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Pizzas are a source of national pride (and money) for Italians, so one could imagine they cannot be completely impartial about it. They may claim every chance
by quanto 3y ago
Pizzas are a source of national pride (and money) for Italians, so one could imagine they cannot be completely impartial about it. They may claim every chance of calling some flatbread a form of pizza.
The word pizza most likely comes from the Greek word pitta -- what we know as pita bread. Naples was a Greek city for millennia until its own city-statehood and then eventual incorporation into Italy in the second half of 1800s. Naples had Greek food, and thus Greek's celebrated flatbread. By Italy's own historical documents, pizzas were neither a dish we know today (pizzas were synonymous with focaccias in Italy) nor a popular dish in Italy until American occupation of Italy in WW2 as American soldiers, who wanted their high-temperature coal-fired NY pizzas in their occupied country.
Nat Geo has a piece on how the birth of Margherita pizza (thus modern pizza) by Raffaele Esposito in Naples was actually based on forgery of historical records by the restaurant/chef to promote its sales in mid-1900s. Italian experts and officials almost always repeat this thoroughly debunked fabrication and awarded an official government plaque.
tldr; the original flatbread "ancient pizza" was Greek food, not Italian. Modern pizza originally was an American thing, not Italian.
This is not to say Neapolitan pizza is a bad pizza. People of Naples should rightly be proud of it.
- namaria 3y agoIf you go back in time long enough, Naples was Greek even before there was any notion of Italy. Any way you split the hair, the italian peoples have a true claim on the roots of pizza.
- ithkuil 3y agoIt doesn't matter that Naples was Greek, as long as pizza as we know it today was a later invention. During the Greek influence period there was indeed a flat bread with toppings. That was popular throughout the Mediterranean, including Egypt. So, the question is mainly where to draw the line between what constitutes modern pizza, what constitutes pizza predecessors and what constitutes contemporary evolution of the modern pizza (e.g. pineapple pizza or deep dish Chicago style pizza, which is obviously a thing but it's also quite different from the original modern pizza). Fwiw in recent years I'm noticing a resurgence of the "pinsa romana" which is a variation on the theme and is gaining popularity likely because people just want a bit of change.
- namaria 3y agoLike I said, pizza is by consensus considered an Italian dish, and American splitting hairs on where it comes from or Italians on what's a "real pizza" are just snobs. Enjoy your hot cheese.
- TMWNN 3y ago> Modern pizza originally was an American thing, not Italian. If people should take away anything from your comment this is it. The pizza popular the world over is a purely American (mostly NYC) creation. Italians can not simultaneously claim the pizza for themselves and denounce the US variety as something foreign.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago> Italians can not simultaneously claim the pizza for themselves and denounce the US variety as something foreign. Yet they will, because for some reason Italians are voracious to appropriate others food culture as their own. I genuinely cannot understand it. Is it ego? Given the attitude even Italian Americans have, that’s my only guess. Every Italian has the “best” recipe for x, but won’t share it because its a “family tradition”. They decry anything that isn’t “authentic Italian cuisine”, despite that being such a nebulous term given how one of the cores of their modern cuisine, tomatoes, is not local to the region. I’ve even had some throw random Italian words into conversations as though they needed to actively prove how “Italian” they were. It’s like, I don’t understand this. I understand being patriotic, but it’s like every single Italian and Italian American has been incredibly insecure of their heritage, and this possibly extends to the whole country.
- namaria 3y agoWow that's a big jumble of racist nonsense.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoFor one, Italians are not a race. They are at best defined as a distinct ethnic group of the Caucasian race. A race I am apart of. Secondly, nothing of what I wrote is written based on the idea that I am superior to Italians based on their traits. Only that I find their inability to value their culture and appropriation of others’ culture confusing. And finally, your name is “namaria”, which sounds close to “marinara” and is almost an anagram for it. Thus I judge you of being an upsetti spaghetti Italian.