
The day I ordered pizza that 'doesn't exist' - inm
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33542392
======
cperciva
I witnessed something similar a few years ago at a conference in Ottawa. We
had gathered at a local pub, and a Parisian friend asked for a hamburger
"cooked rare". The waitress responded "I don't think we can do that", which
elicited the obvious reply "of course you can, just take it off the grill
sooner".

At this point we stepped in to explain that it was a matter of food safety
laws, and the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it
was well cooked... and that, contrary to stereotypes about North American
cuisine, we all understood that good quality meat shouldn't be ruined by
overcooking.

He agreed to have a legal hamburger, but only on the condition that it was
overcooked as little as possible.

~~~
lucozade
I witnessed the opposite in a restaurant in Switzerland. A friend ordered a
steak but asked for it well done. The waitress asked if he was sure. He said
yes.

A couple of minutes later the French chef came out and remonstrated with my
friend for about 10 mins. The essence of the conversation (neither spoke the
other's language and the rest of us translating probably wasn't helping much)
was whether it ought to be a crime to cook well done steak versus how far the
human rights act applied to restaurant choices.

In the end we negotiated an agreement whereby the trainee would cook it and
the chef wouldn't watch.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Similar. Utah. BBQ place. Woman orders her bison well done.

The cook owner comes out, says he will not do that, she will have dust in her
plate, not meat. Bison is just too dry. She insists. He says no. This goes
back and forth just a bit, then he offers to cook her something else well
done.

IIRC, she accepted that offer. I really respected him for that (and agreed):
Sometimes the customer is completely wrong and it is better for the owner for
the customer to either change their mind or leave.

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bshimmin
I lived in Bologna for a couple of years. The pizza there is so damn good I
think you really should just be grateful and accept whatever they give you.
Once you start believing that you can have a pizza rossa with mozzarella, it's
a slippery slope until you end up with a "deep-pan" pizza with chicken on it.

(As another commenter says, this whole situation seems utterly improbable.
Pizzaioli/e are generally friendly and happy to make whatever you want, within
reason, and will just gently rib you if you order something silly, especially
if you're a foreigner. At least, that has always been my experience, anyway.)

~~~
ATsch
this is far from being a rare thing. I have had this happen to me at a local
Italian restaurant, where I ordered a Pizza Vegetaria with parma ham. The chef
outright refused to make it, but after a while agreed to make a pizza with
tomato, Mozarella, ham and vegetables

~~~
goodcanadian
Well, think about it. People would consider it very strange to order a
vegetarian pizza with ham in English, too.

~~~
waspleg
I've ordered vegetarian with bacon or bacon and pepperoni or just pepperoni.
Why? Because A.) It's almost always cheaper than adding half a dozen
vegetables to some other pizza B.) It's also faster to order with less risk of
someone getting the order wrong on.

~~~
waxjar
Reason A is a good reason to refuse to make your order.

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andrea_s
I can't quite imagine anyone (Italian pizzaiolo or otherwise) getting so
worked up over a pizza order. I think the situation described in the piece was
either much friendlier than the author makes it out to be, or a fantasy that
nicely plugs in the eat-pray-love-style "Italians are all about food and
simple life and being passionate about everything while gesticulating" memes.

~~~
dewiz
you clearly never met passionate Italians, food is an important part of the
tradition, even more about pizza which is ruined in so many ways around the
world :-)

~~~
andrea_s
I think I might have met a few, as I am Italian myself :-)

To be honest the story would be much more believable if the writer weren't a
foreigner - that kind of reaction from the shop owner is usually reserved for
much stronger violations of the "pizza code" (pineapple pizza being the go-to
example!)

~~~
roghummal
What's wrong with pineapple on a pizza?

~~~
ai_ja_nai
Pizza in Italy is not a sweet dish. Fruits on it are completely inappropriate,
as with pasta.

The only exception is the chocolate, but it's allowed in stuffed pizza only.

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StavrosK
Maybe it's a matter of language? You can't have a marinara WITH mozzarella,
because the marinara doesn't have mozzarella, but you can have a marinara PLUS
mozzarella, because that's now not a marinara.

~~~
adrusi
_Because last week I made the mistake of asking her for a marinara - which is
a simple tomato and garlic pizza - with the addition of mozzarella._

No, unless this paraphrasing misrepresents the original wording, that's not
the issue.

Far more likely is the "Black coffee with milk" suggestion at the end of the
article.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't see how that's different. Take black coffee, add milk, that's what I
want.

~~~
lucozade
I interpreted it not as her saying that she wouldn't make the pizza he wanted.
She did. She was saying that you can't have a pizza marinara with mozzarella
because it's a contradiction. Like black coffee with milk.

You can of course add milk but then it's a white coffee. As you can add
mozzarella but then it's a margherita.

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noonespecial
I want a cheeseburger without any cheese.

Umm cheeseburgers have cheese on them... Do you mean a hamburger?

But it Italy.

~~~
white-flame
I think the one in the article was even more appropriate, as it's about adding
something that the original label explicitly excludes:

"I'd been asking for the equivalent of a black coffee with milk. "

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Animats
This is an advantage of meat that's been radiation-sterilized. You can eat it
raw. Wegman's offers irradiated burger patties.[1]

[1] [http://www.wegmans.com/blog/2010/07/irradiated-ground-
beef/](http://www.wegmans.com/blog/2010/07/irradiated-ground-beef/)

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CurtMonash
My usual way of ordering pizza in the US is to as for a Margherita or Quattro
Formaggio or whatever, "but with a couple of toppings". That works.

In the place discussed in the article, it would probably be better to phrase
that as "a pizza that is like a Margherita, except that it has an additional
ingredient".

That said -- a pizza that is altered by adding an extra topping is easier to
conceptualize than a cheeseless pizza that is altered by adding cheese. So I
can somewhat understand the pizza-maker's distress. :)

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nly
Is take-away Pizza considered 'fast food' in Italy?

~~~
aruggirello
Mostly. On top of that, you actually have two variants: traditional, round
pizza (which comes in common take-away square boxes, and _may or may not_ be
pre-cut into slices for convenience), and smaller, square-shaped sliced pizza
("pizza al taglio"). The latter is always considered fast food.

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ai_ja_nai
It's also a matter of standards: you can't order a dish and make modifications
that perturbate the nature of that (like, milk in black coffe or cheeseburger
without cheese). Margherita with garlic is equally absurd as marinara with
mozzarella.

The only way out from this catch22 would be to order a pizza with tomato,
mozzarella and garlic, explicitly omitting any "base template" from which to
start

~~~
_ak
> Margherita with garlic is equally absurd as marinara with mozzarella.

Why? What are the specific definitions or margherita and marinara that don't
allow these modifications? Without undisputed definitions, this is just
irrational dogma. Black coffee by definition excludes milk, cheeseburgers by
definition include cheese, but for margherita and marinara, this is not
obvious at all.

~~~
ai_ja_nai
There are 2 problems: First, Margherita is tomato and mozzarella, with
optional basil garnishment. Period. It's the recipe as it is and as it has
always been; if you add an ingredient that heavily belongs to another recipe,
you are profoundly altering the original spirit of the first. Second, garlic
is not considered good with mozzarella. As an Italian, I find it really unfit
due to the cultural taste I'm accustomed to.

A foreigner ordering margherita with garlic is violating our sense of taste
and altering a template that doesn't allow such distorsions.

As a counter example, you can add without problems an egg on a margherita; it
becomes a "Bismark pizza", but it's fine since the egg plays well with tomato
and mozzarella. Any modification that is an enhancement, rather than a
distorsion, is alway welcomed.

~~~
waspleg
I guess I don't understand the pedantry. To me, everyone has different tastes
and is it really hurting you to make what they want? I mean I cook garlic with
mozzarella (and usually 4 or so other Italian cheesed blended together) all
the time. I'm an American, I think they go well together, the egg sounds
repugnant to me, but if you like it, it's not like _I_ am the one eating it. I
can understand a cultural history aspect of preservation but leave that to
some society dedicated to racial pizza purity not the every day.

TL;DR - Who cares?

~~~
alextgordon
To cook something you have to imagine eating it, you have to smell it. I can
fully understand not wanting to cook a dish that is repellent.

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vacri
Here in Australia, 'marinara' means some kind of seafood is on the pizza,
usually shrimp. 'Marinara without the seafood' here would be like 'pizza rossa
with cheese' in the article - it changes the underlying definition of the
pizza.

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gaius
Probably she meant it "doesn't exist" as in there's no button on the till for
it.

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ap3
It's like a "quesadilla sin queso"

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stefantalpalaru
I'll give you two explanations from the discussion of this article in the
Italian subreddit:

\- asking for marinara with mozzarella is like asking for a vegetarian dish
with some meat on the top - it's against the very principle of a pizza with
poor ingredients that were available on a ship (marinara = marine, a sailor's
pizza)

\- Italian pizzerias usually have huge menus with dozens of combinations and
there's really no need to ask for custom ingredients, but for that subset of
places that do allow that, mozzarella is too expensive to be put in the
category of "extra ingredient for half a euro", so a client asking for a
marinara base instead of the more expensive margherita base (that already has
the cheese), might be looking for a loophole to pay less.

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timvp
Great article! Seems like some traditions/traditional things are making people
stupid and/or ignorant haha.

~~~
ai_ja_nai
Enjoy your McDonald sandwich

