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Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy hit back at the Washington Post's piece against him before it was even published on September 22, 2023. The 47-year-old social media personality called one of the writers responsible for the piece and questioned her journalistic standards.
The alleged newspiece reportedly elaborated on Dave Portnoy's past as it tried to piece together why Pizzerias were collaborating with him for his One Bite Pizza Fest.
Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of s*xual assault which may be triggering to some readers. Discretion is advised.
The One Bite Pizza Fest, based around Dave's successful One Bite Pizza review series, also got backlash from Chef and Food Writer, Kenji Lopez Alt. The chef recently published an Instagram story criticizing the festival. In Kenji's story, he warned pizzerias and people against Portnoy's festival as they would be supporting a man with an allegedly highly controversial history.
Although Kenji's story has since disappeared as Instagram stories only stay for 24 hours, it is available to be viewed on multiple Reddit threads discussing the story.
Who is Kenji Alt? What did he say about Dave Portnoy?
Kenji Lopez Alt is a popular and highly successful chef and food writer. His 2015 cookbook, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, was a massive commercial and critical success, even becoming a New York Times bestseller. The food scientist is famous for his style of seamlessly improving cooking with the help of proven science.
In 2017, he co-founded Wursthall, a "German-inspired biergarten with a California point of view" in San Mateo, California. He also runs a YouTube cooking channel with 1.41 million subscribers and boasts a massive Instagram following of 606,000.
Dubbed "Seattle’s most powerful food influencer" by The Seattle Times, Kenji is also the Chief Culinary Advisor for Serious Eats and a New York Times food columnist. Apart from his 2015 publication, he has also written four other books. The latest of these is 2022's The Wok: Recipes and Techniques, another #1 New York Times bestseller.
Kenji recently spoke out against Dave Portnoy in an Instagram story, where he bashed the latter's One Bite Pizza Fest. He also subtly criticized the Pizzerias taking part, who were reportedly unaware of or chose to ignore Portnoy's alleged controversial past.
"If there's one food thing @stoolpresidente (Dave Portnoy) has done, it's putting together this list of pizzerias who are either not aware of his history of s*xual abuse, or know but don't care," Kenji wrote in the Instagram story.
He went on to warn his followers that anyone supporting Portnoy would get sub-par pizza as it would be hard to make it in a festival setting without their actual ovens. Kenji added:
"I won't say anything about his actual pizza opinions because as bad as they are, they're irrelevant to this."
Portnoy reacted to Kenji's Instagram post in an August 18 YouTube video of his One Bite pizza review of Funzi's Pizzeria in New York, which Kenji Alt had visited. Portnoy wasn't too thrilled about Kenji's appearance and had almost gotten off on the wrong foot with the owner because of that. Portnoy called Kenji:
"One of the great a*sholes, s*****g, cowards, pieces of s**t, who ever lived. (sic)"
When the owner lightened the mood by suggesting that maybe it was his "schtick," Portnoy stated that Kenji was going "deeper" and called him "a left-wing lunatic piece of s**t." He later told his viewers to "give him the bird" if they ever saw Kenji Alt walking down the street.
The Washington Post reached out to Kenji for a comment, and he stated that he felt sorry for the Funzi's Pizzeria owner for having to deal with "this tirade."
Dave Portnoy and The Washington Post "hit piece"
Dave Portnoy's One Bite pizza reviews, where he takes a bite out of a pizza from a restaurant before giving it a score review, catapulted him to fame as a popular food reviewer.
The American businessman's die-hard fanbase, consisting of pizza reviewers and Barstool fans make up his massive 1.05 million YouTube subscriber count and even bigger 4.5 million Instagram following.
However, Portnoy hasn't gotten on the right foot with everyone and is a magnet for controversy. Some of these were expanded upon in The Washington Post's alleged hit piece against him. These include an alleged r*pe joke in a 2010 Barstool blog, and an allegedly s*xist remark in 2014 against ESPN host Samantha Ponder.
The alleged hit piece also supposedly highlighted his usage of "#nohomo" in a 2016 Barstool article titled, Christian Hackenberg Is Scary Good Looking. For context, Dave's entire statement was, "I’d tap that a*s. #nohomo".
His resurfaced 2016 ISIS joke about Colin Kaepernick, for not standing for the national anthem was also pointed out. Portnoy later apologized to his employees but lashed out at cancel culture.
The Washington Post article also referenced the 2021 Insider.com allegations of s*xual encounters three women had with Dave Portnoy. These included allegations of choking during s*x and filming these encounters without consent. Dave lashed out at the publication and filed a lawsuit for defamation which was later dismissed.
The article interviewed Pizzeria owners attending Portnoy's One Bite Pizza Fest, taking place on Saturday, September 23, 2023, in Brooklyn. It pointed out that pizzerias were supporting the fest for working with other pizzerias, for the people, and to help the industry and the people who helped build it.
The article did talk about how some pizzeria owners supported Portnoy as they saw him as a "champion of small business". WaPo mentioned that these owners claimed that his reviews boosted revenue by 50%. They also pointed out that Portnoy's Barstool Fund raised millions to help small businesses during Covid.
An email sent by WaPo to one of Dave Portnoy's sponsors was forwarded to Portnoy by the sponsor. The email insinuates that some of the sponsors received backlash for working with Portnoy due to his "misogynistic comments and other problematic behavior". The publication suggested that they were giving a chance for them to respond as they were one of the most prominent sponsors.
Portnoy went on the offensive and called up Emily Heil, one of the two writers responsible for the article in an 11-minute recorded conversation he posted to X on September 21, 2023. The conversation immediately went viral, amassing a whopping 42.5 million views.
The Barstool Sports founder read out the email and confronted Heil on the manner in which the article was written as it "kind of backs people to a corner". Dave pointed out to the writer that the comments in the email were made to look almost like a "statement of fact" instead of an accusation.
Emily Heil stated that they were about to reach out to Portnoy the next day, the same day as the article went out. However, Dave responded by stating that it looked like they already had their opinion made out of him based on the email. He criticized her for piecing together the statements in a way that put the sponsors on the defensive, without mentioning any of the positive things he's done.
Heil asked for an interview for the next day but Dave wanted to review the article written about him, which the former stated was not possible. Dave responded by stating that all he does will be validating "all the stuff you're about to make up" against him as he had been hit with the same allegedly "wildly out of context" things time and time again.
Portnoy asked Heil if she had made her mind up about him already before writing the article to which Heil replied in the negative. He then asked her why the email was framed in such a manner, to which Heil replied:
"You know, sometimes you have to say something like this is like, you know, it's sort of a reporting tactic,"
She added:
"When you want someone to respond, you kind of have to indicate that there might be something negative and then you get them to engage. That's all I was trying to do."
Dave insinuated her response to indicate a "sad state of journalism" and criticized her for leading with something that wasn't being researched enough on its validity. He agreed to do an interview with Heil and her colleague at 10 am the following day but refused when it was rescheduled to 5 pm. Dave Portnoy claimed they canceled a minute before the article was due.
