Pino’s Unique Thanksgiving Pizza Gains Popularity

People can’t get enough of it. Pino’s Pizza in Deer Park is celebrating Thanksgiving in a rather unconventional way with their Thanksgiving pizza, a unique creation that’s generating quite a buzz. This pie features sliced roast turkey breast, gravy, sausage, apple cornbread stuffing, and is topped off with cranberry sauce.

Customers are traveling from all over to grab this $34.99 pie, with 300 sold already this month, and that number just keeps climbing.

Joseph Barbieri, the owner—often called Pino—shared how distant fans are eager for the pie, mentioning that someone even traveled from Toms River, New Jersey. “The biggest question I get is, ‘Can you ship it to me?'” he remarked, still puzzled by the demand.

This Thanksgiving pizza trend kicked off last November when Pino shared a video of him crafting the pie. It features a base of mozzarella-topped dough, smothered in gravy, loaded with turkey and sausage, and finished with cranberry sauce. The video quickly went viral, racking up millions of views across platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

“It really took off. We probably sold over 500 pies,” he noted.

Hailing from Calabria, Italy, Barbieri originally concocted this idea after accidentally stocking up on turkeys from one of his three locations. “Before Thanksgiving, my son called, saying, ‘Dad, I think we messed up. We sold six meals too many and have no turkeys left,'” he recalled, then quickly arranges to get more turkeys from a supplier.

In the early hours of the following Monday, Barbieri used the pizzeria’s oven to cook the extra turkeys without disrupting the day’s work. “By 11 a.m., I got another call. ‘Dad, you’re going to kill me. I sold six too many. I have six left,'” he remembered, humorously recounting the chaos as his social media manager suggested posting about Thanksgiving.

And thus, the legend of Pino’s Thanksgiving pizza was born. Since its opening in 2020, the pizzeria has developed a reputation for its unique specialty pies, offering flavors like hot dog, French onion soup, escarole and beans, and mac and cheese.

Barbieri has since expanded the Thanksgiving menu to include calzones, stromboli, and empanadas using similar seasonal ingredients.

He also crafts special pies for various holidays, like Memorial Day and Valentine’s Day, and is already gearing up for Christmas offerings, which will feature whipped ricotta, sweet sliced ham, homemade pesto, and cranberry sauce.