Wherein The Author Celebrates The Pizza Roll – The All-American Asian-Italian Fusion

Is there anyone who has not tried the famous Pizza Roll? This Totino’s product in your grocer’s freezer section turns out to have an interesting and unexpected multicultural backstory. Who would have imagined that Chinese-Italian fusion cuisine would hit it big in America in the mid 1960’s?

Luigino “Geno” Paulucci arrived one day too late for a 4th of July birthday in 1918. He was the son of recent Italian immigrants, with a father who worked in a Minnesota iron mine. By the 1930’s, the family was running a small grocery store and young Geno got a taste for the food business.

In the 1940’s he decided that the world needed more Chinese food. But not just any Chinese food. Geno believed that there was nothing wrong with ordinary chow mein and chop suey that a few Italian spices couldn’t fix, and thus was born the original national brand of Chinese food available from your local grocer – Chun King.

The stuff was wildly successful and by the early 1960’s accounted for half of all prepared Chinese food sold in the U.S. Geno understood the value of promotion and even retained satirist Stan Freberg to produce a series of funny television commercials hawking Chun King foods. Like this one, which you have to watch to the very end to get the comedic payoff.

In addition to canned Chow Mein, Chun King started a line of frozen foods, which included egg rolls. Paulucci had invested in some egg roll wrapping machinery and felt that it was not being used to its full potential. He put some people on the job of coming up with new varieties of filling for his mini egg rolls and it seemed that pizza flavors fared well in taste tests, topping a list of some fifty ideas.

It was in 1966-67 that Paulucci sold Chun King to R. J. Reynolds (yes, the tobacco company which found itself needing to diversify after the Surgeon General’s Report that declared cigarettes to be a health hazard) and decided to introduce the Pizza Roll along with some other Italian items to be sold through “your grocer’s freezer”.  Jeno’s Pizza Rolls (with a trademarked “Pizza Rolls” name) hit the market in 1968 and have been satisfying red-blooded American boys of all ages ever since.

Paulucci sold Jeno’s to Pillsbury in 1985, and it was not long before Jeno’s products were folded into another Pillsbury brand: Totino’s.  So no matter which brand name resonates with you (they will forever be Jeno’s Pizza Rolls in my mind), there is only one genuine “Pizza Roll”.

And speaking of my mind’s eye view of Pizza Rolls, I cannot look at one without remembering the early television ad that co-opted the William Tell Overture (or the theme from The Lone Ranger if you prefer) as the Pizza Roll jingle.  Is there another piece of music that has been used for so many commercial purposes? I think not!  Clearly, The Lone Ranger approves.  And if you are too young to know what I’m talking about, well boy do I feel sorry for you! But I dare you to watch this and not sing “Pizza, Pizza, Pizza Rolls” to that melody for the rest of the day.

But I digress, so let us return to the Pizza Roll.  Truly, is there a more perfect food?  10 minutes in a hot oven and you have a plateful of ooey-gooey Italian(ish) goodness in a crispy outer crust. That bit of crispness is why a conventional or toaster oven is best.  I would argue that a  Microwave is to be used only as a last resort,  like if you have to eat something hot as you race to get out of the house in advance of a tornado or tsunami or something.

However you heat them, be careful because that first bite into a PR right out of the oven may result in a molten pizza-flavored poultice that can burn your chin or lower lip with impressive efficiency. There, I can now press “publish” with a clear conscience. If you burn yourself, it will be your own darned fault. I didn’t practice law all those years for nothing.

But even the occasional thermal accident (which I will confess I suffered last week) is not enough to dampen my Pizza Roll love.  Sometimes love hurts, right? 

The other thing that hurts is giving up on a good idea too soon. When he was in his late 80s (and running yet another of many food business he created), Jeno Paulucci  regretted selling off the Pizza Roll.  “I should’ve kept the Pizza Roll.  It’s something that’ll damn near live forever.”  I hope so, Jeno.  I hope so.

The interview with Jeno Paulucci from 1988 can be found here: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16315018

35 thoughts on “Wherein The Author Celebrates The Pizza Roll – The All-American Asian-Italian Fusion”

  1. Well there’s another cross border one I never heard of. We do have Chun King products, and we do have pizza pockets but I don’t know that we ever had pizza rolls. Not that I would have had one if it was available, such things were never seen in my childhood home. And I suppose not in my adult home either.

    What didn’t last damn near forever was the harmony between his three children, after his death in 2011 there was an eight year battle over his half billion estate. That’s a lot of pizza rolls. At the end there was a settlement with legal walls between the children so they could never contact each other again.

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    • Yes, Jeno seemed to be a mighty contrary old cuss and he probably set the table for his kids’ battles.

      I have not seen Chun King for years, but have not really looked, either. Pizza Rolls did come into my childhood home, and let me tell you, they were a mighty appreciated thing given my mother’s (admittedly) marginal interest in cooking. Maybe I suffer from a culinary version of Stockholm Syndrome, where awful commercial foods become favorites even though they keep me from enjoying much higher quality fare sometimes. Oh well, what can I say – I love ’em!

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      • Chun King apparently quit manufacturing in the U.S. in 1995 (which surprised me!), but it was continued under license in the UK and Canada for some years after! My parents really loved Chinese food and used to go to Chinatown in Chicago on dates, but when we moved, it was harder to find it fresh and we did succumb to eating Chun King with the taped on can of crispy noodles. Believe me, not the worst stuff I’ve eaten as a kid, and with enough soy sauce and crispy noodles, it was OK. I can see their fade out, tho, most cities now, it’s impossible to swing a cat without hitting a passable Chinese restaurant. Also, my upscale local food store (that has fresh made daily sushi made right in front of you), has quite a selection of Chinese fresh-frozen entrees, and trying a few, they were pretty good.

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  2. Having children gives one a new appreciation for foods such as the common pizza roll. My responsible inner voice tells me that prepared foods aren’t the best route for nutrition and health. Experience tells me that dinner needs to be easy to prepare and something the kids will actually eat. A pizza roll is one of those foods that fills the bill.

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    • Absolutely! I would never recommend them as a thrice-weekly staple, but for an occasional break for the cook (and even as an occasional treat) I see nothing wrong with them at all. If Bobby Kennedy gets confirmed I suspect that a number of my boxed/canned/frozen favorites may see some makeovers.

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  3. A very entertaining and well researched post. Your digressions are appreciated! I am in favor of anything with “pizza” or “ice cream” in the name. I am surprised I didn’t remember the Lone Ranger commercial. It must have been a hit at the time!

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  4. I think the real story here is that both commercials were by the fabulous Stan Freberg. Wiki him to find a guy that was dead center of almost everything in that era, and even when I was a kid back then, I was tracking Freberg’s advertising career, including Ann Miller, beloved, but a little past her prime, doing a fabulous dance routine for Great American Soups. Those not in the know, for the Lone Ranger commercial, the guy with the black eye was representing Lark cigarettes, who also used the William Tell Overture. A true genius from the Mad Men era!

    BTW, I once got shamed in my 20’s for serving a big plate of pizza rolls at a cocktail party I gave, amongst other nibbles, by someone’s wife who thought it wasn’t very “classy”. They were “gone” in about three seconds, tho! A crowd pleaser!

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    • I love the extra background!! I also love Stan Freburg, and need to learn more about him beyond his series of satire records.

      And it’s true: everyone wants to look down on pizza rolls, but they have a way of disappearing quickly if you serve them.

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      • I think the guy with the cigarettes representing Lark cigarettes, their motto was “Show us your Lark pack”, hence the people showing the pizza roll packs, and the guys pushing the signs through the party. I don’t know why the cigarette guy looks like he has a black eye, because that was Tarreyton cigarettes, unless Stan was tweaking everyone! A possibility! There’s always a lot of press for the creative late 60’s era of print advertising, like the Volkswagen commercials; but we forget guys like Freburg, doing broadcast stuff, which was way more expensive and harder to talk the clients into that crazy stuff!

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  7. This post brought back a lot of memories JP. Pizza rolls were sometimes a weekend treat at our house and anticipation was high as the savory Italian smell wafted throughout the house. We crowded a box of Bagel Bites, as well as those pizza rolls, onto the cookie sheet. Yummy! Later it was the Stouffers French Bread Pizza which was another favorite treat. I have often burned my mouth on those pizza rolls – they were very hot! I miss having them – it has been years since I tasted these goodies – now I want some.

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    • Oh yes, the Stouffer’s mouth-roof burn! I have experienced that one a time or two myself!

      You comment surprised me, because your parents were so strict about many food items. It is good that you got to enjoy these. You will be happy to know they are still readily available.

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      • I went to the dental hygienist once and I’d been a patient of Barb’s for years … she started working on my teeth and checking around with her mirror first and she said “you have the nastiest palate burn – did you know?” “Yes” and red-faced I told her it was those Bagel Bites did it.

        You have a good memory JP … yes, my mom was all about a home-cooked dinner seven days a week and always a hot breakfast for my father and me. However, after my father left in January 1984, I sought to break my mom of several “habits” among them “it’s okay to leave a couple of coffee cups rinsed out in the sink overnight” and “we do not need a hot dinner seven days a week.” That began the introduction of treats like these into our diet as dinner, especially in the Wintertime when we did not always go out for lunch. We also did frozen chicken nuggets and fries. Clearly I was a bad influence, but as she got older, she enjoyed that freedom. I don’t buy them now as it’s just me … I’d likely eat the whole package. 🙂

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      • Am I the only person who has realized that the problem with modern American food packaging, is that no matter what the package says, it’s a “single serving”, and can basically be inhaled before the end of the day?

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  8. Well geeze, the fact that pizza rolls were invented by the same guy who founded Chun King is something that I never knew. It probably shouldn’t surprise me though as I always knew that there was nothing Chinese about Chun King (any more so than Chinese Fire Drills or Chinese Checkers had any relation to China). So, it was made by an Italian dude from Minnesota? Makes sense.

    Putting pizza ingredients in egg roll wrappers is pretty inventive. Just like the packaging of dried chow mein noodles (another head-scratcher for actual Chinese people) in a separate can that is taped onto another can of whatever that stuff was that seemed to involve a lot of corn starch. I actually never ate that, but the packaging was fascinating to me. Even more fascinating is that Chun King products are still available. It’s amazing that in 2025 there’s still apparently a market for canned bean sprouts. It’s much less surprising that pizza rolls remain a viable product. They do seem to be a quintessential American food…where the packaging – sealing all of the food inside of a casing and then freezing it – is as interesting as the actual edible. Not unlike Space Food Sticks…another Pillsbury product, which oddly disappeared just about around the same time that the company bought Jeno’s Pizza Rolls.

    Coincidence? I think not.

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    • Haha, you have pointed out a fascinating time-line. I wonder if they ever tried baking a Space Food nub in an egg roll wrapper? Space Foo Yung?

      It would not surprise me that my mother may have bought the occasional Chun King in a can when I was really young, but I don’t recall it. We were blessed with a really good Chinese restaurant in Fort Wayne, so that probably ruined Chun King for my mother at some point.

      Someday I am going to research the origins of “chop suey”. I’m betting it’s about as Chinese as Chun King.

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  9. I wonder if the pizza rolls were called “Jeno’s” instead of “Geno’s” so people would pronounce his name correctly? No matter, I certainly had a few way back when (even when any processed food besides breakfast cereal was the last thing my mother would allow into the grocery basket). And Chun King is yet another example of a product you’ve unearthed from the deepest recesses of my brain. When was the last time I thought about Chun King? I mean, it’s got to be forty years or more! Doesn’t make the read any less entertaining.

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    • A commenter above says that Chun King is still available in Canada, but I have never noticed in recent years whether it is still available in the US.

      And a good question on the name.

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  10. Weirdly enough, I just found out that Jeno was also responsible for developing Michelina’s Foods. Michelina’s was a “go to” quick, cheap, entree I was pretty happy with, and I used to pick up at the grocery store for when I got home late and was hungry, until I realized how much sodium and cholesterol were in those little packages! Buyer beware of those processed foods! Haven’t bought any in about 5 years because it just exceeds the amount of sodium and cholesterol my doctor thinks I should eat in a single meal!

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    • Yeah, pretty much everything that is convenient and tastes decent is a disaster when you start paying attention to the ingredients and the nutrition labels.

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  12. I reread this late the other night as I was burning through a sack of pizza rolls. It’d been a couple years since I’d had them, and they hit the spot! I wondered if dipping them in Ragu might make them better but I don’t need that kind of chaos in my life.

    I wanted more the next day and happened to be ar Fresh Thyme. Naively, I hoped they had some Totinos. Instead, I was greeted with some alien brand promising provolone and uncured pepperoni. It was $12.99 for a bag of twenty, but I bit.

    The expensive lesson learned was that there is simply no way to gussy up the humble pizza roll and emerge with a superior product. Back to Totinos for me!

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    • Haha, your test reaches the conclusion I have long assumed.

      I am in that worst of situations – there is a bag in my freezer that contains less than a full serving. I guess it’s time to commit to a new bag!

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