I always thought pizza was an overrated concept. The hamburger appealed to me much more, and, although not as versatile, more satiating. However, unlike what the end of the article implies, I do see a similar phenomenon happening with Mexican food and the rise in popularity of it, all over the US. I see many renditions of Mexican food created by many ethnicities. I suppose there is still that lingering threat of being caught “culturally appropriating” the food if you decide to get creative with it — but that seems like a comment that would be widely laughed out of the restaurant, especially from other Mexicans. Similarity you see that with Chinese food for generations. Having ate authentic Chinese food my self (once, never again will I) the difference between Americanized and authentic is staggering. It’s true, the Americanization of food universalizes it for everyone to enjoy. Much like our culture, Now, if only we can do it Slavic food. Or, more importantly, any European food found West of the Hajnal line like you see with Mexican or Chinese.
Whoever figures out how to make decent burgers (or possibly Arby's-style roast beef) plus decent pizza, relatively cheap, AND can successfully franchise it, will conquer America.
America has enormous culinary potential. Given our agricultural wealth and climatic diversity we can grow just about anything and grow it well.
However, pizza notwithstanding, we have a lot of cultural catching up to do.
For example, my home state of Washington exports buckwheat, fruit, seafood and even hay to Japan. They make their soba noodles and sushi with our products, and feed their most prized livestock with our Timothy grass, which is apparently the best on earth.
The Japanese are notoriously pre occupied with food quality, so it's clear that we've got the good stuff.
But what do we do with it here? Not much. Yes, we eat it, too, but the potential is much greater than the reality.
What we need is something like the Benedictine monasteries to inoculate the countryside with culture. Not to say our rural folks are devoid of culture, but they are too busy getting by to develop it to European or Japanese levels.
How did you avoid pizza in SoCal in the 60s? I remember a crowded place in Huntington Beach tossing the dough, and there was an inexpensive Shakey's near us in Los Alamitos.
What passed for Chicago style in 80s DC was 1.5 in. thick and dense dough that filled you up with one slice and smelt of beer.
American pizza and Italian pizza are two entirely different things. They just happen to share the same name. When visiting my uncle in 1978 in Rome and travelling throughout the country I was initially so excited to savour real Italian pizza which I was sure would be so much better than our American imitation. What a disappointment. We got an overpriced plate sized disc of cooked dough with a saucer sized splattering of red sauce in the middle. I remember joking with my travelling buddy, "they call this pizza?" Could not wait to get back home to Pennsylvania to Dino's Pizza and Pizza Hut (which used to be really good).
My late wife and i lived in Sherman Oaks in late 1999/early 2000. there was an amazing pizza place called Caioti in Studio City. looks like it's still kicking. for the abstemious among us, they had good salads too.
America certainly has everything needed to create the finest food in the world.
We supply Aspen Ridge with USDA prime Angus beef, no hormones, no antibiotics, Certified Humane® raised and handled. Steve, if you want to try some, have a burger at Cassell's at the Hotel Normandie in Koreatown.
Japan is our biggest export market for beef. A few restaurants that serve our beef are Ikinari, Matsuzaka and Kurauzo in Tokyo. Also a place called the Meat Winery. On Okinawa, O's Steakhouse serves our beef.
I lived for a while in Italy as a kid (Naples and Sigonella). I remember Naples as dirty and unpleasant. I was much fonder of Sigonella. Great memories of the Piazza Duomo of Catania. My favorite Italian foods were arancino, cannolo and, of course, gelato! I don't think I ever ate pizza there, but sure loved American pizza, which my mother made for us kids whatever country we were in.
While pizza has gotten better around the country over the past 20 years, in general all these newer, over priced fast casual hipster built pizza places still aren't as good as authentic Italian-American places in the Tri-State area and the Northeast. And they usually have some sort of gimmick, like unusual toppings, specialty beers, etc. They're fine additions to pizza deserts in the Midwest or wherever, but it's still hard to find real good pizza outside of Italian-American places in NYC, Jersey, etc. Same with Mexican food. Mexican food has improved on the East coast recently but even in NYC it's still hard to get burritos and tacos that taste as good as average places in LA.
And while all these newer pizza places, and many of the restaurants that have been opened over the past 20, 30 years, might have been opened by native born Millennial hipster entrepreneurs, their entire business model has been predicated on the huge wave of unskilled Latin American immigration provided low cost labor in the kitchen, as busboys, deliverers, etc. A lot of these fast casual and high end casual dining places that have sprouted everywhere recently serving mediocre, overpriced food wouldn't be viable otherwise.
I haven’t seen an Italian operated pizza place in years and years in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. They’ve been taken over by, initially, middle easterners, and now, Mexicans.
All the local mom and pop beer stores (a Pennsylvania thing) have been bought up by Pakistanis.
A few thoughts: First, you do not need even need to go to Italy, there are incredible resources on youtube, and elsewhere, that allow you to not only get the recipes but get visual instruction on the technique. This is how somehow I make the best pizza and fried rice I have ever had, and it actually is a somewhat disappointing experience when eating out, though I still enjoy pizza in a third space. Second, technology that was not so readily accessible in the past, aka an oven that can get to 900F for Neapolitan style pizza, is now readily accessible even in Biden's America: https://ooni.com/products/ooni-fyra
I find that a lot American cheeses do not hold up to the Italian standard, at least comparing grocery store parmesans (and I feel no need to go beyond specialty shops in my small town as I can get great results), the fact is that living in the middle of the US gives me access to incredibly good ingredients to work with.
Ultimately, most things get internationalized because there are smart, motivated people in many place. My coffee-specific brew gear is all Japanese, probably not a nationality that non-cognoscenti associate with coffee. However, with something that is necessarily more associated with geography, like wine, it is seems hard to spread everywhere that has sufficient knowledge. Even then, our most precious beliefs about location are subject to revisions as in the Judgement of Paris.
> I’ve tried to avoid eating any pizza in recent years because I like it too much and therefore eat way too much of it once I start
This is actually Scott Adams' method of losing weight, although I feel he is being disingenuous when he says he can eat as much as he wants, as he plays the semantic game of not eating anything he likes in the first place
"The final reason American pizza keeps improving in the 21st Century is because Italians are white, so nobody is concerned about cultural appropriation."
About plums, I know nothing. Except that the ones you buy in American supermarkets are tasteless. I bought a plum in France once however. It was the only one I ever tasted, which took some courage. It looked like hell. Gnarly. Deformed. A freak of nature. But, man, did it taste good! When are we going to get ugly plums like that in America? Surely the day will come.
I always thought pizza was an overrated concept. The hamburger appealed to me much more, and, although not as versatile, more satiating. However, unlike what the end of the article implies, I do see a similar phenomenon happening with Mexican food and the rise in popularity of it, all over the US. I see many renditions of Mexican food created by many ethnicities. I suppose there is still that lingering threat of being caught “culturally appropriating” the food if you decide to get creative with it — but that seems like a comment that would be widely laughed out of the restaurant, especially from other Mexicans. Similarity you see that with Chinese food for generations. Having ate authentic Chinese food my self (once, never again will I) the difference between Americanized and authentic is staggering. It’s true, the Americanization of food universalizes it for everyone to enjoy. Much like our culture, Now, if only we can do it Slavic food. Or, more importantly, any European food found West of the Hajnal line like you see with Mexican or Chinese.
Whoever figures out how to make decent burgers (or possibly Arby's-style roast beef) plus decent pizza, relatively cheap, AND can successfully franchise it, will conquer America.
The best Mexican food I've ever had was at a Salvadoran restaurant.
What I don't understand is burn-your-mouth bravado, but then my mother rarely cooked with pepper, and for 40 years, it makes me ill if I can taste it.
I make my own and it's yummy.
The Lincoln Wine Bar in Mt. Vernon, Iowa!
Wow…there’s a sign of how much this country has changed in the last fifty years.
America has enormous culinary potential. Given our agricultural wealth and climatic diversity we can grow just about anything and grow it well.
However, pizza notwithstanding, we have a lot of cultural catching up to do.
For example, my home state of Washington exports buckwheat, fruit, seafood and even hay to Japan. They make their soba noodles and sushi with our products, and feed their most prized livestock with our Timothy grass, which is apparently the best on earth.
The Japanese are notoriously pre occupied with food quality, so it's clear that we've got the good stuff.
But what do we do with it here? Not much. Yes, we eat it, too, but the potential is much greater than the reality.
What we need is something like the Benedictine monasteries to inoculate the countryside with culture. Not to say our rural folks are devoid of culture, but they are too busy getting by to develop it to European or Japanese levels.
How did you avoid pizza in SoCal in the 60s? I remember a crowded place in Huntington Beach tossing the dough, and there was an inexpensive Shakey's near us in Los Alamitos.
What passed for Chicago style in 80s DC was 1.5 in. thick and dense dough that filled you up with one slice and smelt of beer.
My parents didn't like pizza so we rarely had it in the 1960s.
American pizza and Italian pizza are two entirely different things. They just happen to share the same name. When visiting my uncle in 1978 in Rome and travelling throughout the country I was initially so excited to savour real Italian pizza which I was sure would be so much better than our American imitation. What a disappointment. We got an overpriced plate sized disc of cooked dough with a saucer sized splattering of red sauce in the middle. I remember joking with my travelling buddy, "they call this pizza?" Could not wait to get back home to Pennsylvania to Dino's Pizza and Pizza Hut (which used to be really good).
My late wife and i lived in Sherman Oaks in late 1999/early 2000. there was an amazing pizza place called Caioti in Studio City. looks like it's still kicking. for the abstemious among us, they had good salads too.
America certainly has everything needed to create the finest food in the world.
We supply Aspen Ridge with USDA prime Angus beef, no hormones, no antibiotics, Certified Humane® raised and handled. Steve, if you want to try some, have a burger at Cassell's at the Hotel Normandie in Koreatown.
Japan is our biggest export market for beef. A few restaurants that serve our beef are Ikinari, Matsuzaka and Kurauzo in Tokyo. Also a place called the Meat Winery. On Okinawa, O's Steakhouse serves our beef.
I lived for a while in Italy as a kid (Naples and Sigonella). I remember Naples as dirty and unpleasant. I was much fonder of Sigonella. Great memories of the Piazza Duomo of Catania. My favorite Italian foods were arancino, cannolo and, of course, gelato! I don't think I ever ate pizza there, but sure loved American pizza, which my mother made for us kids whatever country we were in.
According to teenagers (I have a couple), there are "hamburger girls" and "pizza girls." Not sure exactly what that means, but you must be the former.
While pizza has gotten better around the country over the past 20 years, in general all these newer, over priced fast casual hipster built pizza places still aren't as good as authentic Italian-American places in the Tri-State area and the Northeast. And they usually have some sort of gimmick, like unusual toppings, specialty beers, etc. They're fine additions to pizza deserts in the Midwest or wherever, but it's still hard to find real good pizza outside of Italian-American places in NYC, Jersey, etc. Same with Mexican food. Mexican food has improved on the East coast recently but even in NYC it's still hard to get burritos and tacos that taste as good as average places in LA.
And while all these newer pizza places, and many of the restaurants that have been opened over the past 20, 30 years, might have been opened by native born Millennial hipster entrepreneurs, their entire business model has been predicated on the huge wave of unskilled Latin American immigration provided low cost labor in the kitchen, as busboys, deliverers, etc. A lot of these fast casual and high end casual dining places that have sprouted everywhere recently serving mediocre, overpriced food wouldn't be viable otherwise.
I haven’t seen an Italian operated pizza place in years and years in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. They’ve been taken over by, initially, middle easterners, and now, Mexicans.
All the local mom and pop beer stores (a Pennsylvania thing) have been bought up by Pakistanis.
A few thoughts: First, you do not need even need to go to Italy, there are incredible resources on youtube, and elsewhere, that allow you to not only get the recipes but get visual instruction on the technique. This is how somehow I make the best pizza and fried rice I have ever had, and it actually is a somewhat disappointing experience when eating out, though I still enjoy pizza in a third space. Second, technology that was not so readily accessible in the past, aka an oven that can get to 900F for Neapolitan style pizza, is now readily accessible even in Biden's America: https://ooni.com/products/ooni-fyra
I find that a lot American cheeses do not hold up to the Italian standard, at least comparing grocery store parmesans (and I feel no need to go beyond specialty shops in my small town as I can get great results), the fact is that living in the middle of the US gives me access to incredibly good ingredients to work with.
Ultimately, most things get internationalized because there are smart, motivated people in many place. My coffee-specific brew gear is all Japanese, probably not a nationality that non-cognoscenti associate with coffee. However, with something that is necessarily more associated with geography, like wine, it is seems hard to spread everywhere that has sufficient knowledge. Even then, our most precious beliefs about location are subject to revisions as in the Judgement of Paris.
> I’ve tried to avoid eating any pizza in recent years because I like it too much and therefore eat way too much of it once I start
This is actually Scott Adams' method of losing weight, although I feel he is being disingenuous when he says he can eat as much as he wants, as he plays the semantic game of not eating anything he likes in the first place
"The final reason American pizza keeps improving in the 21st Century is because Italians are white, so nobody is concerned about cultural appropriation."
Heh. If you only knew.
I wrote about this a couple years ago. Pizza isn't Italian, it's American!
https://eccentricculinary.substack.com/p/pizza-isnt-italian
About plums, I know nothing. Except that the ones you buy in American supermarkets are tasteless. I bought a plum in France once however. It was the only one I ever tasted, which took some courage. It looked like hell. Gnarly. Deformed. A freak of nature. But, man, did it taste good! When are we going to get ugly plums like that in America? Surely the day will come.