- Was this always your passion?
- Pizza?
- Yeah.
- I used to like ribs.
- There you go.
- I used to be a rib man; I switched.
I wasn't getting enough bread.
I'm Scott, and I eat all kinds of pizza.
But my friend Mark, he is a pizza purist.
So we're trying the craziest concoctions
claiming to be pizza, but are they "Really Dough?"
Mark!? You left your pepperoni outside. Mark?
Hey, Mark, are you here? I got the beef!
He left his oven on; Mark where are you?
You're gonna burn this place down.
Hey
- Hey, Scott
- Dude, you left your pepperoni outside.
What would you do without me?
- How have you been?
- [Scott] I've been okay man, what are you doing?
Chopping greens?
- Yeah, just cilantro
- Making a salad
You know what, I got a question:
You ever tried vegan pepperoni?
The stuff like the little, they look like just--
- Styrofoam chips?
- Yeah, well it looks like somebody took a--
- Styrofoam chips.
- Styrofoam chips. Paulie Gee is in Greenpoint,
he's doing a vegan Sicilian.
- Paulie's stepping out of the box.
- You ever have that?
- No.
- That's the jam. If it's got vegan cheese, still a pizza?
- I won't know until I eat it, just bring it.
I eat anything you bring me.
- You do, maybe you don't like it.
- I ate your squid ink, foie gras.
- I didn't make that, I was just the messenger.
- OK.
- Don't give too much credit to the messenger.
I'm gonna get the vegan pizza. Do me a favor,
stick this in the fridge.
- I'll do that.
- Don't make that mistake again otherwise
the pepperoni's walking
- Tell Paulie I said hello.
- I will.
- Hmm, maybe I should put cilantro in my meatballs --
a Mexican meatball.
- Paulie! Mr. Paulie Gee, how are ya?
- Look at that hat!
- You know, I posted a picture of this hat,
and you made a threatening comment that
made it sound like you were going to
break into my apartment and steal it.
- Yeah, but I don't know where you live.
- There's a reason I don't tell you where I live.
So I got a pizza I want to eat from you.
There's a specific thing, I've been sent on a mission,
a mission from Mark Iacono.
You seem a little nervous.
- You know, Mark's like the freaking Pizza Prince.
- Well, he's not so great, don't worry.
- What's the difference between
bagel dough and pizza dough?
- I don't know.
- You've never heard of foie gras?
- Foie who?
- What do you even use cilantro for?
- Now, Mark doesn't think you can have a good pizza
that's got meat substitutes and cheese substitutes.
My first thought was, "Paulie Gee makes great vegan slices,
maybe we can make it happen."
- We gonna make it happen. - What are you gonna make?
- It's the vegan Freddie Prince.
Sesame seeds on the bottom, like Freddie's in Whitestone
- I've been there, yeah.
- Upside down Sicilian, like Prince street
- Freddie, Prince.
- You see what I did there, you like that?
- You're an animal. OK, I'm going to
prove to him it's possible to have a good pizza
with vegan cheese and meat substitutes.
- I got your back, pal.
- You got me?
- I've got your back, absolutely.
As long as I get that hat, I got your back.
- OK, look, if the pizza's great, you get the hat.
- All right, we're gonna whip one up. Yo!
- You're not gonna make it yourself?
- I don't do that.
- Oh I forgot, you're Paulie Gee.
- So here's how we make our vegan Freddie Prince.
- Paulie Gee's
- We line our pan with oil and sesame seeds,
and we press the dough into the pan
so that the sesame seeds stick.
We top it with Numu vegan mozzarella.
The mozzarella is... The Mozzarella is just like whole-milk mozzarella
in terms of its melting quality.
Then we put it into the oven.
- Vegan cheese.
- Start by putting on some vegan sauce,
everybody says, "What makes it vegan?"
It's just that it's a sauce that has umami in it.
We have olive oil and basil and garlic and onion.
He's dusting it with vegan parm from Follow Your Heart
and finish it off with a vegan sausage from Beyond Meat.
Then we're gonna put it back in the oven.
- Feed me please.
- All right, now it's ready
to take the pie out of the oven.
Look at that thing. Ah, it's gorgeous. That's pizza.
That's pizza. Nah, I can't be braggadocious.
- My mind raced thinking of reasons why
Mark wouldn't consider this one to be a pizza.
I mean, vegan cheese is still cheese, right?
- Real pizza needs to have
the finest and freshest ingredients.
When you walk into a pizzeria, the aroma should
punch you right in the face.
Sauce, cheese, dough. That's it.
Pizza's should look as good as they taste.
- All right, this vegan pizza
better look like a real pizza.
Although if Mark were to consult a vegan pizza historian,
he would know the pizza marinara should not ever
have cheese, if you put cheese on a pi--
- All right Scott, here we go, pal.
- Ahh, here we go. Whoa! - Vegan Freddie Prince.
- This is vegan?
- All vegan. Just in case you want to be neat.
- Let's dig into it! Let's--
Do you have your eye on a slice?
- I have my eye on this one.
- Oh look, they're twins, oh.
- There you go.
- All right so, right off the bat, first of all,
I'd be remiss if I did not applaud your crumb structure.
- Oh, thank you very much.
- You got great crumb.
- You'll love it, I hope.
- If you want that hat, you better hope it's good.
- I'm getting the hat?
- Hang on, hang on, I wanna analyze a little bit.
You know what this has going for it
that a lot of vegan pizzas does not?
The majority of the bit of this is the awesome crust.
Even though it's a thick pizza, it shows restraint because
you don't have to overload it with surrogates for cheese,
and surrogates for meats.
It's already got a base that holds it down.
- It's good stuff. Can I take another bite?
- Do whatever you wanna do.
When this thing lands in front of you,
it definitely is impressive.
But on a Sicilian, sometimes it lands
and it's this huge cheese blanket.
This thing, not only is it not animal-processed cheese,
but it's also kind of, like, minimal on top.
Like, there's variety in the look.
Is that something that you-- - I like the balance.
I always like to balance ingredients, always.
And that's kind of how I came up with
the upside-down Sicilian with the seeds.
They got the seeds on the bottom,
but then you get the cheese blanket.
- Yeah, we didn't even talk about this yet.
- Yeah, we didn't talk about it.
Look at that, just a little bit brown,
it's a beautiful thing.
- I mean the bottom of this crust already looks good,
because it's got that golden, lightly fried thing,
but some of the fat is probably coming out of the seeds.
You don't think so? You're toasting sesame seeds.
You're gonna get some oil out of it. Maybe a little bit.
Look I'm not a seed expert here, I'm a pizza guy. But--
- Was this always your passion?
- Pizza?
- Yeah.
- I used to like ribs.
- There you go.
- I used to be a rib man; I switched.
I wasn't getting enough bread.
Anyway, great to reminisce, but let's look into the future.
I mean, for me it's no question; that's pizza.
When Mark eats this--
- I think he's going say it, I do. I feel good, yeah.
Get it over to him.
- You know how it is, I was coming into your shop
when my brother's in town,
he's vegan and I wanna eat something with him that I enjoy,
that I know he's going to like,
and this is something that I feel like
even if he wasn't in town, I would go for,
because it just tastes awesome, it's light, but the, my--
Oh thanks, thanks.
- There we go.
All right, there you go pal, send my regards, OK?
Tell him to stop sounding like "Ray Donovan."
- I know, you mention it every time I see you,
meanwhile I've never seen it.
- Oh, I'm sorry for the shmutz on the box.
- Don't worry, I'm gonna get more on it. Be good.
- All right, boss, thank you so much.
- See you sooner than later.
All right, Mark, check it out!
I made it back.
- You're always creeping up on me.
- You're always leaving the door open.
- You're like a phantom.
Oh, this is the vegan sausage.
- Yeah, it's got vegan mozzarella,
vegan sausage, vegan parmesan.
- There's no such thing as vegan p-- it's vegan cheese.
You can't call parmesan vegan.
- It's a parmesan flavor, without using animal products.
- All right, you've got some directions written on the box.
- Yeah, he told me how to reheat it, he said,
"Reheat it with some oil, and then we're gonna add
vegan parm after it comes out of the oven."
- All right.
- Be careful.
We're gonna sprinkle a little bit of the vegan parm on here.
You are going crazy with this cheese.
Wait, don't do too much, be careful.
- Come on, cheese makes everything taste better
- Yeah, cheese does, but this is not, this is soy.
- You have your pizza cutter with you?
- Always have my pizza cutter with me
- Good, now we're gonna
- Sounds awesome, you hear that sound?
- It does. It has a nice crisp to it.
- First of all, look at that. Let's do it.
- What?
- I'm curious to hear what you think about it.
- It tastes like pizza.
- Cool, perfect, awesome. There we go, that's our answer.
Definitively, Paulie Gee's Freddie Prince vegan pizza
is truly a pizza, and not only that,
it's awesome. - No it's not.
No, it's not a pizza. - You just said it's pizza!
- No, it's vegan pizza.
- Wait...
- It's vegan pizza.
- Mark, like 12 seconds ago you said, "It's pizza."
What happened between then, and right now?
- Well, I meant to say it's vegan pizza.
And I think Paulie wants me to call it a vegan pizza.
- I don't care what Paulie wants, he's not here right now.
It's me, it's you, it's the pizza -- three of us.
- How about this, it's pizza with vegan toppings.
- But then, wouldn't a pizza with meat toppings
just be a pizza with meat toppings?
- Well no, it's pizza with a vegan topping,
yeah, so I guess it is pizza.
- Yes! There you go!
- I mean, everything about this says pizza.
- Done, my work here is done.
- You know whenever you're right, I kick you out.
- Kick me out all you want.
- It has the dough, it has the sauce.
See, you can eliminate the sauce,
and just have cheese, and have a pizza.
You can eliminate the cheese and just have sauce,
you still have a pizza.
- I thought you said a pizza is crust, sauce, cheese?
- But you can eliminate one of the two,
meaning, sauce and cheese, and you still have a pizza.
- New rules.
- Well no, not new rules, I'm just kinda like, you know...
- Changing the rules, to new ones.
- Explaining better.
- So, here I am, confirmed, pizza?
- Yup.
- Boom, there's our answer.
Mark said it, we all know it, we all believe it.
Paulie Gee's Freddie Prince pizza is a vegan pizza,
that means it's a pizza.
- With vegan toppings.
- Why do you always have to have to last word?
Is there something that happened to you
when you were a kid that--
- You really want to get kicked out, don't you?
- I don't wanna get kicked out,
but I am always testing you. - Well, you're about to
- Do you want to be locked in?
Because that's what's gonna happen if I get kicked out.
- That's all right because I don't leave.
- Uh oh, I'm starting to get those vegan burps.
- Really, is there such a thing?
- Oh yeah.
- Get out.
- Call from wireless router.
- Do you know that person? That's a weird name.
Don't forget to call us, if you need anything.
1-800-MARKANDSCOTT, friends forever.
- Really?
- Dough.
- OK.
- Thanks for watching, and don't forget to subscribe
to Thrillist, and you can check out our other episodes,
like where we eat the Poke pizza.
- And don't forget to like, comment, and share.