restaurantMystery Diners · Season 2, Episode 5 · Aired November 16, 2012
Pina Pizza House
Downey, California
Good outcome here: the business is still trading today.
What happened after
Family-run Italian restaurant open since 1959, still run by the Persico family; official site shows current hours (open daily except Monday).
What happened on the show
Johnny Persico noticed his beer sales and void counts drifting at his Downey pizza house and pinned his suspicion on a college-age waiter he called frat-tastic. Charles Stiles sent mystery diners Grant and Jill in as a busboy and a sorority guest. The surveillance, as aired, catches waiter Jed on his phone, drinking on shift, serving alcohol without checking identification, and botching orders on purpose to slip friends free pizza, then moving to sell Jill a whole keg. The confrontation has Johnny firing him, and unusually for the show Jed shows some remorse. Stiles wraps with sales back in order. Since Mystery Diners was later accused of scripting its confrontations, this campus-flavored sting is best framed as broadcast, a dramatized account of one waiter's shift rather than a verified one.
After the cameras left
Pina Pizza House is among the show's most durable survivors, and it owes that to age, not to a sting. The family-run Italian spot has been open since 1959 and is still run by the Persico family at 11102 Paramount Boulevard, serving daily except Monday per its own site in our 2026 check. A business that predates the show by more than half a century was never really the fragile thing an episode implied, which is the recurring irony of Mystery Diners.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.