8 ms·
The day I ordered pizza that 'doesn't exist'
- vacri 11y agoHere in Australia, 'marinara' means some kind of seafood is on the pizza, usually shrimp. 'Marinara without the seafood' here would be like 'pizza rossa with cheese' in the article - it changes the underlying definition of the pizza.
- gaius 11y agoProbably she meant it "doesn't exist" as in there's no button on the till for it.
- StavrosK 11y agoMaybe it's a matter of language? You can't have a marinara WITH mozzarella, because the marinara doesn't have mozzarella, but you can have a marinara PLUS mozzarella, because that's now not a marinara.
- ectoplasm 11y agoThe problem is that mozzarella doesn't keep at sea.
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoUntrue
- lake99 11y agoThis may be the case in the current age, where ships have freezers. But this article[1] says that in a refrigerator (not freezer), mozarella lasts for just a couple of weeks. I have no first-hand knowledge of this myself. http://www.eatbydate.com/dairy/cheese/brie-feta-mozzarella-soft-cheese-shelf-life-expiration-date/ http://www.eatbydate.com/dairy/cheese/brie-feta-mozzarella-s...
- adrusi 11y agoBecause last week I made the mistake of asking her for a marinara - which is a simple tomato and garlic pizza - with the addition of mozzarella. No, unless this paraphrasing misrepresents the original wording, that's not the issue. Far more likely is the "Black coffee with milk" suggestion at the end of the article.
- Dylan16807 11y agoI don't know. If you specifically ask for a "pizza rossa with mozzarella", that's a contradiction. But to ask for an item that just happens to by itself be a type of pizza rossa, and then ask for mozzarella on top, I don't see the problem. You're not asking for a contradiction, you just want two items put together. If I go to a burger joint that offers an option with no burger patty, and I order "cheese sandwich with a burger patty added", I've gone a bit roundabout but I haven't asked for anything contradictory or 'nonexistent'.
- dewiz 11y agothe black coffee with milk is the right example, as you don't order a veggie burger with meat.
- jrochkind1 11y agoI order veggie burgers with bacon on top all the time, it's delicious.
- StavrosK 11y agoI don't see how that's different. Take black coffee, add milk, that's what I want.
- lucozade 11y agoI interpreted it not as her saying that she wouldn't make the pizza he wanted. She did. She was saying that you can't have a pizza marinara with mozzarella because it's a contradiction. Like black coffee with milk. You can of course add milk but then it's a white coffee. As you can add mozzarella but then it's a margherita.
- nly 11y agoIs take-away Pizza considered 'fast food' in Italy?
- aruggirello 11y agoMostly. On top of that, you actually have two variants: traditional, round pizza (which comes in common take-away square boxes, and may or may not be pre-cut into slices for convenience), and smaller, square-shaped sliced pizza ("pizza al taglio"). The latter is always considered fast food.
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoAgree. Italian fast food usually is squared sliced pizza that you eat standing in the shop, or on the go. It's fast because it is continuously produced and therefore, by the time you walk in, it's always already available, steamming and waiting to be cut. Take away round pizzas usually take more because the are made JIT for you and are considered more of a way to have regular dinner at home without cooking.
- andrea_s 11y agoI can't quite imagine anyone (Italian pizzaiolo or otherwise) getting so worked up over a pizza order. I think the situation described in the piece was either much friendlier than the author makes it out to be, or a fantasy that nicely plugs in the eat-pray-love-style "Italians are all about food and simple life and being passionate about everything while gesticulating" memes.
- dewiz 11y agoyou clearly never met passionate Italians, food is an important part of the tradition, even more about pizza which is ruined in so many ways around the world :-)
- andrea_s 11y agoI think I might have met a few, as I am Italian myself :-) To be honest the story would be much more believable if the writer weren't a foreigner - that kind of reaction from the shop owner is usually reserved for much stronger violations of the "pizza code" (pineapple pizza being the go-to example!)
- roghummal 11y agoWhat's wrong with pineapple on a pizza?
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoPizza in Italy is not a sweet dish. Fruits on it are completely inappropriate, as with pasta. The only exception is the chocolate, but it's allowed in stuffed pizza only.
- andrea_s 11y agoNothing, really (if it works for you!). It's just extremely far removed from the usual way pizza is consumed in Italy. I'm usually annoyed by the many culinary debates we like to have (e.g. when should you put cheese on your pasta), but this one I can relate to :-)
- cperciva 11y agoI witnessed something similar a few years ago at a conference in Ottawa. We had gathered at a local pub, and a Parisian friend asked for a hamburger "cooked rare". The waitress responded "I don't think we can do that", which elicited the obvious reply "of course you can, just take it off the grill sooner". At this point we stepped in to explain that it was a matter of food safety laws, and the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked... and that, contrary to stereotypes about North American cuisine, we all understood that good quality meat shouldn't be ruined by overcooking. He agreed to have a legal hamburger, but only on the condition that it was overcooked as little as possible.
- lucozade 11y agoI witnessed the opposite in a restaurant in Switzerland. A friend ordered a steak but asked for it well done. The waitress asked if he was sure. He said yes. A couple of minutes later the French chef came out and remonstrated with my friend for about 10 mins. The essence of the conversation (neither spoke the other's language and the rest of us translating probably wasn't helping much) was whether it ought to be a crime to cook well done steak versus how far the human rights act applied to restaurant choices. In the end we negotiated an agreement whereby the trainee would cook it and the chef wouldn't watch.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoThere's a similar crime going on in Florence - people order a well done "bistecca alla fiorentina", not knowing that the meat has been dry-cured for at least 2 weeks in special refrigerators just so the proteins break on their own, making the meat perfectly digestible when cooked rare. There are no hygiene issues either, so people ruining that expensive dish with their foolish requests don't have any excuse.
- PeterWhittaker 11y agoSimilar. Utah. BBQ place. Woman orders her bison well done. The cook owner comes out, says he will not do that, she will have dust in her plate, not meat. Bison is just too dry. She insists. He says no. This goes back and forth just a bit, then he offers to cook her something else well done. IIRC, she accepted that offer. I really respected him for that (and agreed): Sometimes the customer is completely wrong and it is better for the owner for the customer to either change their mind or leave.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- noonespecial 11y agoI want a cheeseburger without any cheese. Umm cheeseburgers have cheese on them... Do you mean a hamburger? But it Italy.
- white-flame 11y agoI think the one in the article was even more appropriate, as it's about adding something that the original label explicitly excludes: "I'd been asking for the equivalent of a black coffee with milk. "
- intruder 11y agoOne of the bars near my University back in the days only had cheeseburgers on their menu. So I ordered a cheeseburger without cheese. Laughter ensued and I was forever stamped an idiot. That's why I moved to Japan.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- njharman 11y agoExactly. This is such a stupid, nonissue article. Relying solely on ignorance of what pizza names mean.
- abbot2 11y agoA friend of mine who used to work at McDonalds, told that "custom" burgers are always made to order, so he advised that if you want a fresh hamburger, order a cheeseburger with no cheese - you'll get a fresh made to order hamburger and cheese on the side.
- bshimmin 11y agoI lived in Bologna for a couple of years. The pizza there is so damn good I think you really should just be grateful and accept whatever they give you. Once you start believing that you can have a pizza rossa with mozzarella, it's a slippery slope until you end up with a "deep-pan" pizza with chicken on it. (As another commenter says, this whole situation seems utterly improbable. Pizzaioli/e are generally friendly and happy to make whatever you want, within reason, and will just gently rib you if you order something silly, especially if you're a foreigner. At least, that has always been my experience, anyway.)
- ATsch 11y agothis is far from being a rare thing. I have had this happen to me at a local Italian restaurant, where I ordered a Pizza Vegetaria with parma ham. The chef outright refused to make it, but after a while agreed to make a pizza with tomato, Mozarella, ham and vegetables
- goodcanadian 11y agoWell, think about it. People would consider it very strange to order a vegetarian pizza with ham in English, too.
- waspleg 11y agoI've ordered vegetarian with bacon or bacon and pepperoni or just pepperoni. Why? Because A.) It's almost always cheaper than adding half a dozen vegetables to some other pizza B.) It's also faster to order with less risk of someone getting the order wrong on.
- waxjar 11y agoReason A is a good reason to refuse to make your order.
- EliRivers 11y agoApropos of nothing much, I spent six months working in Naples, billeted in a run-down coastal resort town some 15km west of the centre, on the coast. There was some adequate pizza, and some truly awful pizza, and at one point we got so sick of the only food options being pizza or pasta that we flew a cook in from England to make us a curry. A local cook was tasked with preparing the rice, which he got wrong. I suspect that out of the cities, the quality of food drops off significantly, and the range of foods, which was always pretty unimpressive in Italy, certainly drops off. This is going to be true everywhere, of course, but I suspect countries coasting on a reputation of good food suffer this to a greater degree.
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoIt's also a matter of standards: you can't order a dish and make modifications that perturbate the nature of that (like, milk in black coffe or cheeseburger without cheese). Margherita with garlic is equally absurd as marinara with mozzarella. The only way out from this catch22 would be to order a pizza with tomato, mozzarella and garlic, explicitly omitting any "base template" from which to start
- _ak 11y ago> Margherita with garlic is equally absurd as marinara with mozzarella. Why? What are the specific definitions or margherita and marinara that don't allow these modifications? Without undisputed definitions, this is just irrational dogma. Black coffee by definition excludes milk, cheeseburgers by definition include cheese, but for margherita and marinara, this is not obvious at all.
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoThere are 2 problems: First, Margherita is tomato and mozzarella, with optional basil garnishment. Period. It's the recipe as it is and as it has always been; if you add an ingredient that heavily belongs to another recipe, you are profoundly altering the original spirit of the first. Second, garlic is not considered good with mozzarella. As an Italian, I find it really unfit due to the cultural taste I'm accustomed to. A foreigner ordering margherita with garlic is violating our sense of taste and altering a template that doesn't allow such distorsions. As a counter example, you can add without problems an egg on a margherita; it becomes a "Bismark pizza", but it's fine since the egg plays well with tomato and mozzarella. Any modification that is an enhancement, rather than a distorsion, is alway welcomed.
- bshimmin 11y agoWow, thank you for posting this. Pizza alla Bismarck suddenly transported me back to a very happy place!
- 11y ago
- timvp 11y agoGreat article! Seems like some traditions/traditional things are making people stupid and/or ignorant haha.
- ai_ja_nai 11y agoEnjoy your McDonald sandwich
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoI'll give you two explanations from the discussion of this article in the Italian subreddit: - asking for marinara with mozzarella is like asking for a vegetarian dish with some meat on the top - it's against the very principle of a pizza with poor ingredients that were available on a ship (marinara = marine, a sailor's pizza) - Italian pizzerias usually have huge menus with dozens of combinations and there's really no need to ask for custom ingredients, but for that subset of places that do allow that, mozzarella is too expensive to be put in the category of "extra ingredient for half a euro", so a client asking for a marinara base instead of the more expensive margherita base (that already has the cheese), might be looking for a loophole to pay less.
- CurtMonash 11y agoMy usual way of ordering pizza in the US is to as for a Margherita or Quattro Formaggio or whatever, "but with a couple of toppings". That works. In the place discussed in the article, it would probably be better to phrase that as "a pizza that is like a Margherita, except that it has an additional ingredient". That said -- a pizza that is altered by adding an extra topping is easier to conceptualize than a cheeseless pizza that is altered by adding cheese. So I can somewhat understand the pizza-maker's distress. :)
- swagv 11y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8
- ap3 11y agoIt's like a "quesadilla sin queso"
- Animats 11y agoThis is an advantage of meat that's been radiation-sterilized. You can eat it raw. Wegman's offers irradiated burger patties.[1] [1] http://www.wegmans.com/blog/2010/07/irradiated-ground-beef/ http://www.wegmans.com/blog/2010/07/irradiated-ground-beef/