No it didn't.

> But their suspicions were only confirmed when a woman made an unusually large pizza order, Politico reported, leading armed officers to discover her sitting down for tea with two friends, several children and Abdeslam.

so a) they knew the place before the pizza became relevant, b) they discovered the guy sitting there, resulting in them knowing the guy was there

the topic of pizza seems pretty tangential compared

Yeah, that part of the story is really odd. Was the pizza order necessary as a pretext for the house search, maybe? Or did it just serve as a catchy journalistic hook for the story...

You'd imagine that a judge would need a lot more evidence than "a large pizza order" before granting such an authorisation. He's about to send a bunch of armed police into a family house with children inside. It could have been a children's birthday party. More likely it is done kind of parallel construction or protecting an informant.

Not sure about Belgium but in France, they have declared a state of emergency since last November. As such, the police can raid anytime, anywhere without a warrant. Something similar might have happened there?

Perhaps the most ridiculous attempt at parallel construction ever put before the courts.

How many pizza's does it take to catch a terrorist? This is some pretty shoddy reporting.