Black Thought on Pizza, Philly Food Traditions and Life on the Road

Black Thought’s pizza habit has moved well beyond ordering a pie. The Roots MC cooks in an oven that reaches 1,100 degrees, turns out a pizza in about 90 seconds and gives hot honey the heat it needs to caramelize. That hands-on interest also explains why his Mike’s Hot Honey partnership feels like a fit: he says he was already using the product long before the collaboration began.

In a conversation with Foodbeast, the Philadelphia native connected his cooking experiments to a lifetime of food memories, from late-night Raisin Bran on tour to the meals his family stretched when money was tight. His picks range from a New Jersey grandma pie to lemon water ice at John’s in Philadelphia, with a few unexpected bandmate snacks along the way.

Hot honey meets a 1,100-degree oven

Black Thought traces his interest in pizza experimentation to a family gathering during the pandemic. For his wife’s birthday, he rented a house and brought in chef Roblé to cook. Pizza was the main event, and Roblé put hot honey and truffle honey on pies, pairing sweetness with savory ingredients, kimchi and umami flavors.

That meal prompted Black Thought to get a pizza oven. His wife bought him a couple of Ooni ovens, but he felt they weren’t hot enough or sturdy enough for what he wanted. When Tom Gozney released his oven, he found a better match. It can reach 1,100 degrees, cooking a pizza in roughly 90 seconds, and it’s versatile enough for chicken, vegetables and fish.

At that temperature, he says, the combination of heat and a cooking surface made with bricks, wood or charcoal changes the honey. It caramelizes, adding depth beyond the familiar sweet-and-spicy effect. That’s the appeal for a cook who sees hot honey as an ingredient that can respond differently to the way it’s used.

The partnership with Mike’s Hot Honey grew from shared Philadelphia connections and overlapping personal histories, he said. It also made sense because the product was already in his kitchen. “It’s not like me co-signing something you won’t find in my kitchen,” he told Foodbeast.

One of his more surprising tests came after filming a Mike’s Hot Honey commercial. A scene had him telling a young worker to put honey on everything that came out, including ice cream. The moment made him wonder whether the combination would work in real life. He tried it at home on avocado ice cream, which he thinks came from Morgenstern’s, and liked it. He’s also drawn to unusual flavors at artisan creameries, including egg yolk and avocado ice cream.

Pizza preferences, from Jersey to Philly

His longtime New Jersey favorite, Coppola in Berkeley Heights, recently closed. The restaurant’s grandma pie remains his benchmark: a slightly sweet crust, crisp outside with a little softness inside, and a sweet, garlicky sauce. Black Thought prefers tomato-forward pizza to cheese-heavy pies, and Coppola’s balance suited him.

He also rates Angeloni’s Thinny Thin, Reservoir in South Orange for its bar pie, and Star Tavern. The last one reminds him of Angeloni’s, a connection that helps explain why it made his list.

Philadelphia remains central to his food map. Before Angelo’s became his preferred cheesesteak stop, he went to Dalessandro’s. His order there was salt, pepper, ketchup, fried onions, American cheese and provolone. For water ice, he points to John’s at 8th and Christian, where lemon is his usual choice. He likes it for its comparatively short ingredient list and pairs it with soft pretzels, which he also buys at John’s. As a child, he got pretzels from Federal Pretzel Company, just a block away.

His other Philadelphia favorites are just as specific: Butterscotch Krimpets, followed by Jelly Krimpets, and a late-night Wawa shorty with turkey and cheese, plus Herr’s chips. He doesn’t eat pork, so turkey is his usual sandwich choice; if a shop has turkey ham, he may order an Italian or turkey hoagie instead.

His preferred hoagie is carefully built. He likes oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, sweets and hots, but only in small amounts. A sandwich should be full without turning sloppy. That standard comes from childhood visits to Ricci’s, where he bought dollar hoagies near his grandmother’s workplace. He remembers being able to hold one in one hand without the filling spilling out, even though it was packed with ingredients.

From the tour bus to The Tonight Show

The Roots’ touring days called for a different kind of food setup. Black Thought says the band once toured around 300 days a year, and cereal was a constant on the rider. Quest favored Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles. Black Thought chose Raisin Bran, eating it with soy milk during a period when he was vegan or close to it and wasn’t consuming meat or dairy milk.

His post-show routine was distinctly practical: he’d fill a large red Solo cup with cereal, let it soften, press it down and add more. It was a late-night tour-bus snack rooted in the Kellogg’s Raisin Bran he grew up eating. The cereal was already sweetened, he recalled, though plain raisins provide enough sweetness for him now.

His current dressing-room rider at The Tonight Show reflects a shift toward health and fitness. It includes Mountain Valley spring water, Fentimans sodas, Rose Lemonade, Pink Ginger, ginger beer with muddled lime, Harmless Harvest coconut water and watermelon water. For food, he asks for dried fruit such as cranberries and figs, fresh grapes, cheese and crackers, and packaged snacks. Popcorn with Himalayan pink salt has taken the place of Doritos.

He links the change to age and the demands of a long career on the road. The band members are now in their 40s and 50s, and he describes them as having arrived at an intersection of health, fitness and spirituality. His childhood taste for original cheese Doritos has faded; he never cared for Cool Ranch or ranch flavor more broadly.

Asked about his lyric “Dorito-head cats” from “Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’ New,” on Things Fall Apart, he explained it as a reference to the chip’s triangular shape and Philly slang around someone having a “big head.” It was wordplay tied to place, rather than a description of a particular snack habit.

For the strangest eating habits among the Roots, he nominated Damon, the band’s sousaphone player, known as Tuba. Black Thought has seen him shake torn-up lunch meat into a bag of chips, add hot sauce and mix it all together. It resembles loaded corn chips found in some food traditions, he said, but Tuba’s combinations still turn into a traveling conversation piece.

Food memories built around making things stretch

Some of Black Thought’s strongest food memories come from periods when his family relied on public assistance or monthly support, including Social Security or Veterans Administration payments connected to his father’s military service. Stretching the household budget shaped what counted as a treat.

He remembers shopping at Murray’s, a local bulk retailer he compares to an older, no-frills version of Costco. His family could buy cases of food, including T-bone steaks. Sometimes the house had no gas for the stove, so he would heat food on a hot plate or in a wok. A freezer stocked with steaks felt like a luxury even when cooking options were limited.

The cuts weren’t necessarily high quality, he acknowledged, and the family didn’t know where they came from. But buying food by the case helped feed everyone through the month. His mother, grandmother and aunt also made hearty dishes stretch: cabbage with corned beef, corned beef hash, salmon hash with rice and canned salmon, or similar meals made with canned tuna. He remembers the care and sacrifice behind those plates as much as their flavor.

That same practical approach runs through the foods he still seeks out: a balanced hoagie, a tomato-forward pizza and a simple lemon water ice with a pretzel. His tastes have changed with his career, but the details remain personal. For Black Thought, food is both a craft to experiment with and a record of the places, people and routines that have stayed with him.