American Pie (How a Neapolitan street food became the most successful immigrant of all)

American Heritage.com ^ | April/May 2006 | Hanna Miller

[SamAdams76]

I eat pizza once in a while. I wonder if any Freepers ever tried pizza. It's pretty good.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Pizza is in a category by itself in the phone book because of the dollar volume of the business derived solely from phone sales and delivery. No other kind of food service can compare.

[Frank_2001]

A Roman delicacy known as "placenta"...That loses a LOT in translation!!!

[softwarecreator]

I eat pizza once in a while. I wonder if any Freepers ever tried pizza. It's pretty good

I think I've heard of this "pizza".  Something about a tower leaning ... ?

[ThomasThomas]

http://www.sliceny.com/archives/2006/04/a_slice_of_heaven_pizza_and_organized_crime.php

From above link:

It was once say by someone I can't rightly remember who, but he said
"Never eat anything bigger than your head.
He must of said this before he ate pizza.

Pizza and organized crime share a long and storied history. In the 1930s AI Capone decided he wanted his piece of the burgeoning pizza-industry pie. He forced neighborhood pizza parlors to purchase only his mozzarella cheese, which was made in a mob-controlled plant in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

More than fifty years later Rudy Giuliani made a name for himself as a federal prosecutor with the famed Pizza Connection case. Giuliani prosecuted organized-crime figure Salvatore Catalano and 22 other defendants of Sicilian descent, who from 1979 through 1984 imported 1.6 billion dollars worth of heroin into the United States and then laundered the proceeds through pizza parlors throughout the country. In the course of an 18-month trial one defendant died, and another was murdered. After six days of deliberation all but one of the defendants were convicted. Who was Giuliani's star witness? None other than Joe Pistone, otherwise known as Donnie Brasco.

[RepoGirl]

According to this article, I don't exist. I don't like pizza, having always found it (even as a kid) too greasy and hard on the system.

Wait, I take that back. I did eat pizza once in some famous restaurant near the campus of Yale. It was white clam and garlic, or something--and that was pretty amazing.

But even the charms of NYC and Boston pizza leave me cold.

[L_Von_Mises]

I did eat pizza once in some famous restaurant near the campus of Yale. It was white clam and garlic,

That was most likely Pepe's. Been around since the twenties. Clam pie is their specialty, although not my thing. Frank Pepe's nephew was working for him way back and they got into a fight so Salvatore Consiglio (the nephew) opened up a pizza place next door and named it Sally's. IMHO Sallies is the best apizza anywhere (how the real apizza joints spell it in the Northeast).

Anything you get further West or South of North Jersey isn't real pizza.

[Rte66]

We had "hamburger pie" in my small-town Midwest grade school cafeteria in 1959 - it was that Bisquick type recipe with a thick biscuit crust on the bottom, then browned ground beef with some Italian spices and something tomatoey in it, then cheddar cheese on top.

The bread on the bottom soaked up all the red grease from the meat and cheese both. I absolutely loved "hamburger pie"! I've tried to duplicate it as an adult, but have never achieved the same level of greasiness that made that "pie" so good.

Eventually, they started calling it "pizza." My parents told me they already knew about "pizza" from living in California when Daddy was in grad school in the mid-1940s and it was nothing like that burger pie. Putting all this together, I just naturally assumed pizza started in the US in CA. I knew that Chicago's Uno claimed to be first, but didn't know that was true until this article.

Our small town had a Pizza Hut by that time and teens congregated there. I honestly don't recall if they had home delivery or not--I know we never had it at home.

It was really in college that I ate the most pizza -- and a couple of my more workaholic jobs where we ordered in a lot while working - for everyone. We used to get heart-shaped pizzas from our sweethearts - or sent to them.

I still don't order it at home much, but do make my own very often and will never pass up a stray piece offered. I love it cold for breakfast, too. I even like anchovies on mine, but prefer it without them.

The worst pizza to me is one with pineapple on it, even with Canadian bacon or ham or something else. I like my own "white" ham artisan pizzas with Dijon mustard and horseradish sauce instead of tomato sauce, and Swiss instead of mozzarella - but only occasionally.

Other than that, the moon hits my eye like a big-a pizza pie and I love it.

[Graymatter]

>>Anything you get further West or South of North Jersey isn't real pizza.

So true. I'm from Jersey, now in central PA where they can't even pronounce it right.

[swmobuffalo]

I've been working in pizza places or other places that make pizza for the last 20 something years. Still love it! People get the weirdest combinations but hey, if they like it, so be it! I'm a big fan of taco pizza and ones with everything on them except the anchovies. Hate anchovies and shrimp too. They stink to high heaven when put in the oven!

[OKIEDOC]

Give me a good old hamburger from the 1950's Hamburger Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma and I could and probably would die a happy man.

[OKIEDOC]

You mean.....wipe away the tears...boo hoo..hoo... that Pizza Hut and God Fathers isn't real Pizza, blah blah blah.......

[BnBlFlag]

"Good ole 50's hamburgers"....
Ain't that the truth. Also, never eat a hamburger north of Oklahaoma or west of Texas!

[OKIEDOC]

I about gagged the first time I ate a hamburger in Canada, They brought the thing out loaded down with Ketchup.

Of course now I love ketchup.

[The KG9 Kid]

I'm old enough to remember this 'Chef Boyardee' pizza mix in a box that came with a little tin can of tomato paste and a packet of dry Parmesan cheese to pour over it.

God, that pizza was lousy as hell. My parents loved it.

I remember sitting in front of our black and white TV eating awful square thin pizza slices watching the Patty Hearst drama unfold.

[leadhead]

"old enough"?

Patty Hearst was kidnapped in the 70's.

My mom was making that Boyardee boxed belly buster in the 50's.

I found it amusing when I learned that the Boiardi family from Cleveland had owned the food company and a company that made specialty mortars. I wonder which came first, tile grout or their canned spaghetti?

[kalee]

ping

[Bernard]

Until Uno’s opened its first location outside Chicago in 1979, people had to go to East Ohio Street to sample anything like Sewell’s idea...

The author left out a few other places in Chicago, which weren't located on East Ohio Street:

Uno's

Due's

Gino's

Gino's East

Dino's Grotto

Lou Malanati

So she dropped in a short history of Chicago deep-dish pizza. Maybe for her next article she can do an in-depth study the Italian Beef. That might take her two paragraphs, based on this.

[goldstategop]

Americans like ethnic food. None of it seems foreign - whether its Chinese, German, Yiddish, Italian or Middle Eastern - it just seems well - American.

(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")

[SamAdams76]

Would you believe that you can still find that awful "Chef Boyardee" pizza mix in your supermarket?

I remember having that stuff as a kid growing up in the early 1970s too. It was passed off by my mother as "real pizza" but I already knew better. There was a genuine pizza place down the street that made great pizza but I only got to eat it two or three times a year. This was back in the days before casual dining when "going out to eat" was only for special occasions and you had to dress up to go there. 99% of all meals back then were made and consumed at home.

I also remember my mother making this godawful toaster-oven pizza which was essentially tomato paste and shredded cheese on top of English muffins.

We ate it just like we ate everything she put on the table (or my father gave us the belt). Wednesdays was always spaghetti-and-meatball night and Friday night was for fish sticks. Not that my family was Catholic but all our neighbors were and my parents didn't want to insult them by having meat.

I still live in New England and having been around the country, we definitely have the best pizza here. Also the best subs. Forget major chains like Subway and D'Angelos. When you come to the Boston area, seek out the local mom and pop pizza & sub shops. They are everywhere. That's where you get real pizza and real subs.