Pizza's interesting to me because it's one of the few foods where I think the American variant is largely superior to the original. All of the "traditional style" pizza I've had simply doesn't have near enough cheese.
Sort of reminds me of how Japan has mastered high end denim despite it being a very American product.
Pizza in the US is so detached from its Italian origins that if you emphasized "authentic" pizza, a fair amount of people would think you're talking about New York style.
I've travelled quite a lot in the top half of Italy over the decades for both work and pleasure - Milan, Venice, Florence, Siena, Verona, Bologna, Pisa, Parma.
I would suggest that from the outside it could be easy to underestimate just how seriously (many) Italians take their food.
Last year - as a family, on the way somewhere else - we visited a "factory" that makes Parmesan cheese. It's astounding how much work and time goes into making a product that, although it's of course produced "on mass", feels anything other than mass produced.
My French is just fine - merci beaucoup - yet unfortunately yet another HN thread gets distracted from the intention of a post by someone determined to focus on semantics :/
Never in my life as a native speaker of American English have I ever seen “on mass” used like that. It’s fair to ask for clarification since “on mass” in that sentence is very, very unusual (dare I say “incorrect”).
> PP was asking to clarify your English, not your French, so that readers could understand...
(This is the first time I've had this on HN) but I have no idea what you mean. Is someone really not understanding? It looks like they're trying to correct what I wrote :/
It's a product produced in quantity, but not “mass-produced”.
The point is, assuming that we all knew what the original commenter meant—and I think we did—it's rude to correct their usage. This has been basic netiquette since Usenet.
Flat bread topped with some sort of condements is expected to have independently discovered basically everywhere where they had bread in some incarnation.
The Italians really did their marketing well to get the attribution
That's true but most of them are unleavened, the yeast plus the fast cook time is I think what makes pizza unique, more than the cheese which is present in other variations.
I think the cube rule should really be amended such that toast is actually "open-faced sandwich". Toast is just bread. Toast with toppings, such as pizza, is actually an open-faced sandwich.
the italians have plenty of flat breads with condiments (try foccacia), and they are not pizza. those italians don't say "hey, we invented that too", nor should anybody else.
we all agree what pizza means at least till the point we need to duke it out over pineapple (which is not pizza)
i'm reminded of an old Lake Wobegon piece about Minnesota tacos (pronounced to rhyme with tack-o). they're made with folded over white bread and with your flannel sleeves rolled up because the juice will run down your arms
> by the 1970s Italy had left its peasant origins behind it had become an industrial consumerist, democracy, and at that point, people start to get nostalgic, and they make the past simple for themselves by turning it into recipes, turning into simple forms. And that has become actually, and this is another novelty, very politicised in recent years. The current government, which of all the various right wing parties have been in power since 1994, is the one that most is most proud of its sort of fascist DNA, if I feel like, it's linked to historical links to Mussolini's fascist Party. They've really wedded themselves to this idea, this food nostalgia, this idea of defending Italian culture against contamination from abroad or wherever it might be.
pizza got bigger (than in Italy) first in America, and that started to happen well before the actual Fascists. So, no, pizza standards are not a nostalgic defense against contamination.
French winemakers started defending their region names as trademarks in the middle of the last century (picked up steam in 1960s to 1970s) and cheese followed, and the rest of the Europe too. That's where the joke "real Existentialism must come from France, otherwise you just have sparkling anxiety" comes from.
As one rather benign example, Hungary and Slovakia asserted rights to the name of the wine Tokaji/Tokai and in 2007 Friuli Italy had to stop using that name for their wine, a name they had been using for hundreds of years (though the grape is still called Tokai in Italy). In Hungary, the measure of quality/sweetness of the wine (it's a dessert wine) is called Puttonyos. The Italians now call their wine Friulano (not a dessert wine in particular); I want the Italians to start measuring their quality in Putanas just to give the finger to Hungary.
europeans are not purists about cheese, europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. It's a marketing move for the quality producers of regional cheese varieties to protect their market by proclaiming that their cheese is the authentic one, and others (with no regard to quality) are not. it's wanting to own the name. The Sardinians are proud of their cheese that they eat with the maggots in it, it's not about purity.
> europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does.
I'm not certain about your exact meaning, but I disagree here. Cheese availability in supermarkets is strongly regional even within Europe, and most non-local varieties are either impossible to get, or have to be ordered at 4 times the price outside their regions.
E.g. You can buy perfectly adequate taleggio cheese in an Italian "Lidl" supermarket, but stores (from the same chain!) just 2 car hours away wont have it, and there is no "unbranded" local replacement either.
You do get some very generic kinds of cheese pretty much everywhere ("vegan cheddar", sandwich slices mostly consisting of emulgators and color, Emmental, Gouda, Parmesan, ...) but the availability/selection even for very well-known cheeses (like pecorino) decreases quickly as you leave their regions.
I do agree that a big motivation is to reduce competition and protect regional monopolies basically, but in many cases this also protects and preserves the identity/taste of that product itself, by preventing large international producers from turning distinct regional products into lowest-common-denominator mass-market trash.
I kinda wish there was more of this type of thing. I'm all for making new foods but call them something else please.
As a Hawaiian I find it culturally disrespectful what passes for poke in most areas outside the Hawaiian Islands, so I kind of wish they were required to use a different name so that they could hopefully learn what they're making is not poke, at least not traditional poke.
Maybe now-a-days that's common in Hawaii, probably to cater to tourists, but, at least all the places I go and the stuff I grew up with looks nothing like that.
It would look more like this. No rice, very few veggies.
So, nix the Thai curries and Japanese curries because they are different from their Indian counterpart?
If a particular country itself wants to police what something means, I guess... and that means we could ossify what poke means in the us but poke exists in other countries as well (like the philippine islands and japan.) and they are different.
But I disagree... we can have Texas BBQ and Carolinas BBQ and St Louis BBQ... or CT lobster rolls and maine Lobster rolls...
We might as well rail against calling non mincemeat hamburgers 'burgers because they are not genuine burgers...
It's amusing to read some of the early articles, such as one that appeared in the New York Times ("Pizza a pie Popular in Southern Italy, Is Offered Here for Home Consumption"), explaining to the mainstream what pizza is and heralding its availability as take-out in the US: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1781097393301119360?lang=e...
Why do they need to be undercover? It’s not like anyone is expecting to be raided by the pizza police. And can they do anything about hot pockets? Or is that considered a calzone? Are calzones off jurisdiction? They’re basically a pizza folded onto itself.
Stromboli is American, from Philadelphia. It was named after a movie about a Sicilian island that was popular in 1950, because they just wanted to give it an Italian sounding name.
Afaik they don't serve those in Italy or even that far away from Philadelphia. So "in the USA that can be anything" is ... I guess accurate, for a regional American dish
Today I learned about pizza fritta! Lends unexpected legitimacy to what I saw on the menu in a chippy one night out long ago in Glasgow. I never dared to try it.
It tracks that if you're going to give an accreditation you want to make sure its being upheld. Pizza shops can cut a lot of corners that a normal patron might not notice or care about.
Neapolitan pizza isn't even the most popular pizza in Italy...
The AVPN is basically just an organization promoting Neapolitan pizza around the world since Naples is traditionally a poorer part of Italy and extra tourism helps.
It is interesting though, and I do enjoy Neapolitan pizza (even got an Ooni pizza oven just to make it at home lol).
Pizza's interesting to me because it's one of the few foods where I think the American variant is largely superior to the original. All of the "traditional style" pizza I've had simply doesn't have near enough cheese.
Sort of reminds me of how Japan has mastered high end denim despite it being a very American product.
Pizza in the US is so detached from its Italian origins that if you emphasized "authentic" pizza, a fair amount of people would think you're talking about New York style.
I've travelled quite a lot in the top half of Italy over the decades for both work and pleasure - Milan, Venice, Florence, Siena, Verona, Bologna, Pisa, Parma.
I would suggest that from the outside it could be easy to underestimate just how seriously (many) Italians take their food.
Last year - as a family, on the way somewhere else - we visited a "factory" that makes Parmesan cheese. It's astounding how much work and time goes into making a product that, although it's of course produced "on mass", feels anything other than mass produced.
>"on mass"
En masse?
same difference
Not really "in mass (quantities)" would mean large amounts produced, "on mass" means the factory sits on a very large rock.
"en masse" is French for "in mass" not "on mass" so completely different.
Seem difrens
sé difez
yes, but to be fair, for an english speaker, en masse is pronounced more like "on mass" than like "en mass".
to be more french, say "awning" but lose the entire "-ning" part, and then "mass", like the "a" in father, not the "a" in cat.
Makes me think of those who pronounce "coup de grâce" as "coupe de gras". Ew.
Once I tried pointing this out. The speaker said "it doesn't matter". Sure, bud, enjoy your lard. Ew.
> En masse?
My French is just fine - merci beaucoup - yet unfortunately yet another HN thread gets distracted from the intention of a post by someone determined to focus on semantics :/
Never in my life as a native speaker of American English have I ever seen “on mass” used like that. It’s fair to ask for clarification since “on mass” in that sentence is very, very unusual (dare I say “incorrect”).
PP was asking to clarify your English, not your French, so that readers could understand what you were trying to express with your neologism.
> PP was asking to clarify your English, not your French, so that readers could understand...
(This is the first time I've had this on HN) but I have no idea what you mean. Is someone really not understanding? It looks like they're trying to correct what I wrote :/
It's a product produced in quantity, but not “mass-produced”.
There is no English expression “on mass.” The expression used by English speakers are the French words _en masse_.
The point is, assuming that we all knew what the original commenter meant—and I think we did—it's rude to correct their usage. This has been basic netiquette since Usenet.
RIP south Italy, where the pizza actually came from.
Flat bread topped with some sort of condements is expected to have independently discovered basically everywhere where they had bread in some incarnation.
The Italians really did their marketing well to get the attribution
That's true but most of them are unleavened, the yeast plus the fast cook time is I think what makes pizza unique, more than the cheese which is present in other variations.
Quesadilla? Pizza. Taco? Folded pizza. Calzone - taco, therefore folded pizza. Toast with jam? Sweet pizza. Shit on a shingle? Military pizza.
Any food without bread? Pizza without bread.
Pizza without bread? Pizza without bread.
Pizza? Pizza.
Pizza with pizza? Pizza++.
Pizza is toast, unless it's deep dish then it's quiche: https://cuberule.com/
A quesadilla is a sandwich, though.
I ordered a bruschetta in Nice (France), and got something that looked like a mini pizza.
Granted, Nice is next door'ish to Italy
I think the cube rule should really be amended such that toast is actually "open-faced sandwich". Toast is just bread. Toast with toppings, such as pizza, is actually an open-faced sandwich.
It might be casual heresy but it is right.
A sandwich is two pizzas kissing.
The next step is to create pizzarule.com with an Apple marketing-inspired design explaining how all food is some derivative of pizza.
All food evolves into pizza given enough time, or something like that.
Pizza with spices? Pizza#
>Pizza++
Pizza with classes?
Or Pizza in notepad.
Poems are just stack of words, aren't they.
more of sack, stacks are sooo ordered.
shuffle emily poem dickinson invariant are.
the italians have plenty of flat breads with condiments (try foccacia), and they are not pizza. those italians don't say "hey, we invented that too", nor should anybody else.
we all agree what pizza means at least till the point we need to duke it out over pineapple (which is not pizza)
i'm reminded of an old Lake Wobegon piece about Minnesota tacos (pronounced to rhyme with tack-o). they're made with folded over white bread and with your flannel sleeves rolled up because the juice will run down your arms
By coincidence I heard an interview on Radio 4 today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gqz2 41:00
Approx transcript:
> by the 1970s Italy had left its peasant origins behind it had become an industrial consumerist, democracy, and at that point, people start to get nostalgic, and they make the past simple for themselves by turning it into recipes, turning into simple forms. And that has become actually, and this is another novelty, very politicised in recent years. The current government, which of all the various right wing parties have been in power since 1994, is the one that most is most proud of its sort of fascist DNA, if I feel like, it's linked to historical links to Mussolini's fascist Party. They've really wedded themselves to this idea, this food nostalgia, this idea of defending Italian culture against contamination from abroad or wherever it might be.
pizza got bigger (than in Italy) first in America, and that started to happen well before the actual Fascists. So, no, pizza standards are not a nostalgic defense against contamination.
French winemakers started defending their region names as trademarks in the middle of the last century (picked up steam in 1960s to 1970s) and cheese followed, and the rest of the Europe too. That's where the joke "real Existentialism must come from France, otherwise you just have sparkling anxiety" comes from.
As one rather benign example, Hungary and Slovakia asserted rights to the name of the wine Tokaji/Tokai and in 2007 Friuli Italy had to stop using that name for their wine, a name they had been using for hundreds of years (though the grape is still called Tokai in Italy). In Hungary, the measure of quality/sweetness of the wine (it's a dessert wine) is called Puttonyos. The Italians now call their wine Friulano (not a dessert wine in particular); I want the Italians to start measuring their quality in Putanas just to give the finger to Hungary.
I know nothing of this field. Just commenting as the interview came up today.
But surely ideas about nationalism and purity can arise at any time?
IIRC the interview was about pasta recipes, and about cultural rather than DOP purity.
europeans are not purists about cheese, europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does. It's a marketing move for the quality producers of regional cheese varieties to protect their market by proclaiming that their cheese is the authentic one, and others (with no regard to quality) are not. it's wanting to own the name. The Sardinians are proud of their cheese that they eat with the maggots in it, it's not about purity.
> europe has the same "supermarket brands" of cheese that the US does.
I'm not certain about your exact meaning, but I disagree here. Cheese availability in supermarkets is strongly regional even within Europe, and most non-local varieties are either impossible to get, or have to be ordered at 4 times the price outside their regions.
E.g. You can buy perfectly adequate taleggio cheese in an Italian "Lidl" supermarket, but stores (from the same chain!) just 2 car hours away wont have it, and there is no "unbranded" local replacement either.
You do get some very generic kinds of cheese pretty much everywhere ("vegan cheddar", sandwich slices mostly consisting of emulgators and color, Emmental, Gouda, Parmesan, ...) but the availability/selection even for very well-known cheeses (like pecorino) decreases quickly as you leave their regions.
I do agree that a big motivation is to reduce competition and protect regional monopolies basically, but in many cases this also protects and preserves the identity/taste of that product itself, by preventing large international producers from turning distinct regional products into lowest-common-denominator mass-market trash.
I kinda wish there was more of this type of thing. I'm all for making new foods but call them something else please.
As a Hawaiian I find it culturally disrespectful what passes for poke in most areas outside the Hawaiian Islands, so I kind of wish they were required to use a different name so that they could hopefully learn what they're making is not poke, at least not traditional poke.
Here's is Google's first picture of poke
https://pasteboard.co/seVXA4y4e3Qb.webp
Maybe now-a-days that's common in Hawaii, probably to cater to tourists, but, at least all the places I go and the stuff I grew up with looks nothing like that.
It would look more like this. No rice, very few veggies.
https://pasteboard.co/RdAwZEuQQENd.jpg
There are various varieties (salt, shoyu, octopus, etc...) but they all have one thing in common. They are not served with veggies and rice.
In other parts of the world where we can’t just pull big tasty fish out of the water, we have to make do with other ingredients, sorry.
So, nix the Thai curries and Japanese curries because they are different from their Indian counterpart?
If a particular country itself wants to police what something means, I guess... and that means we could ossify what poke means in the us but poke exists in other countries as well (like the philippine islands and japan.) and they are different.
But I disagree... we can have Texas BBQ and Carolinas BBQ and St Louis BBQ... or CT lobster rolls and maine Lobster rolls...
We might as well rail against calling non mincemeat hamburgers 'burgers because they are not genuine burgers...
It's amusing to read some of the early articles, such as one that appeared in the New York Times ("Pizza a pie Popular in Southern Italy, Is Offered Here for Home Consumption"), explaining to the mainstream what pizza is and heralding its availability as take-out in the US: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1781097393301119360?lang=e...
Why do they need to be undercover? It’s not like anyone is expecting to be raided by the pizza police. And can they do anything about hot pockets? Or is that considered a calzone? Are calzones off jurisdiction? They’re basically a pizza folded onto itself.
A calzone should have ricotta cheese not mozzarella.
Stromboli is closer to folded up pizza as it typically has mozzarella cheese.
> A calzone should have ricotta cheese not mozzarella.
It typically has both. And ricotta is legally not a cheese in Italy (because it's not made from milk).
I thought Ricotta is what's left over after you make another cheese from milk, most commonly cows milk.
Wikipedia says ricotta is made from milk in Italy from the production of mozzarella
Whey leftover from Parmesan production is also commonly used to make ricotta
In the USA any of those can be anything.
Sromboli can be ground sausage and cheese on a french bread roll.
Stromboli is American, from Philadelphia. It was named after a movie about a Sicilian island that was popular in 1950, because they just wanted to give it an Italian sounding name.
Afaik they don't serve those in Italy or even that far away from Philadelphia. So "in the USA that can be anything" is ... I guess accurate, for a regional American dish
They are served in Puerto Rico. I find that amusing because there’s local types not found anywhere else.
The Italians, for revenge, do their own cheesesteak sandwich.
Just because some people abuse the language out of ignorance does not make them right ;-)
because everyone knows dave portnoy.
> Why do they need to be undercover?
It's a marketing gimmick to promote their pizza brand.
Today I learned about pizza fritta! Lends unexpected legitimacy to what I saw on the menu in a chippy one night out long ago in Glasgow. I never dared to try it.
(But I can attest to the deep fried mars bar)
It tracks that if you're going to give an accreditation you want to make sure its being upheld. Pizza shops can cut a lot of corners that a normal patron might not notice or care about.
Neapolitan pizza isn't even the most popular pizza in Italy...
The AVPN is basically just an organization promoting Neapolitan pizza around the world since Naples is traditionally a poorer part of Italy and extra tourism helps.
It is interesting though, and I do enjoy Neapolitan pizza (even got an Ooni pizza oven just to make it at home lol).
Yes and no. I've seen many established businesses gradually switch to it over time due to it being "the original." Thank Instagram for that.
I really hate these movements that clothe themselves in words like "authenticity", but when you look underneath, it's just a clique.
[flagged]
These detectives should come from new york given that ny pizza is far superior than italian pizza