DailyDirt: Tips For Optimal Pizza Eating
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
There are a lot of different kinds of pizza, and it’s a food that is often mentioned here on Techdirt — often as the example of how giving away free samples can drive greater business. But if you just like to eat pizza, and don’t care about any other aspects of the pizza business (or any other business), here are just a few tips for you.
- According to one pizza box aficionado, the best box design for holding a pizza comes from India. The VENTiT pizza box allows steam from a hot pizza to escape without exposing the pizza via big holes in the box and keeps the pizza warm longer. [url]
- If you don’t like cold pizza, you should really re-heat your leftover pizza in a skillet. The pizza crust will stay crispy this way, so just forget about using a microwave or toaster oven. [url]
- Don’t eat a pizza with a fork and knife in New York City, especially if you’re a politician like Mayor Bill de Blasio. The proper way for New Yorkers: “You grab it, you fold it, you eat it, and you walk.” (Otherwise, you’re a tourist.) [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: bill de blasio, cooking, etiquette, food, pizza, pizza box design, re-heating, utensils
Comments on “DailyDirt: Tips For Optimal Pizza Eating”
One question...
WHO EATS PIZZA WITH SILVERWEAR?!
That stuff’s MEANT to be held by your hands, maybe a napkin, and eaten.
Sheesh! Even people from the Mid-West know that!
Re: One question...
That’s what I was wondering. I live on the west coast, and I’ve been all over the country and a handful of places outside it, and nowhere, ever, have I seen people eating pizza except by picking it up with their hands.
Re: One question...
Who eats pizza with silverware? Italians
Re: One question...
Exceptionally messy pizzas and unstable pizzas are the only time I’ve had them that way, well that and orthodontic surgery recovery. I could chew it fine but not bite it off. But yeah it is very much an exception rather than the rule.
Re: One question...
Another question…who eats pizza in India? Unless, of course, it’s veggie pizza with fake cheese.
Re: One question...
Who gives a shit how anyone eats anything … sheesh
who in their right mind would use a fork and knife on pizza? such a waste of time…
Polite and eager for work:
Lived on both coasts and in the middle. Moved interstate 18 times, though there were a few repeats. About 40 or so years of that was in the Hospitality business with a strong side on food service and the kitchen. I observed folks, sometimes regionally (though today I would not wish to risk a senior moment with regard to where those were) using utensils on pizza and struggled to maintain a sense of decorum when witnessed.
I feel confident that those locations were not on either coast, but were in the middle, someplace(s). Interestingly, I found some other things common in those middle places, not prominent on either coast. The first thing I noticed is manners. Even in cities, manners were more prominent in the middle than on the coasts. The second thing noticed was a work ethic. Folks in the middle understood work. Had some trouble with that issue on both coasts.
The utensils on pizza thing probably comes from the manners bit, taken a bit far, though one could argue that the work ethic works in too, as it is a lot harder to eat a pizza with even the Bestest(TM) utensils, than by hand. And Yes! Folding is the way to go. One of my requirements for a good pizza is that when I pick up the slice and fold it, it should not sag at the other end (regardless of pizza circumference and/or topping selection). This is possible with many different kinds of dough, but it (the dough) must be treated properly, both before and during the baking process to achieve such a result.
On the other hand, Chicago style deep dish is an argument for experimentation gone too far! ๐
Ok If there is going to be a list about Pizza Boxes Hell Pizza cannot be left off…..
As their box folds into a coffin for “your remains” those few slices not eaten. Basically as the pic will not display you punch and pop out your pizza box to form a coffin.
http://craphound.com/images/hellpizzacoffin.jpg
.
or more recently “a world-first 3D zombie shooter on a pizza box”
Hell pizza rocks ever since I met the owners I’ve been a super fan. Hell they deliver the pizza’s via hearsts. They had one of the first ever chose your own adventure Youtube video’s as you try to deliver pizza during a Zombie attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p1yBlV7Ges
They created Pizza Roulette for College students. Basically they put Ubers super ho… Very Hot sauce on one and only one slice of pizza. So one unlucky college student would find themselves sweating to no end… lol
http://www.bestadsontv.com/files/print/2012/Mar/43324_BAR6088%20-%20Pizza_Roulette_Poster_A1_LR_Page_1.jpg
They jumped on the opportunity to rent the neighboring billboard to a PETA billboard winning them many awards
http://static.holloway.co.nz/sa/hell-pizza-poster.jpg
and seriously this barely scratches the surface… Like to join their loyalty club you must sell your soul… as the website asks when was the last time did anything for you like order a pizza get you laid or keep you out of trouble…. just saying
So, allowing steam to escape from the box via greater “heat transfer” keeps the pizza warmer longer. How is this any different from saying that collecting all of your private communications protects your privacy?
Re: Re:
Perhaps it is a “Jedi truth”. It keeps it warm instead of hot.
The Authenticity of Pizza
Strictly authentic pizza is a dish of the very poor: bread dough, olive oil, tomato paste, and garlic, with all but the first being dispensable if finances do not permit. I believe you will find a description in Ann Cornelison’s _Women of the Shadows: A Study of the Wives and Mothers of Southern Italy_ (1976). Of course, to make it palatable to Americans, a good deal of meat, cheese, and fresh vegetables had to be added, and of course the traditional method of eating it broke down. Pizza as we know it was invented in America. Deep-dish pizza is simply an extreme case.
That is a common characteristic when various kinds of cuisine are converted for American consumption. one of the few exceptions I can think of is Tibetan cooking, where they have to take some butter out, to reflect the fact that the diners are not eating at an altitude of 15,000 feet. Perhaps similar considerations would apply if someone were to open an Eskimo restaurant.
A couple of years ago, the Italian state prosecutors managed to get a wiretap of one of Silvio Berlusconi’s call-girls talking to her girlfriend about one of Berlusconi’s orgies, and they published the tape. An excerpt was subsequently reprinted in Harpers magazine (April, 2011). In the recording, the call girl’s girlfriend wanted to know what the celebrants had had for dinner, and the call-girl responded: “Let’s say the emphasis was not exactly on food. The table was set nicely, but the food was very simple– well prepared, though. A caprese antipasto, a pasta, a good risotto, grilled chicken, a little [eggplant] Parmigiana,” and she went on to complain about the hopeless banality of Berlusconi’s tastes, that surely he could find something more interesting to eat than _that_. This is what _authentic_ Italian cooking looks like.
Interestingly, in Tomasi de Lampedusa’s _The Leopard_, the Italian _Gone With the Wind_, the Sicilian Prince of Salinas, a thinly disguised version of Lampedusa’s grandfather in the year 1860 at the time of the Risorgmento, does not carve a bird or a roast at table– he dishes out the minestrone soup. The soup is considered to be the dish of authenticity, which requires the hand of the paterfamilias.
I tracked down a couple of items in Berlusconi’s dinner which I did not know about, and I think it works out to someone like George Wallace or Strom Thurmond eating a traditional southern dinner consisting of fried chicken, and the usual fixings, viz: cole slaw, mashed potatoes, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. Oh, and peach pie for desert. This is presumably the Italian equivalent. The whole idea is to stretch out a small quantity of chicken with a multitude of vegetable preparations of wildly varying taste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risotto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmigiana
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprese_(gastronomia)
I also eat chocolate bars with a knife and fork.
The best way to reheat pizza and fries and just about anything else is on a stone in the oven. With pizza and fries, you can’t tell they are just warmed up.
Hah. Try pizzas in S?o Paulo and you won’t ever want to eat a pizza elsewhere in your life ๐