I used to be a motorcycle deliverator back in the '90s. At one of the places I worked, a small group of Israelis would eat in from time to time and they would always order pizza with cheese, chicken and black olives. So I tried it one evening and found it to be delightful, and still to this day it’s one of my favourite pizzas. It goes really well with a beer.
So fast forward about 20 years and I’m in a regular, undistinguishd cafe/restaurant in Milan. The waiter comes over and I ask (in bad Italian) for a chicken and olive pizza. The young man looks both shocked and disgusted at the idea, replying in perfectly fine English - “I don’t think so. I’ll ask the chef, but I don’t think so.”
So he disappears into the kitchen, and reappears a very short time later and says - “The chef doesn’t think so either.” Then, tapping the table insistantly with his finger - “Order off the menu!”.
As @anon86928381 noted above, what is or isn’t pizza/pie/flan/etc. is silly. As long as there is a generally agreed upon definition to the item in question, specific to your area or language, that people will understand, then that’s good enough.
To wit: “Hey do you want to go to [local diner] for some pie?” or in NYC: “I could go for a slice” or 'I’m making a sandwich".
I think people should be allowed to put whatever ingredients they want on a pizza.
Except pineapple, obviously.
What does concern me is the new button i just noticed that says “Summarize with AI”.
Im too scared to click on it…
I was going to call out Italy for screwing around with, for instance, McDonald’s hamburgers… but here’s one way they differ from the US version. F–k me!!
McDonald’s in Italy offers a burger called My Selection Asiago PDO & Bacon burger which is made from Italian beef, topped with bacon entirely made fromItalian pancetta, and graced with a local, smoky asiago cheese. From there, it’s garnished with caramelized onions, Caesar dressing, and lettuce.
I’m not sure they are (this is UK, remember - I’m not sure how common that term is here) and even if they are, we have a thing called the Trades Descriptions Act in the UK that requires businesses not to misrepresent their wares. This is probably a legally moot point, but if it is a “pot pie” they should say so.
First hot take: it’s fun to be a snob sometimes. Italians tend to revel in it. My hood has the best food mentality. And most umbrage is good natured, I found.
Second hot take: when I was growing up, the pizza we liked most from the local place was “Happy Joe’s Special”, which was “Canadian bacon and sauerkraut”. Or the “taco pizza”, which had salsa in the tomato sauce, salad and crushed Doritos on top after coming out of the oven.
What about things like mostarda, or caponata, e l’agrodolce esiste pure. Then a lot of the pairings with basalmic vinegar are sweet, like strawberries, or gelato. I think it’s appreciated, quite a lot, if you think outside primi o secondi.
As for American’s bringing pizza back, I think they popularized it, but there’s definitely some quite old literature talking about napolitan pizza far before the 20th century (it was viewed as cibo dei poveri, so not something fancy like ragu bolognese).
TBH, I know exactly one person that likes mostarda, and I see him every morning in the mirror.
But yes, advertising trying to sell IGP balsamic vinegar was quite aggressive - maybe they managed to convince a lot of people.
Exactly, it was a poor person food, sold on the streets of Napoli - pizzerie were more or less unheard of before the 50s. My father ('36) tells me there were a couple in Reggio Emilia, and were not really considered as restaurants (my grandpa used to say “That’s not food”), and there are letters from US soldiers traversing Italy from South to North wondering why they could not find them.
If you understand Italian, I can recommend the “D.O.I.: Denominazione d’Origine Inventata” podcast, were a nutrition history professor dismantles most of the myths about the long traditions of Italian cuisine.
