Pizza Week 2025: Mario's Pizza in Owego
OWEGO, N.Y. (WIVT/WBGH) – News 34 is excited to announce the return of Pizza Week.
34 alum and now special pizza correspondent Mike Tanzini is resuming his tour of local pizzerias.
First, Mike takes us out to Owego to learn about a familiar family recipe.
'It's just an ongoing tradition and a family-run business,' said Mario's Owner Jerry Pettinato.
A staple in Owego, Mario's Pizza has been in business for over 45 years. A lot can change in four and a half decades. But if you ask Jerry Pettinato, if something ain't broke, you don't fix it.
'It hasn't been tweaked, it has not been changed, it's been the same recipe,' said Pettinato.
Jerry knows a thing or two about the pizza business. His father and family managed an Italian restaurant in the Scranton area that's been in operation since the 1920s. Meanwhile, Jerry's father-in-law opened Mario's Pizza in the late 1970s. It wasn't long before Jerry jumped into the pizza biz to continue the family tradition.
'Between my wife being in the business, me being familiar with that, it seemed like a natural progression with me to get into this,' said Pettinato.
It's a full family effort as Jerry, Amanda, Vinny, and Gina all work together to make the signature Mario's pizza, which starts with dough made fresh each day using a blend of flour, water, sugar, salt, and a special yeast.
'Fresh yeast is extremely fragile. It can't sit for a long time, or it will lose its potency,' said Pettinato.
The dough will ferment for 24 to 36 hours, which enhances its flavor and makes it light, airy, and easy to work with.
'You go all the way around. Give it a little tug and pull. Let gravity stretch it out. Give it a little tug and a little turn. Unfortunately, it took me a little while to really get the technique. It's not about speed…oh there it goes. I jinxed myself here. Is this fixable? This is the magic of television. When this comes out, you probably won't be able to tell there was a hole in it,' said Pettinato.
Next, it's time to drop down the sauce.
'One scoop of sauce dead center – kind of like target practice here,' said Pettinato.
Mario's utilizes fresh California tomatoes.
'You want the best that you can possibly get. It's been the same brand of tomato for 45 years. That company is strict with their tolerances, and everything is perfect' said Pettinato.
Along with a special blend of Italian seasonings, which packs a punch of fresh flavor.
As with any loyal family business, Jerry isn't budging on revealing the family recipe.
'There are some traditional Italian seasonings. A little bit of TLC, a little bit of love, and we'll… just leave it at that,' said Pettinato.
Now, time for the 100% whole milk, full cream mozzarella cheese that's going to melt beautifully and blanket our pie. After spreading what I'd consider a perfect layer of cheese, I feel like it might be time for a promotion!
'I'm in charge. My first order of business is giving everyone a half day. Jim is going to stay and make pizza with me.'
After several minutes in the oven, we take it out, cut it up, and get ready to enjoy a meal as a family – the same meal that Mario's has been serving to customers, both young and old.
'They've been with us for generations. It's more than 45 years that we've been here. We're on second and third generations now coming up and seeing their kids and grandkids come in and have that same smile on their face when they take that first bite of pizza,' said Pettinato.
I want to thank everybody at Mario's for helping me be a part of the family and for creating their signature Mario's pizza. There are some places out there that say, 'When you're here, you're family.' I can tell you firsthand that when you're down at Mario's, you're part of La Famiglia.
Mario's is located at 51 Fox Street in Owego, which is the only location owned by the Pettinato family.
Next, Mike heads to Vestal to learn about another long-time pizza staple in our community.
Meanwhile, you can vote for your favorite local pie in our pizza poll by clicking here.
Pizza Week 2025: Mario's Pizza in Owego
'Hurlyburly' at KNOW Theatre
Demolition of IBM Old Building Group nears completion
Van Cott Jewelers announces official closing date
Hanagan's Heroes monument to be relocated to Southside Veterans Park
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
44 minutes ago
- New York Times
Mario Kart World's Journeys Are Smooth and Unremarkable
Mario Kart World is an incredibly clean game. As the latest iteration of a decades-spanning franchise, it has been winnowed into something smoothly efficient and entirely absent of blemishes. The series' hypercolored, candy-coated art style is rendered with impressive clarity on the Nintendo Switch 2's brand-new hardware. You can launch into a race in moments, whether playing on your own, sharing a split screen or playing online. In this well-crafted experience, there is very little standing in the way of the fun. Yet once I eventually put down the racing controller, I can only assume this iteration will be as thoroughly erased from my memory as Mario Kart 8 was after its release 11 years ago. It comes down to the nature of playing these games. They aren't linear narrative experiences. They aren't designed to provoke specific emotions at specific times, nor to generate thought or reflections on a theme. The Mario Kart games are toys, things to pick up and play, to boop and to beep, before putting them back down again. The karts and drivers you can select are collectibles to rotate around and admire, not embody. They're like video game versions of Parcheesi. They don't come bearing rich characters, plots or motivations, all useful tools when it comes to creating something that can memorably exist on its own as a piece of art. When Mario Kart 8 came out for the Wii U in 2014, the most active discourse about it online focused on Luigi. More specifically, the evil way he seems to smirk at other racers while caught on the replay camera that rolls after a race. We couldn't get enough of the anodyne plumber shooting murderous looks at his competitors. But Luigi wasn't designed to be a giant jerk. His demeanor was an accident of his default facial expression paired with players' desire for meaning and humor in a game without much consideration for either. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Most Followed TikTok Creator in the World Khaby Lame Detained by ICE for Overstaying Visa
Most Followed TikTok Creator in the World Khaby Lame Detained by ICE for Overstaying Visa originally appeared on L.A. Mag. The 25-year-old Senegalese-Italian influencer entered the U.S. on April 30 and departed the country on Friday after being granted a 'voluntary departure' by ICE. According to a statement made to The Guardian by an ICE spokesperson, Lame was held for allegedly overstaying the terms of his visa. Unlike a formal deportation, a voluntary departure allows Lame to return to the U.S. in the future without facing a legal reentry ban. With 162.3 million followers on TikTok, Lame is known for his silent comedy skits, his bio reads 'If u wanna laugh u r in the right place.' In January, he was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Reflecting on his journey, Lame told UNICEF 'from my own experience as a child fearing poverty, struggling to find my passion at school, and losing my job during the COVID-19 pandemic, to finding my place and calling in the world, I know that all children can thrive when they are given a chance and opportunity.' He became an Italian citizen in 2022, during a time of debate within the country over citizenship laws affecting children born in Italy to immigrant parents. As an Italian citizen, Lame was able to be in the U.S. for 90 days before having to apply for a visa. Shortly after arriving in the U.S., Lame appeared at the 2024 Met Gala in New York City as a guest of BOSS. It remains unclear how he spent the remainder of his time in the detainment occurred amid heightened political tensions surrounding immigration enforcement in the U.S. This week alone, ICE conducted multiple raids, prompting widespread protests against the agency and current immigration policies. As of now, Lame has not made any public statements regarding his detainment. His only recent activity online was a photo shared of himself in São Paulo, Brazil released on Monday via Instagram story. This story was originally reported by L.A. Mag on Jun 11, 2025, where it first appeared.
Boston Globe
8 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Disney has filed an AI lawsuit that could shift the future of entertainment
As AI rapidly develops, tech companies have raced to build and monetize tools that generate Hollywood-grade images and videos. Now these tools are poised to transform moviemaking and the entertainment industry in coming years, experts say, and this lawsuit represents a bid by some of Hollywood's giants to secure their place in that future. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It's sort of a 'finally' moment,' said Chad Hummel, principal at the Los Angeles office of the law firm McKool Smith. Previously, entertainment giants had stayed on the sidelines even as researchers documented how AI tools could be used to generate apparently infringing content. Now they've entered the fray in a big way. Advertisement Midjourney is one of a handful of AI generators that has captured the world's imagination by letting users spin up images on demand. What started as a novelty quickly became a major source of online content, as people used Midjourney and other generators such as OpenAI's Sora and Stable Diffusion to generate everything from memes to pornography to reimaginations of popular characters from movies and TV. Advertisement But the resulting images don't come from a vacuum - the AI models are trained by ingesting millions of words and images from across the internet, including copyrighted work from individual artists and entertainment studios. AI companies claim that their generators are spitting out entirely new creations and that the training data falls under 'fair use' according to copyright law. Artists and midsize media companies have pushed back, saying the AI is stealing their work. Disney and Universal's lawsuit frames the issue as a matter of good versus evil, calling Midjourney 'a bottomless pit of plagiarism.' AI industry advocates counter that legacy media companies are standing in the way of a technological advance that could unleash a wave of creativity. Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the companies allege that Midjourney 'seeks to reap the rewards' of Disney's creative work by selling an AI image service that 'functions as a virtual vending machine, generating unauthorized copies of Disney's and Universal's copyrighted works.' Indeed, AI-generated content depicting beloved - and copyrighted - characters such as Mario, Shrek or Winnie the Pooh has circulated online, at times going viral on social media and spawning a new approach to fan art. Star Wars junkies, for instance, no longer have to comb the web for stories and visuals based on their favorite characters - they can use an AI video generator to create an original 11-minute Star Wars movie with photorealistic sets and characters. AI video still isn't advanced enough to produce passable full-length films or TV shows, Washington Post tests found. Advertisement That might be why copyright holders waited to file lawsuits against AI video generators, said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell University. While AI audio can now produce songs that sound human-generated, AI video hasn't made that leap, he said. OpenAI's Sora, for example, can only generate content roughly a minute long. And although the speed and fluency is a remarkable improvement compared to older models, it doesn't offer the kind of fine-grained controls directors and studios need, according to Grimmelmann. But production companies are already using AI for preproduction brainstorming, special effects and on-screen images. The quality of AI-generated content has improved rapidly since OpenAI first released its image generator DALL-E in 2021, with companies including OpenAI and Google now offering video generators to the public. Many believe it's a matter of time before content that's entirely AI generated makes its way into mainstream entertainment. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film and TV actors, has struck deals with voice AI companies allowing actors to license their voices, and this week the union reached a tentative agreement with a collection of video game companies to pay actors if their voices or likenesses appear in AI-generated games. 'Patience and persistence has resulted in a deal that puts in place the necessary A.I. guardrails that defend performers' livelihoods in the A.I. age,' the union said in a blog post Monday. Meanwhile, a new class of AI start-ups such as Moonvalley and Runway are already working with Hollywood studios to integrate AI into the production process, the companies have said. This lawsuit is the latest in a barrage by rightsholders - including artists, authors and media companies - alleging infringement by AI firms. Among the highest-profile cases is one filed by the New York Times against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. At the same time, many are signing multimillion-dollar licensing deals with AI firms granting them full access to their content - for a price. (The Washington Post has a content-sharing deal with OpenAI.) Advertisement The Disney and Universal suit takes a different tack from other lawsuits, demanding that Midjourney filter what it generates rather than avoid scraping the studios' intellectual property altogether. 'This one seems more aimed at establishing the kind of expectations that copyright owners have of non-AI platforms: You need to take down obvious copies of our works,' said Grimmelmann. What the movie studios don't want, according to Hummel, is for tech firms to be able to cut them out of the equation by training models on their work without having to pay for it. 'This is not going to be Hollywood trying to shut down generative AI,' Hummel said. 'It's about compensation.' Already, many visual artists are feeling the effects of AI's entry, said Jon Lam, a video game artist and creators rights activist. He said he has watched his circle of professional contacts struggle to find work when AI can replicate different art styles with the click of a mouse. Wednesday's lawsuit was 'a huge confidence boost' for creatives like Lam hoping for an upset that stops film, TV and video game studios from drawing on artists' work without paying them, he said. A win for Disney and Universal wouldn't necessarily protect artists in the entertainment industry from getting replaced by AI, said Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at University of Chicago who helped build Glaze, a software tool that protects visual art from AI mimicry. But it could drastically limit the material that AI tools can draw from, he said. Without fresh data, AI generators would regurgitate the same visual ideas over and over, Zhao said, making them less useful for production companies. In that sense, both AI companies and entertainment studios rely on artists who produce new work and make a living wage. Advertisement Some tech industry leaders have argued that creating tools such as ChatGPT would be impossible if they couldn't be trained on copyrighted data - and that requiring AI companies to pay every creator would stall an AI boom that promises vast economic benefits. Studios such as Disney and Universal should embrace AI video rather than suing to stop it, said Adam Eisgrau, who leads a program on AI, creativity and copyright for the Chamber of Progress, a center-left trade group that represents technology companies including Midjourney. 'My initial reaction is that the movie industry has a long history and a short memory,' Eisgrau said. He compared the lawsuit to one decades ago in which studios sued the makers of videocassette players and lost - which he said was 'lucky for them,' because they ended up profiting greatly from the technology. Meanwhile, each step forward for AI video is met with rapt attention from fans of the tech. A clip posted Sunday in the Reddit forum r/aivideo showed a short trailer for a nonexistent movie - one with visual references starkly similar to science fiction series such as Star Wars. 'Please turn this into a feature film. It would be freaking crazy,' one commenter said. 'That's the plan!' replied the poster. Advertisement - - - Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report.
