Some men dream of climbing the highest mountain. Others yearn to sail around the world in a rowboat, run a mile in less than three minutes, or kick a football through a brick wall.
Rob Carrabbia, 29, has a dream, too. He wants to be known as the creator of the world's biggest commercially sold pizza. And not just as a one-time stunt for a photo op. This is a pie you can order, take home and eat, any day of the week.
Monday evening, the Guinness Book of World Records will send their emissaries to confirm that "The Big One" at Mama Lena's Pizza House in McKees Rocks really is as big as they say it is. The Big One is a 150-cut, 53 1/2-inch, $99.99 pizza -- and it's on the menu now.
Just one thing -- order in advance, please.
"I like to get paid ahead of time," says Carrabbia, whose wife, Wendy, owns the shop. "It takes about 15 pounds of cheese. It's got about a gallon of sauce, 20 pounds of dough."
Carrabbia's dream started innocently enough. He remembers the attention paid to the world's largest hamburger -- newspaper covers, MTV, "The Today Show." He saw an article about the reigning pizza champ in "Pizza Marketing Quarterly," an industry trade magazine.He realized that it's not that much bigger than something already on the Mama Lena's menu.
"We got another pizza on the menu that 's a 64-cut -- 30 inches," Carrabbia says. "We can go a little bigger than that. So I read about it, checked my ovens and started putting it together. Why not break the world record and go after the publicity and everything else?"
According to "Guinness World Records 2005," the current record holder is Paul Revere's Pizza in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, which offers a 4-foot-diameter pizza with a 12.59 square-foot area.
Carrabbia stresses that the record he's shooting for is completely different from just making the biggest pie in history. That one was a 122-foot, 8-inch pizza made at Norwood Hypermarket, Norwood, South Africa, on Dec. 8, 1990.
"There are giant pizzas they piece together ... but it's not edible," he says. But his Big One "is the largest commerciallly available, and you're getting good quality. If you see pictures of the other world record-holders, it's all burnt-up looking, nasty."
It's hard to imagine the market for The Big One besides fraternity parties or March Madness binges. The $100 price tag -- $120.99 for Mama's Famous White Pizza -- is enough to scare off most gastrointestinal daredevils.
Carrabbia admits he has sold only about 10 so far, the last one going to a local school that was having a party for its basketball team. That's going to change, he thinks.
"After this, I hope to sell a couple a day," he says.
Mama Lena's Pizza House -- named for Carrabbia's mother, whose recipes dominate the menu -- is no stranger to accolades. The shop just won Star 100.7's "Best Pizza in Pittsburgh" contest for the second year in a row.
It placed fourth in the prestigious pizza contest at the North America Pizza & Ice Cream Show in Columbus, Ohio. The grand prize, should they win next year, is an all-expenses-paid trip to compete with the U.S. Pizza Team at the world championships in Italy.
Is he worried that the pizza-sized arms race will spiral out of control, and someone else will quickly snatch the world record away from him?
"I'm sure someone will," he says. "It's not really that big yet."
