I was going through my feed on X and I saw someone liked a comment I made. As is my habit I went back to the posts from this individual to see if it was of interest. And as I clicked, I saw a picture of what was supposed to be a pizza. It was a thin crust but it had about two inches of what looked like chopped meat cooked onto it. I was horrified. But all things considered, lots of things called pizza don’t seem to resemble what was called pizza back when I was a kid in Brooklyn. There was a pizzeria on Avenue X that served the typical Neapolitan pie. It was a large round thin crust with marinara sauce, mozzarella and various cheeses to taste. For meat lovers you could get pepperoni or sausage garnishing the surface. But that was about it. And that was plenty good. Watching the cooks shaping the dough and twirling it in the air was an entertainment all its own. Coming hot out of the oven and served on a piece of wax paper with a coke to wash it down was paradise. If you were rich, you might even buy two slices. But a slice was a nickel so one was all I could afford and no coke for me.
Later on in life I found out about rectangular pizza with thick crust. Camera Girl’s mother was Sicilian and that’s how they made pizza. And that was very good too. And they had some different ideas about toppings. They would introduce the seafood motif; anchovies, and even bluefish. All very heretical to me. But still delicious.
But her I am sixty years later and what do I see? Chaos. Pizza without tomato sauce, without mozzarella, without cheese, vegan pizza, pineapple pizza, pizza without dough! It’s too much. And then there are the chain pizza joints. They stuff cheese in the crust. What the hell is that?
Well, I guess it’s just the way of the world. We live in a global environment. Cuisines from everywhere exist in this world civilization and are adapted to the business environment and every other factor. It only makes sense that a successful product will morph to expand its popularity. After all I don’t complain that the Chinese or Thai recipes I like probably aren’t authentic cuisine but instead a version that works for a restaurant competing in an American marketplace. Why should pizza be any different?
But then I saw that monstrosity with the mound of chopped meat on top. That must be the sign of the end times and the four horsemen of the apocalypse must be somewhere nearby.
But one good thing came from seeing that. It made me think back to that pizzeria on Avenue X and the perfect proportion of crust, tomato sauce, olive oil and cheeses. On a summer afternoon after playing ball and hanging around with the boys from the neighborhood we’d go to that pizzeria and watching the pie being made and waiting for it to bake was the best feeling in the world. Because you almost didn’t want to start eating it because it would be finished before you knew it. The anticipation was the thing. Good times.
