Frank's Pizza & Pasta

Two pulsing buzzes from my phone grab my attention as my screen lights up with:

“You guys wanna go to Dave Portnoy’s pizza spot in Bmore later? Just named it best pizza in MD,” from Dillion Harding in a group chat with just me, him, and Rose.

“Wanna go on Sunday?” replies Rose within the minute… and the plans are set in stone. Frank's Pizza & Pasta will be seeing the three of us on Sunday night to determine if Dave Portnoy’s 8.3 pizza rating is all that it’s hyped up to be.

Dave Portnoy, better known as the Barstool guy, is a prominent figure in the social media and business world. He turned his passion for sports into a million-dollar business after his college days and founded Barstool Sports, a sports and popular culture company. In 2017, Portnoy began posting his One Bite Pizza Reviews series and has been doing them ever since. His opinions and ratings of pizza places are known to make or break an establishment's reputation. If anyone knows about his reviews, you’d know that he rates pizzas on a 0–10 scale with decimals, where anything over 8 is top-tier, 7s are solid, 6s are okay, and anything lower is usually not great. He starts each video with, “One bite, everyone knows the rules,” and usually proceeds to stuff the entire thing (most definitely more than one bite) into his mouth.

Knowing the impact Portnoy’s praise has on popularity, especially after calling Frank’s pizza “spectacular,” Rose and I attempt to call ahead to order. We settle on either straight-up cheese or, if they’ll let us, half cheese/half buffalo chicken. Rose sits snuggled up like a tightly wrapped burrito in her Lovesac and dials the number. Four rings go by. On the fifth, a woman's voice, rushed and frantic, says, “Hello, Frank’s Pizza. Just a warning, our phones keep dying, so please try to place your order quickly if you can.”

Registering what she hears, Rose says, “Oh, okay… um… we will take a large pizza, half cheese, and can I do half buf—” beep beep beep goes her phone, signaling the termination of the call. We each try calling back several times, but it goes straight to voicemail. Welp… I guess we’ll just order there.

Our pre-arrival Google search uncovers that Frank’s opened in 1985, with a coin flip determining which of the owners' names would represent the restaurant. Frank won. Four years later, he was killed in the kitchen of the pizza joint by a bullet that went through the wall of the connecting bank. A dent from the bullet still remains in the side of the pizza oven to this day.

As we pull up, the etching of a little Italian chef—who (most importantly) has a mustache and is holding a pizza—becomes clearer as the illuminating glow of Frank’s Pizza & Pasta stretches out below him. The place is small and gives a family-friendly, homey vibe. There’s a line that, if we hopped in it, would be busting out of the door. We squeeze in, realizing these people have already ordered, and place our order for a large cheese pizza. Behind the counter, the workers are packed in like sardines.

The sardine nature of the number of workers has our pizza out and in front of us in less than 10 minutes. Very quick service.

There’s no one way to describe the crowd in Frank’s. It truly is a spot for everyone. With six booths and two two-person tables, getting a table can be a challenge, but you just order at the counter and hope for the best. I see a husband and wife, probably around 65, start to crumple their napkins, and I make my move. They get up and walk past, seeing me beeline for their table. In passing, the man says, “Better move quick.” I laugh but, in all seriousness, secure a spot for us.

You’d think we hadn’t eaten in days based on how we cleared that pizza box. Rose, Harding, and I doctor up each slice with the allotted oregano, red pepper flakes, and Parmesan shaker cheese as we try to step into the shoes of Dave and capture the essence of the pizza. Our review and rating process begin.

Rose’s Review: 8.5

“The sauce makes this pizza, which is not what I was expecting—it's the perfect amount, and the flavor is unreal.”

Harding’s Review: 8.1

“Great crunch. Solid thin crust. Great slice.”

Kacy’s Review: 8.4

“The crunch of the crust, outlined with perfect bubbles, and the sweet sauce are doing this pizza justice. It is more on the saucy side, just how I like it, and the New York style is my ideal slice.”

As a group, we recommend Frank’s to anyone who finds themselves in the Baltimore area. Pizza (and food in general) brings people together, and what brings people together even more is the influence of a famous person like Dave Portnoy. This place is family-friendly, has a nice staff, and is my favorite of all the other pizza places I’ve tried in Baltimore. I think it stands out to me because of the thin and crunchy crust and the sauce that is on the sweeter side. I was also surprised by how engaging and nice the people in the restaurant were. This was a reminder of the strong knit community Baltimore fosters.

Whether it was families in a booth, Grubhub delivery drivers waiting to deliver food, college students breaking free from campus, or an old couple on a Sunday night dinner date, this place is clearly loved by many. Portnoy might’ve brought me and my friends to this place, but I can only imagine how many people in the Baltimore area have called this their go-to pizza spot long before Portnoy even stepped foot through the front doors.