BALTIMORE — Juniet Ozturk runs Angeli's pizzeria.
With five locations in Baltimore, and being named to multiple lists ranking the best pizza locally and nationally, he's drawn some attention.
Catching the eye of famous pizza reviewer and founder of Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy, came as a surprise when he got a phone call saying Portnoy was at one of his locations.
"Immediately I was like 'Brother we gotta go' he's like 'What's going on' I was like the pizza guy is at our spot we gotta go', he checked the camera he was like 'Oh my god' like we dropped the apron and right away jumped out," said Ozturk.
Ozturk almost missed him, sprinting from the driver seat of his car to stop Portnoy from leaving.
"I [jumped] in front of the car, and I was like, man Dave, big fan, we are here to see he's like, what's going on I was like, we are the owner of this place," said Ozturk.
Ozturk and his brother gave Portnoy a tour of the restaurant though he hasn't found out what the review is yet.
"That was amazing that feeling, our dream. You obviously want to have the big influencers in your spot," said Ozturk.
Ozturk has a different background from pizza than most of the places you think of with the best slices.
While usually the best pizza is made by Italians, he's from Turkey.
Most lists rank New York as the epicenter of the pizza world, he's rooted in Baltimore.
"Everybody's like, 'We heard about you, we are from New York, and I can tell you, you guys have a New York style pizza, you guys are killing it,'" said Ozturk.
A good pizza starts with the dough and you can't just wing it.
"Why they say New York is the best pizza is because of the water PH, so water PH, New York and Baltimore's is totally different. So with saying that we do change the water PH," said Ozturk.
He's got it down from how much sauce needs to be added to the cheese for a large pie to how long it needs to be in the oven.
"Oven temperature is one of the most important part, if it's too high then it can burn, If it's too low then the pizza is going to turn into like a stone," said Ozturk.
Portnoy got the cheese pizza, the same thing he gets everywhere.
So far, Ozturk hasn't seen what his score was.
"We really believe in our product. We have five locations now, and we are doing good. We have big followers, all places are doing really good thanks to our community," said Ozturk. "We really love what we do, so we are hoping we got the good score, but again, if it's not, I'm still going to be here so, you know, connect with the community and hoping to do better," he added.
He says people have already come in saying they saw Portnoy was there and he expects more when the review drops.
