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Anthony Mongiello, Inventor of the Stuffed Crust Pizza Blessed are the cheesemakers

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An image from the title page of US patent 4,661,361

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Headshot of Anthony Mongiellow, a large man with a greying Van Dyke beard, wearing a black shirt emblazoned with his company name and logo.
Anthony Mongiello
A recent documentary tells the story of how a kid from Brooklyn invented the stuffed crust pizza, sued Pizza Hut for ripping him off, and lost. It is a fascinating story, and left me in no doubt about who actually invented the stuffed crust pizza: Anthony Mongiello, that kid from Brooklyn. But it was the incidental asides Anthony dropped in the documentary, along with a look at Formaggio Cheese, the company he built, that really made me want to talk to him about his family of cheese engineers and his own history as a cheese inventor.

Notes

  1. Take a look at Formaggio Cheese if you want to get a better idea of the “75 different Fresh Mozzarella products” they offer.
  2. Stolen Dough, the documentary, is available on a few streaming channels.
  3. There’s a report of the case that I certainly am not competent to judge on its merits. Still, even if Pizza Hut did not infringe on Anthony Mongiello’s legal rights, the company’s moral judgement leaves a lot to be desired.
  4. Would you like to see Italian mozarella di bufala DOP being made? Of course you would.
  5. Here is the transcript.

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