For the last six years, I’ve eaten pizza every single day. Sometimes it might just be a slice, but most days I will get through a whole one. My favourite is a classic American deep-pan pepperoni. I also love tomato and cheese on a nice thick crust, so a plain margherita will never go amiss.
Ohhhhkay…..
My wife is very supportive and often brings slices home. Last year, I spent 16 days in Italy exploring Rome, Naples and the Amalfi coast with her and our daughter. I ate pizza there, too, of course.
Well, yes, obviously. Top tip from the home of pizza – you don’t use water buffalo mozzarella, use the “fake” cow milk one. It melts better. You do use the water buffalo on a saltimbocca though (an extremely fine one to be had in the church square in the middle of Pozzuoli).
But:
I think people find it hard to understand why I do it, and just how much I love pizza – but it’s as simple as that. I’ll continue my streak as long as I’m still excited about pizza, and I’m happy to enjoy my delicious journey, one bite at a time.
You know, man’s a little weird. Not knife slashingly weird, but he is a bit weird.
Just over a year ago, a pizza box company saw my Instagram and asked if I’d be interested in working for them. I left my job to sell boxes to pizza stores full-time. It’s the perfect job for me, as I can travel and try pizzas from all over the country. This spring, I had pizza in 10 different US states. I also went to Las Vegas for a pizza convention. My favourite crust is the thick, crispy and chewy style from New Haven, Connecticut. The city has the best pizza I’ve ever tried. I love eating at a place called Sally’s Apizza, which has been open since 1938. The sauce is like nothing I’ve ever had, and the coal-fired oven puts the perfect char on the crust.
But isn’t that glorious? And no, I am not making a joke nor sneering. I think it is both glorious and gorgeous. We live in a society free enough, rich enough (to a great extent, the same thing) that the slightly weird squiggle shaped peg of a guy is able to find exactly that right slightly weird wiggle shaped hole into which he fits.
Sure, sure, Instagram, pizzas, cardboard boxes, all very trivial – and yet a guy is able to make his living doing what he loves. We should have more of this capitalism and markets so more of us can do that, right?
Good for him.
All though I’m not too sure all that pizza is.
Can’t tell from the picture whether or not he tips 19 stone…
Totally agree. More power to this chap’s elbow.
Spud, you won’t be surprised to hear, is an expert on pizzas. During the lockdown, dominoes pizza reduced the number of toppings they offered. This, said spud, proved his theory that pizza companies didn’t need to offer the great variety of toppings they usually did. After all most of what was on offer, spud didn’t like and never ordered so he didn’t see why anyone else should.
Everybody is good at something.
Unfortunately, the education system in the UK is such that they can’t be arsed to find out what that something is and have decided what makes ‘a good education’ and it is a one size fits all model.
Yes, good for him. We are shaping a world where more people can find a niche.
But! Next week in The Guardian: “Why pizza is cultural appropriation/causing global warming/bad for your health/heteronormative/whatever”
No, everyone less less bad at something……
“Everybody is good at something.”
Spud’s existence refutes your claim…
Marvellous. And, judging by the shape of his face, he’s not overweight.
When eccentricity becomes obsessive self-indulgence it’s perhaps less admirable. The fact that he describes his wife as “supportive” is a clue that they recognise that there’s something not right with his head (apart from the beard).
@Andrew C
It’s noticeable that virtually all of the regular pizza companies have dropped seafood toppings. So no more prawn, anchovy and olive pizzas for me.
I’m sure I’ve told this story before but… Taking a Brooklyn lass from a Sicilian-American family to the Pizza Express off of Oxford Street to catch the jazz. She ordered from the menu & the waitress placed a pizza in front of her would just about have covered a side plate. “Gee that’s cute! Wadyaknow, they give you a trier to see if you like it. Sure Honey, I’ll have one of those but heavier on the anchovies”
“I was disappointed by the leaning tower of pizza – it was just a building.”
His pizza fetish is a bit excessive but props for getting paid for his hobby. I average 1 pizza a week normally but for various reasons I had 4 this past week!
Like him I was also very fortunate to get paid doing something I mostly loved.
I’m so old I can remember when Americans referred to Pizza Pie.
But then people used to say Avocado Pear and Koala Bear. And The Ukraine and The Lebanon.
Mr Womby @ 9.18. I had not noticed that but just having a shufty, you’re right regarding Domino’s and Pizza Hut.
I know some Domino’s stores (in ‘enriched’ areas) stopped pork toppings a few years ago, and maybe it’s part of the ‘let’s quietly make everything halal (or kosher if you prefer) before anyone notices’ agenda.
Next week in The Guardian: “Why pizza is cultural appropriation/causing global warming/bad for your health/heteronormative/whatever”
But I’m assured by those who should know that the pizza as we know it is a New York thing. And indeed there is a sort of proto-pizza common to cuisines along the north Med coast. You can buy it in Greek & Turkish bakers in London. Dough base with cheese & various added bits & pieces. Usually oblong & made in an individual portion size. To NuYawk is owed the size, circularity & possibly tomato paste. (But definitely not pineapple!)
If the Graun was to eschew American culture it’d have no culture at all.
Dominos & Pizza Hut sell pizza do they? Who knew?
Surely this can’t be allowed? Man finds niche, pays his own way, gets on in the world. Where are the regulations?
Health and safety – just think of the cost to the NHS (even though he’s American)
Diversity – was there no black trans lesbian fattie to do the work?
“I think people find it hard to understand why I do it”…
and that’s also part of the beauty of a free society instead of a controlled one – nobody else needs to understand so if they object they can be forcibly invited to mind their own fuckin’ business.
@Theophrastus (2066) –
Spud is wonderful as a “Bad Example”. If Spud does x, we must do anti-x. If Spud believes y, then the truth is somewhere close to anti-y.
Like a compass that always points South.
‘“Everybody is good at something.”
Spud’s existence refutes your claim…’
Nah, Spud is good at being the dimmest economist in the Western Hemisphere.
I like thin crust pizza and for me there is not much more abominable than a Chicago deep dish pizza.
Fun fact – a lot of my work is in company acquisitions and disposals and a Domino’s franchise is a licence to print money. The prices to buy a prime location are pretty high.
He can have all the pizza he likes, as long as he doesn’t put pineapple on it .
As for a shortage of toppings, “Chi si accontenta, gode”. Or make your own, you’ll find they’re way better than the mass-produced stuff.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/dec/31/dvdreviews1
Twenty years ago the guardian was predictably all-in for this infamous hit piece on McDonald’s although I am unaware whether they reported the subsequent confession by the Michael Moore wannabe filmmaker that he had been an alcoholic for 30 years.
A NYT review actually included the following:-
There was some weight gain — 18 pounds by the end of the experiment — and also mood swings, loss of sex drive and nearly catastrophic liver damage. His general practitioner, Daryl Isaacs, likens Mr. Spurlock’s all-Mac diet to the terminal alcoholic binge undertaken by Nicolas Cage’s character in ”Leaving Las Vegas” and worries that his patient may succumb to liver failure before the 30 days are up.
Maybe his near catastrophic liver damage was largely due to the usual causation.
Returning to the guardian article I suspect if the likeable Mr Wildes had restricted himself to a single US-based fast food chain their tone would have been a good deal less understanding. I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t have an anti-American axe to grind.
I know that I’ve probably mentioned this before but, a couple of years ago I challenged myself to swim 500 miles in a year. I tended to have a craving for pizza when I got home from the gym after swimming four or five kilometres in the morning and so was having pizza nearly every day. I completed the challenge half way through October. Although I’m in my sixties I ended up looking totally ripped and lost enough weight that my T2 diabetes went into remission.
I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t have an anti- Republican–American axe to grind.
The Graun”s virtually the Occasionaly-Caught Squad house magazine.
John,
Many moons ago, back in the 80s, I worked for six months in Sydney. My circumsatnces were such that I had to eat out and had damn all money. Adopted an evening meal regime that consisted of McDs six nights a week and a cheap chinese vegie takeaway on the seventh. At the end I had lost a little weight but was deemed incredibly healthy when I had a medcial checkup on returning home.
Brilliant by Stonyground
@Andrew C, @Peter Macfarlane: Murphy’s new cognomen is Pineapple. When he’s not being a Dribbling Advocate that is.
@BraveFart I had the best pizza of my life on the island of Naxos. The crust was like matzoh and well-browned on the underside. Thick crust is just focaccia by a different name, when you’re short of funds or you want to fill your boots. Oh for the whinge of a duff.
I had some pizza for lunch: mushroom and truffle on sourdough from Waitrose. Pretty good but it takes us two meals to finish one.
there is a sort of proto-pizza common to cuisines along the north Med coast
There’s been a recent discovery at Pompeii of a mural depicting what looks very much like a pizza. No tomatoes or peppers, of course.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66031341
Dunno if it’s true, but I’ve been told pizza was food for prisoners as it fitted through the bars.
It’s really just posh Italian cheese on toast!
Pineapple topping is anathema
And away from the north Med coast:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammekueche
There’s been a recent discovery at Pompeii of a mural depicting what looks very much like a pizza.
Not at all surprising. Cuisines are the materials you have & the methods you have to prepare them. Neither have changed much over the past couple thousand years, so why not?
And Earl of Sandwich didn’t invent the effin sandwich. People had been putting stuff on hunks of bread since bread was first invented 3-4k years back or whatever. And no-one in all that time thought of sticking another hunk on the top? I don’t buy Marco Polo bringing noodles from China to Italy either. Nobody ever thought of boiling dough instead of baking it before? Or making thin shapes of it so it cooks quicker?
Sandwich-pioneer or not, if I had the means I’d be a notorious rake just like the Earl: the ruin of every farmer’s daughter within a day’s horse ride.
You’ve all criticised pineapple on pizza so much that I’m curious.
I’ll have to try it one of these days!!
Ed P said:
“It’s really just posh Italian cheese on toast!”
Known as Italian Rarebit (pronounced ‘rabbit’) in this house.
In Flanders, it’s common to encounter a dish called Le Welsh, which is Welsh Rarebit made properly (with beer added to the cheese). I imagine they picked it up from Tommies in WWI.