A pizzeria is vying for a spot in Guinness World Records for the world’s largest commercially available pizza.
The $99, 150-slice pizza isn’t a one-time deal. In fact, the Big One is already available, though Mama Lena’s Pizza House has had few takers so far.
The would-be record setter measures about 90cm by 1,2m and takes up nearly all the space in the shop’s brick oven.
A tip: call ahead. The Big One takes about 15 minutes to prepare and another 20 to 25 minutes to bake, said Rob Carrabbia, whose wife, Wendy, owns the pizzeria in the suburban Pittsburgh town of McKees Rocks.
”The only way you’re looking to order it is if you want a big pizza,” Carrabbia said.
Mama Lena’s was already offering a 76cm-by-76cm, 64-slice pizza when Carrabbia read about the current record holder in a trade magazine and figured he could beat it.
”If I’m already making one this big, I can make one another half as big again,” he said.
The pizza has been on the menu for more than a year. So far, about 10 have been sold, including for birthday parties and to a school for its basketball team.
”It’s 20 pounds [9kg] of dough, it’s one gallon [four litres] of sauce, 15 pounds [7kg] of cheese and a lot of tender love and care,” Carrabbia said on Monday. ”We cook the old-fashioned way, stone and cornmeal.”
Carrabbia said Guinness requires that the pizza’s making be videotaped and witnessed by a public official. He planned to attempt the record on Monday.
Besides the novelty, Carrabbia said anyone who orders the Big One is getting a bargain.
”It’s less than a dollar a slice” for a plain cheese pizza, he said. Toppings are extra and a white pizza — no red sauce, but garlic, cheese and marinated tomatoes — costs $120,99.
The current record holder is a 1,2m-diameter pizza offered by Paul Revere’s Pizza in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Dubbed the Ultimate Party Pizza, it uses more than 4,5kg of dough, 1,3kg of sauce and about 2kg of cheese.
The category is different from the world’s largest pizza. That record was set in 1990 in South Africa, where the Pick’n’Pay Norwood Hypermarket made a pizza 37m in diameter, using 4 500kg of flour, 1 800kg of cheese and 900kg of sauce.
For its 50th anniversary in 1994, Guinness named that pizza one of its top 10 most astounding feats. — Sapa-AP