Posted on 12/21/2023 6:00:24 PM PST by nickcarraway
The beginning of the country’s love affair with bread, cheese, and sauce
By Saahil Desai
Consider—just for one terrible, stressful, bleak moment—if our forebearers in Naples had never invented pizza. No perfectly charred Margherita pies, no late-night Domino’s delivery, nothing. To the pizza-deprived, the world’s most beloved food probably wouldn’t sound all that special. What’s so great about the combo of bread, cheese, and sauce, after all? The alchemy among the three creates something that is so much greater than the sum of its parts—but I don’t have to tell you that, thankfully.
In 1949, the writer Ora Dodd had a much tougher challenge. In her story for The Atlantic, simply titled “Pizza,” Dodd sought to introduce Americans to a strange new food taking over Italian neighborhoods:
The waiter moves aside the glasses of red wine, and sets before you a king-sized open pie. It is piping hot; the brown crust holds a bubbling cheese-and-tomato filling. There is a wonderful savor of fresh bread, melted cheese, and herbs. This is a pizza, Italian for pie. There is a plural, pizze, but no one ever uses it, for pizza is a sociable dish, always intended to be shared. Two people order a small pizza, about a foot in diameter. A large pizza is twice that size. Don’t imagine an American pie blown up to about two feet, however; a pizza is a nearer relation to a pancake. It is very flat, made of raised bread dough, with the filling spread on top.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Yeah. Been to the spot too. Is it no longer there?. Bar is also good, relatively new, but good. Mashed potatoes on a pizza? Actually works.
Used to eat pizza and bar hop, a little too much. 😁
I remember Dean’s song….forgot about that .
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It was Ramona’s on Birch in midtown. I just checked Yelp and it says it is closed. Palo Alto Online says it closed ten years ago. What a shame...they had GREAT pizza! It was just a small hole-in-the-wall joint.
I don’t remember Magoo’s in MP. All the great old burger & beer joints are gone. San Antonio’s Nut House, Oasis, Jans Valley Inn, Kirk’s on California Ave.
We still have Rosottis, Flea Street Cafe, and Dutch Goose, though.
Amazing that we lived so long without pizza……extra cheese and pepperoni is my favorite .
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I thought maybe I was confused but that is not case-
Why the Tomato Was Feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years
Again, depends on what you consider civilized society.
Apparently it’s Britain. Tomatoes were eaten in Italy in the 1500s. And of course in the new world for centuries before that.
I could eat pizza everyday. 😊
“no tomatoes, of course”.
Tomatoes were a “New World” vegetable, so not found at Pompeii.
“I never even heard of pizza until the 1950s.”
For me, growing up in a small farm town, I never heard of it until the ‘60s. I hated it at first; it just seemed like a weird mish-mosh of stuff.
Now it’s one of my faves.
Good to know.
“I think that number is a little low”
Definitely. I’d double that number.
“The Spot” is owned by Pepe’s now. It changed decades ago.
It reminded me of growing up in rural Michigan and hearing about this exotic food called TACOS on the partridge family.
“Up until the late 1800s in cooler climates, tomatoes were solely grown for ornamental purposes in gardens rather than for eating. Smith continues:”
That sounds like Britain.
Again, I may have overstated it but w/o ac and ice the majority of civilization in 1500 lived in cooler climates.
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