Note that the modern Italian pizza, including in Napoli, is a post-War invention [1]. “Most Italians hadn’t heard of pizza until the 1950s;” after “Italian-American soldiers were sent to Sicily and travelled up the Italian peninsula, they wrote home in disbelief: there were no pizzerias” [2].
(19th-century pizza marinara had little t9 no cheese, for instance.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_pizza
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b...
> Before the 1940s, pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian Americans. Following World War II, veterans returning from the Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine, proved a ready market for pizza in particular
How could veterans bring pizza back the US if somehow pizza was unknown in Italy? That's absurd. I really don't get why some Americans feel this need to claim that everything popular originates in the US.
It’s not, though it is a sceptical review of an Italian academic’s work. (How did you conclude it’s an opinion piece? It’s not even in the URL.)
> Following World War II, veterans returning from the Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine, proved a ready market for pizza in particular
I forgot the term, but it’s a food that’s cross influenced itself.
Pizza obviously existed in America before WWII. We have documented evidence of American pizzerias, e.g. in New York back to 1905, opened by a Neapolitan [1]. Italian Americans in Italy, influenced by the American version, spurred pizza’s development and expansion across the peninsula. Those soldiers (and their comrades) returning to America influenced our version and in turn spurred its expansion across America.
> don't get why some Americans feel this need to claim that everything popular originates in the US
I said it’s a post-WWII invention and was strongly influenced by America. Not that it originated here.
Pizza was born in Italy. What Italians call classic pizza today is a post-WWII invention, by Italians, in Italy, strongly influenced by the way it’s cooked in America. Chief among the changes was the temperature at which it is cooked. (Something they dialled up further than we did.)
For whatever reason, pizza is a food that everyone makes up myths around. This is as true in New York or Chicago as in Italy.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%E2%80%93style_pizza
The only thing I had access to, the title: "Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong". That reeks of "opinion piece".
> Pizza obviously existed in America before WWII. We have documented evidence of American pizzerias, e.g. in New York back to 1905, opened by a Neapolitan [1]. Italian Americans in Italy, influenced by the American version, spurred pizza’s development and expansion across the peninsula. Those soldiers (and their comrades) returning to America influenced our version and in turn spurred its expansion across America.
The italicized part is not supported by the Wikipedia article, that I trust more than some review of a book I don't have and that you selectively quote. Without it your narrative breaks down.
Sure. I’ll confirm that you’re wrong.
> the Wikipedia article*
You only quoted Wikipedia saying “before the 1940s, pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian Americans.”
Where do you think Italian Americans live?
Read the whole paragraph, it explains that once American soldiers (presumably non-Italian-American) were exposed to Italian cuisine, they brought back appreciation for it back home, which led to the rise of pizza in the general American population.
Also known as America! You asked “how could veterans bring pizza back the US [sic] if somehow pizza was unknown in Italy.” To prove that, you quoted a section that showed veterans did not “bring pizza back” to America, it was already here. (Nobody claimed pizza “was unknown in Italy” prior to WWII, so I’ll ignore that part.)
WWII caused pizza to stop being seen as an immigrant food in America. It also caused the American pizza processes to intermix with those in Naples, both changing it into its modern form and helping it expand across the Italian peninsula.
I’ll note that you’ve misquoted once source, Wikipedia, complained you couldn’t access a second, and provided zero of your own all while rejecting evidenced culinary history. Curious to be proven wrong with sources versus stubbornness.
The term is noted in the "history of pizza" wikipedia article you linked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect
> I really don’t see how saying it’s a post-WWII invention and was strongly influenced by America means it originated here.
> Pizza was born in Italy. What Italians call classic pizza today is a post-WWII invention, by Italians, in Italy, strongly influenced by the way it’s cooked in America.
This doesn't really make sense; an object that a 19th-century Italian would have called a "pizza" would not be called a "pizza" by anyone today. The word existed, but the concept didn't.
However, while a modern "classic Neapolitan pizza" is clearly not the same kind of thing as a 19th-century Neapolitan pizza, it just as clearly is the same thing as a 20th-century American pizza.
Flatbreads eaten with other foods placed on top of them are a common thing, and wikipedia's "history of pizza" page makes sure to say that that's where the history of pizza begins, but that's not really a defensible idea either; there is no continuity between various parallel "bread, but with flavorful foods at the same time" meals from across the world and pizza. If Achaemenid soldiers baked flatbread with cheese on it, and then that practice died out, and over a thousand years later Italian peasants put vegetables on their flatbread... why would we say the extinct Persian food is an ancestor of the Italian one?
If a bunch of American soldiers, raised to believe that pizza is an Italian food, visit Italy and learn that nobody there makes, eats, or sells pizza, what can we say about where pizza was born? The lesson there is that pizza is about as Italian as crab Rangoon is Burmese.
> an object that a 19th-century Italian would have called a "pizza" would not be called a "pizza" by anyone today
Eh, some of the 19th-century descriptions come close enough to be recognisable as a pizza variant.
I’m not convinced a 19th century tomato pie wouldn’t be recognised as pizza today.
> while a modern "classic Neapolitan pizza" is clearly not the same kind of thing as a 19th-century Neapolitan pizza, it just as clearly is the same thing as a 20th-century American pizza
I haven’t seen a historical source (or combustion analysis) showing the high temperatures modern Neapolitan pizzas are cooked in occurring in the early 20th century here (nor 19th century there).
That appears to be the Italians taking the New York gas-oven idea and cranking it to 11. (480°C to be exact.)
> visit Italy and learn that nobody there makes, eats, or sells pizza, what can we say about where pizza was born?
That many of them didn’t go the Napoli, also, we bombed a lot of things.
Is that really the temperature New York pizza is cooked at? Every Napolitana pizza recipe I've made or seen is cooked around 330-350C in a stone oven with wood. Never imagined pizza would be cooked at such high temperatures.
Neapolitan. Approximately 380 (base) to 485°C (dome) in a wood-fired oven, by regulation [1].
[1] https://www.pizzanapoletana.org/public/pdf/Disciplinare-2024... page 12
Domino is still one of the worst pizzas I have ever tried in Canada.
This is a discussion between him and another guy -> https://angeloforgione.com/2022/04/04/alberto-grandi-sulla-p... Pizza became widespread in Italy after WW2 (thanks to emigration from Naples to the rest of Italy and tourism within Italy), and the global diffusion of pizza outside US and Italy definitely comes from the US rather than from Italy; but it got to America at the beginning of the 20th century almost a century after pizza restaurants were born in Naples.
Everything you’ve said is correct. The question is whether 19th-century Neapolitan pizza would be recognised, by Italians, as pizza today. The answer is a solid maybe. In Napoli, yes. Elsewhere, including in America, much less certainly.
Note that I’m not suggesting people would think it’s not related to proper pizza. But if you told the average Roman or Venetian about New Jersey tomato pie [1], they’re likely to react as they would to Hawaiian pizza. Even though that product resembles pizza marinara quite closely. (Even when baked on a bubbling versus rising dough.)
On the other hand, Hawaiian pizza is definitely pizza, the question is only whether the topping makes a good combination.
Most Italian food served in the US is American food made by immigrants. Just as Indian food in the Uk is. Italian American food is heavier, much more meat based, and drowning in cheese and garlic in a way Italian food isn’t.
Pizza is Italian. Period. American style pizza is a riff on that which has become popular outside the US. However claiming that pizza is American is akin to saying Chinese food is. Nonsense.
Sure, do you have a contemporaneous source?
Because the food historians who have traced its history through primary sources do, and they point to one story: pizza marinara and its variants in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries, which had almost no cheese, sometimes no sauce (it wasn’t marinara then), and—crucially—wasn’t heated nearly as much as today’s Neapolitan pizzas, and the modern Italian pizza after WWII.
Also, I didn’t say pizza is American. I said it’s a post-War invention. Certainly in its proliferation across Italy, and strongly influenced by America’s Italians.
And I’m referring to the pizza one gets in Italy. (I’m on the Gulf of Napoli for the umpteenth time in a week.) American pizza is distinct, and also different from its own pre-war form.
No!
“Carbonara is ‘an American dish born in Italy’ and it wasn’t born until the second world war. The story that most experts agree on is that an Italian chef, Renato Gualandi, first made it in 1944 at a dinner in Riccione for the US army with guests including Harold Macmillan.”
And “before the 1960s, wheels of parmesan cheese weighed only about 10kg (as opposed to the hefty 40kg wheels we know today) and were encased in a thick black crust. Its texture was fatter and softer than it is nowadays. ‘Some even say that this cheese, as a sign of quality, had to squeeze out a drop of milk when pressed,’ Grandi says. ‘Its exact modern-day match is Wisconsin parmesan.’”
Italy was a poor country until after WWII, when it saw in half a decade “the same kind of progress that the UK had witnessed over the course of a century during the Industrial Revolution.” That kind of abundance fuelled a fury of extravagant culinary creativity and alongside it myth making. (The “correct” formulations of which were largely not pinned down until the 1980s.)
https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b...
It's not a modern invention.
Nope [1]. (I’ve seen it. This is the view of on-site historians.)
> and is also mentioned in Virigl's Aeneid
Indirectly, as trenchers [2].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/28/1184724633/pizza-a-wall-paint...
[2] https://publish.illinois.edu/litlanglibrary/2020/07/23/the-a...
But the article only tangentially touches on the actual reasons so I'm not sure if that's an accurate description.
American-style pizza was invented in NYC. Pretty different from Neapolitan pizza, although many shops sell what they call “Neapolitan-style” pies, that are still pretty different from the original.
I'm actually surprised Domino's wasn't a success. There's something about the network effect and fast delivery that makes these projects thrive.
McDonald's doesn't have a local equivalent (it used to exist, and they got bought up by McDonald's[0]) so it doesn't have the same local (and better) competition that Domino's has, especially on a dish Italian people feel strongly about.
So basically, three completely different situations.
say what?
Because McDonalds is cheap, fast, and tastes good. Seems obvious. They haven't sold billions of Big Macs because they taste terrible, no matter how much food snobs would like to pretend otherwise.
Even if you have "great food" sometimes you want a change. Something that might be "great food" to a tourist can be boring to a local.
For growing chain competing with anything is hard.
New York’s pizza pride is entirely misplaced.
Yes when compared with napolitana, but average pizza in Italy is just as meh. Hotdog pizza at least tried to innovate. NY style pizza is on par with napolitana (and far better value for money). Italy gets all of its pepperoni from US. What never ceases to entertain me how much Italians try to get offended by it or how pizza experts try to disagree with me.
For the same reason that Starbucks exists in Italy, or Portugal, it is way more expensive, provides worse quality, and yet it managed to succeed.
The mere thought that they could set foot in that market is already funny.