Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
A Revere pizzeria manager is competing for $1M on ‘Survivor’ Season 48
Luigi's Pizzeria manager Justin Pioppi is one of 18 contestants hoping to outwit, outplay, and outlast the crowd and win the $1 million grand prize on "Survivor."
Justin Pioppi makes a lot of dough as the manager of Luigi’s Pizzeria in Revere. Starting Wednesday night, viewers will find out whether the Winthrop resident can make even more dough as he competes on the newest season of “Survivor.”
Pioppi, 29, is one of 18 contestants vying for the $1 million prize for the winner of Season 48 of CBS’s long-running reality show, which airs its two-hour premiere on Wednesday at 8 p.m.
Though it didn’t make the cut for Boston.com’s pizza bracket, Pioppi insisted that Luigi’s “makes the best pizza.” (For what it’s worth, Barstool Sports pizza aficionado Dave Portnoy gave Luigi’s a solid 7.5 out of 10 in his review.)
Advertisement:
“It’s our family restaurant through and through,” Pioppi said in a cast video posted by CBS. “My parents started it together over 40 years ago. I got my aunts up front and my buddies from high school doing deliveries.”
Pioppi said that his time lugging 50-pound bags of flour in the kitchen served as his gym, which will come in handy on the many physical challenges on the show.
As for the social aspect that defines “Survivor” cast members, Pioppi, one of six members of the Vula tribe, said that he hoped his fellow contestants would regard him as “the goofy, happy-go-lucky, fun-loving kid who has a lot of hair.”
Pioppi didn’t always plan on managing Luigi’s, which his parents have run for decades. He was a legislative aide at the State House straight out of high school, and later graduated from Yale.
Advertisement:
But when his mom got leukemia, Pioppi stepped in to run the day-to-day operations at Luigi’s during the pandemic, and never left.
“I was planning to go to law school, but my mother got really sick about four years ago with leukemia,” Pioppi said in his cast introduction. “She couldn’t work anymore, so I step[ped] in. I go from Yale to making meatball subs with my father in the kitchen.”
“I’m gonna play this game for her,” Pioppi continued. “Give her a big check and say, ‘Ma, for the first time in your life, you don’t have to go to work tomorrow.'”
“Survivor” Season 48 premieres Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 8 p.m. on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Watch Justin Pioppi’s “Survivor” cast intro:
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com