years? I hope not, especially since there are so many other
great food options.

RUTH TAM
There are great food options. But I still want jumbo slice to last.

Especially because the block is changing rapidly as it is.

Maybe...as Adams Morgan gets more upscale, you’ll see fewer slice shops. Maybe there will be
one jumbo slice instead of six.

Or maybe in 20 years it’ll be a fancy one with like a photobooth and gluten free/non-dairy
options. Exposed brick and edison light bulbs . . . Or whatever the 2040 version is of that.

PATRICK FORT
We will almost be in our fifties...

RUTH TAM
And I’ll still be eating jumbo slice.

-----

PATRICK FORT
Dish City is produced by me, Patrick Fort.

RUTH TAM
And me, Ruth Tam.

Our editor is Poncie Rutsch.

PATRICK FORT
Our theme music is Daniel Peterschmidt. Ben Privot mixes the show.

RUTH TAM
WAMU’s general manager is J.J. Yore. Andi McDaniel oversees all our content.
PATRICK FORT
If you want to talk to us online, we’re on Twitter and Instagram at Dish City. And our email is
dishcity@wamu.org.

RUTH TAM
If you want to talk to us in person, which hopefully you do, we’ll be grabbing drinks at bars
around the district the Tuesday after each episode drops. Details at dishcity.org/sidedish.

PATRICK FORT
Hopefully we won’t be eating jumbo slice.
RUTH TAM
What are you talking about.

PATRICK FORT
If you love Dish City, tell a friend! And review us in your podcast app. It’ll help listeners, jumbo
slice fans or foes like yourselves, find our show.

RUTH TAM
We’ll be back next week with a new episode, so hit that subscribe button and see you next
week.

PATRICK FORT
Bye.