Pizza Highlights of 2012: A Retrospective

pizza party

I don’t think that 2012 was ever deemed the official year of the pizza, but it certainly did its best to dominate the news cycle. I’m bias, but I don’t think there was another food (except Twinkies maybe) that made as many headlines. I covered a majority of those standout stories right here on Pizza Walk With Me so I thought it would be a great time to look back and remember the unofficial year of the pizza. 

What a peculiar list. From the largest pizza ever created to a museum dedicated to pizza paraphernalia, pizza hit the big time. I have no doubt that in 2013 we’ll see a number of pizza innovations. Whether that’s new technology, techniques, or records. The pizza community is bubbling with excitement and is poised to grow faster than dough injected with yeast and set to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. To 2013: The Year of the Pizza!

World Record Alert: World's Largest Pizza Record Returns to Italy

On December 14, 2012, the Italians did what they do best: make pizza. Actually, made a very large pizza. The largest pizza to ever exist in the universe (as far as scientist can tell). The Italian people came together to create a 130 foot wide margherita pizza made from 19,800 pounds of flour, 8,800 pounds of tomato sauce, and 19,800 pounds of mozzarella. A delicious and amazing feat!

What is the most stunning about this is that the Italian people had to reclaim this record. For the last 22 years a grocery store in South Africa owned the title with a 122 foot wide pizza they built. For what reason? Probably to keep lions at bay. 

Five chefs came together to build the newest pizza and put to shame every other country on the map. They decided to name the pizza “Ottavia” to “symbolise the hope of a great economic and cultural revival,” Dovilio Nardi, one of the chefs, said. 

Nardi is on the right path. A pizza can symbolize many things, but its most potent and important meaning is that of coming together as one and destroying hardships (and pizza). When the going gets tough, the tough order a pizza. What spinach is to Popeye, pizza is to every human. A single slice can rejuvenate your faith in reality and give you the power to innovate and create. Every ounce of mozzarella and flour your body digest is a distilled chemical reaction that fuels your future. 

There’s some more photos and quotes at the Daily Mail if you can’t get enough of this saga. Congrats to all involved and here’s hoping to a 2013 full of pizza. 

Pizza Calculator from Ledo's Pizza

I don’t like Ledo’s pizza. It happens. For there to be great pizza, there has to be terrible pizza. It’s just the way the pizza world works. I think Ledo’s understands that pizza isn’t quite their strength so they’ve augmented their offerings with a “pizza calculator.”

You enter the number of pizza partiers and it’ll tell you an estimate of how many pizzas to order. Then multiply that by two or three for a true pizza party. 

Pizza Review: Lucci's Pizza in Squirrel Hill

Those lines. This pizza was sliced and diced with authority. Notice how the pizza doesn’t even try to bond back together like a symbiote or the Iron Giant. That’s a sign of a crispy, flaky crust that is waiting for you to ravage. It’s bold enough to stand on its own. “We don’t need those dirty other slices, we’re independent.” This Lucci’s pizza is thin, but capable. Like a lean cross country runner or a pole vaulter. Deceptive, yet satisfying. Wait, what do you mean you’ve never had Lucci’s Pizza? Oh, that’s right. It’s within a pizza’s throw of two very famous pizza shops that shine brighter than a hundred blessed pizzas.

Lucci’s stands very close to Mineo’s and Aiello’s which some may consider the finest in Pittsburgh. Which is fine, because Lucci’s offers a very different pie. Instead of an unhealthy  amount of cheese and grease, Lucci’s delivers a humble pie that believes in moderation. If this was an Indiana Jone’s situation, Doctor Jones would choose this pizza, the pizza of a carpenter. 

That might be the best way to describe Lucci’s Pizza. It’s comfortable. It’s nothing extravagant. It’s exactly how you would imagine a pizza would be. In a TV Script, when there’s a need for a pizza, the prop team would get a pizza from Lucci’s. It’s the pizza that would show up in clipart and that’s okay. It’s standard. 

The one thing that kind of sticks out is how crispy and crunchy the crust is. When you bite into the handle of the pizza it splinters into a thousand tiny bits of crust. It’s a surprise considering how calm and collected the rest of the pizza is. 

But the taste, flavor, and texture are exactly how you would imagine it to be. The cheese can land a bit on the heavy side, but the total package is nothing to flinch at. And when you put this pizza next to the somewhat absurd Mineo’s and Aiello’s, it works. It seems different when everything nearby is so over the top. 

Three out of five pizzas. 

PIZZA INTERVIEW: pppizza's Jenn Frank

The other day my pizza pal Justin was like “Hey, someone outside of Pittsburgh tweeted about pppizza. You should check it out.” I’m always sniffing out other pizza enthusiasts so I can pick their brain (which is hopefully made of pizza). After pulling back the pizza veil, I was stunned to find out it was none other than Jenn Frank! How incredibly exciting. 

In the following interview we discuss pizza in culture, video games, favorite pizza places, pizza therapy, and the eventual future of pizza. It’s an exciting trip and I hope you enjoy.

PizzaWalkWithMe (PWWM): Pizza! Why do you think pizza has wedged itself directly into the center of American culture?

Jenn: I actually have a very serious answer, and it pertains to this very American thing called “Odyssey Years.” Rather than entirely giving up on “childish things” we are, for the first time ever, permitting ourselves to defend our superficially-puerile loves (like pizza, or maybe other trashy “disposable” things like reality television) with very big, grown-up, and sometimes academically viable reasons. A big part of this is nostalgia: maybe you were really into Ninja Turtles, or maybe your hometown baseball team went out for pizza after games. I’m 30 now, so I remember transitioning from Reagan to Bush, Sr. The first war I remember is the Gulf War. My generation had a childhood colored by unrest, uncertainty, and a resounding, nameless malaise, which is a pretty far cry from the “Me generation” or “Generation X” preceding it. We inherited all these awful things, and we didn’t know how we’d caused them, kind of akin to growing up in a broken home. But then the U.S. enjoyed a boom of economic and technological hope and prosperity, and pizza became this cheap, frivolous, “oh, screw it” thing your family did on movie night. And then the 2000s happened, and all these university-educated people are leaving college for a hopelessly vacuous job market, and suddenly chain pizza becomes this economic “baby, we’re splurging tonight!” thing. And when you’re eating instant ramen every night, and then one night a month you’re ordering a pizza instead, that pizza really comforts you: “Hello, old friend.”

I think our love of pizza also speaks to a broader desire for authenticity and sincerity, and current popular culture is totally bereft of those qualities. Meanwhile, chain pizza places are like, “Guys, we finally figured out how to get a hot dog into your pizza crust,” and there is zero pretense that a pizza can be remotely healthful or beneficial.

It’s very subversive, actually. We grew up during a self-improvement fad, fitness fads, diet fads, all of which are culturally very hostile—it’s amazing that we’ve been able to manufacture and market self-loathing as adroitly as we have. So choosing to eat a pizza is this “oh, screw it” in a different way, too: you’re rejecting other people’s priorities when you order a pizza. It’s a political act, really. So pizza has embedded itself into American culture in all these ways. Its trajectory probably mirrors that of the hamburger’s, actually, except a pizza is meant to be shared, and if you are eating a pizza all by yourself, that’s, like, ultra subversive.

PWWM: What do you think about the regional attachment to pizza? A region’s love of their own pizza almost goes beyond patriotic.

Jenn: I’m going to tell you something pretty sacrilegious now: I am really into hot dogs. For my dollar, Chicago does the hot dog right. I am pretty into Ohio’s “Stadium mustard,” though, and I think New Orleans’ Lucky Dog is the best hot dog you can buy on the street. But I don’t really compare and contrast hot dogs because Chicago already has the best ones, even better than Nathan’s in New York. When you bite into a hot dog, you’re looking for a palpable edamame snap that—I’m sorry, let me regroup. Most of my readers already know I am a proud Chicagoan; as such, I’m always reluctant to admit that Chicago-style pizza is my least favorite of all pizzas. Of course I’m glad that Chicago has its own internationally-recognizable pizza identity. We’ve earned it! I just wish it weren’t a disgusting type of pizza, that’s all. And this basically expresses my attitudes regarding foreign policy: I’m proud of this identity, in a way, I’m just sorry it’s so disgusting. But if anyone were to ever tell me “Chicago’s pizza is disgusting,” I’d probably get really worked up, really angry. That’s the thing: we worked hard to be this gross! Our pizza has a story, a legacy! You have to respect it!

PWWM: What is your go-to pizza place?

Jenn: It varies. In San Francisco I always lazily picked “Extreme Pizza” just because, at the time, their website would take me to an opening flash montage with people snowboarding or skydiving, making the franchise too outrageous to not order from. In Chicago I have a couple favorites. I’m a longtime fan of O-Tomato, which offers really healthy foods and scrupulously ungreasy pizza (their BBQ Chicken pizza uses gouda). A close friend of mine recommended Peaquod’s, but that friend is also dead, so visit at your discretion. I live right by Coalfire and recommend it. One popular new pizza joint is Roots, but it’s too expensive to take a friend there unless you’re paying for her (AKA me). If you’re recording a podcast with friends you go to Piece. Then again, if you’re all the way over in Indiana, you hit up Pizza King, which by the way is where I played my first pinball machine.

PWWM: I agree with your Chicago pizza assessment. For me, it’s too much like eating cake and takes the fun out of ordering a large pie for yourself and impressing your friends by eating the whole thing in just one sitting. The thickness is a bit outlandish, like Chicago was so desperate to get into the pizza game they went the complete opposite route to make a name for themselves.

Jenn: Yeah, exactly. If “audaciousness,” or audacity or whatever, is a quality we seek in food—and I love a great gimmick, okay, so I’m not being ironic, I’m not saying turduckens aren’t splendid—Chicago-style pizza has it in spades. It is, if nothing else, an audacious idea. So I’m torn between being, like, super proud, and being very “who thought this was a good idea?”

PWWM:My brother lives in Chicago and has a habit of forcing me into a variety of pizza places when we visit. I’ve been to Peaquod’s and lived to tell the tale and Piece is one of my favorites.

Jenn: It seems like you’re based on the East Coast (?) so your distaste for Chicago-style pizza is forgiven, but I’m really glad you still have reasons to stop by the Midwest. Which is good because, if you’re a foodie, and particularly a foodie living on shoestrings, yes, we really do have the best food. That is something I’m not apologetic about. I mean, our Thai is only so-so, but listen, we have Ethiopian food. I am really into containing foodstuffs with some type of “bread handle,” say, pita or naan, and Ethiopian food uses this really amazing, porous flatbread I love, called Injera. It is fantastic.

Kirby Pizza

PWWM: One thing you mentioned was your first pinball machine experience was at a pizza place. I remember begging my grandma to take me to Pizza Hut not for the pizza, but because they always had a rotating cast of arcade cabinents. Ninja Turtles and Street Fighter II were staples for some time until the NeoGeo cabinets starting taking over their turf. Who could say no to a machine stuffed with multiple games? A lot of my early pizza memories are closely associated with video games in someway. Why do you think video games and pizza go so well together?

Jenn: This is a pretty interesting aside, yeah. Part of it has to be form and function. Gamers are notoriously into “handhelds,” and pizza and Lean Pockets are just two more types of handhelds, and really just fascinating technologies overall.

PWWM: What is your relationship with pizza and what made you want to start your pizza blog?

Jenn: I eat pizza when I am lazy or depressed—sometimes when I am celebrating something, too, but mostly those other times. I started my pizza blog because I am in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Since I am eating an awful lot of pizza right now, I thought talking endlessly about pizza might be a better use of all my nervous energies. What I’m discovering, though, is that we have something of a “tribe past” with pizza, and if I am really looking to forge a “human connection” with strangers, maybe talking about pizza is better shorthand than talking about our feelings outright.

PWWM: The ubiquity of “pizza parties” really speaks to your “tribe past” theory. Pizza is a common thread throughout get togethers, why do you think pizza cornered the market on that? Why haven’t any other foods come close? I suppose you can argue that the existence of “sliders” is just the burger industry trying to steal ground from pizza, but not very successfully.

Jenn: So, yeah. Pizza is physically a thing a group of people gather around. Like, we gather and literally break bread together.

I think a lot of food, really delicious food, does that for us. On the whole I’d say “family-style” Italian food has that market cornered, but dim sum, tapas, potlucks, and even Ethiopian food, they’re all excuses to take a group of people out and unite over something. And that’s great, when everyone is reaching for things, and arms and limbs are crossing impolitely and it becomes this mess of “oh, pardon me, no, you go first.” Even if it’s a pleasant eating experience, it’s still like a really pleasant shitshow. If I wanted to introduce strangers, I’d have them share food first, talk afterward.
So pizza is a “get-together” food, because you come together in kind of a formal way to eat a pizza, while hamburgers and sandwiches are solo foods. Like, you can offer me a bite of your hamburger, but only if we’re also married. I’m not a germaphobe or anything, but I’m very, “Er, that’s yours, you go ahead and keep that.”
I feel like, before the Internet, playing video games was this very social thing, where our arms “cross” and we’re trying our best to “take turns.” Now we use headsets for multiplayer or whatever, but even though we’re “dining” together, your co-op partner is sitting way over there, eating his own metaphorical hamburger. Does that make sense? It isn’t communal in the same way your best childhood friend’s living room felt communal, where playing Nintendo together had this overarching feeling of Thanksgiving dinner.

PWWM: When will there be a proper pizza video game? If there’s Burger Time, why isn’t there “pizza time”? There was even that pizza delivery game that was a precursor to Crazy Taxi, but no true pizza simulator. Some may argue that “The Noid” was as close as we got, and well, that’s just sad.

Jenn: My friend, there is already a pizza game. It’s called “Pizza Tycoon,” and it spawned two sequels. I’ve written about food-oriented video games before and, no, I don’t understand the industry’s burger fixation at all.

PWWM: When it comes to pizza what do you feel is the most important aspect?

Jenn: That vegetable toppings are not underdone. I don’t mind a burnt crust, or a doughy one, or too much or too little cheese, but I really do not appreciate a raw vegetable on top. If anything, I’d prefer everything limp and wilted. I guess I prefer too little tomato sauce to too much, but that’s one flaw I’m willing to overlook.

PWWM: Do you think the Wii U will use its built in NFC capabilities to maybe pioneer pizza/video game connectivity? I can see Activision bankrolling that.

Jenn: Speaking as a goddamn professional, Dan, we don’t know that much about Near Field Communication right now, and it’s hubris to even speculate. I will say, though, that the gamepad is said to work up to 26 feet from the console—this is a pretty audacious claim, and only time will tell. Still, I never travel farther than 11 feet from my television with a slice of pizza, which is to say, my pizza and video games are already communicating in a “Near Field.”

PWWM: Do you think Sony and Microsoft will include a voucher for a free pizza with their new consoles to help boost sales? Seems like a surefire tactic.

Jenn: Pizza chain tie-ins used to work, just because they were clever and well-made. Yesterday I mentioned those Pizza Hut ‘Land Before Time’ promo toys to my best childhood friend, and she realized she remembered them and freaked out. And she said something like, it isn’t my imagination? I’m not nostalgic for a bygone era? And I reassured her she is not. Like, Pizza Hut really did give you great things in exchange for settling for their pizza.

And here I’m running a major risk for going off on a weird tangent, but “brand loyalty,” the concept of that, has really changed since the '80s and '90s: there’s no social transaction, the consumer isn’t benefiting anymore. It’s become so one-way. And the very concept of the “coupon” is weak! My best childhood friend uses them, to the point of neuroticism, but have you ever cashed in on an IOU like that? I haven’t. But now every company drops a bafflingly worthless coupon right into their packaging. You don’t have to do anything special to *get* something special anymore. It’s all so disposable. What I’m saying is, if a free pizza falls in the Sony forest, would anyone care?

PWWM: Where do you see pizza heading in the future? How will it evolve? Or is this it?

Jenn: Please, please let this be it. We have Pizza Bagels and Triscuit Pizzas, P'Zones and Pizza Cones, none of which improve on the form. But anytime you say, “Well, we’ve finally topped ourselves,” some jerk takes it as his cue to pop in with his cultural contribution, and it’s almost always some great new Suicide Machine. I’m going to tell you right now, Dan, Pizza Hut’s new Overstuffed Pizza is incredibly horf-worthy. Pass.

PWWM: I’m with you, but I think that pizza has to evolve just a tad. A Pikachu can’t stay a Pikachue forever, know what I mean? I think we’ll see a government funded program that bakes important nutrients and chemicals into their pizzas. Like fluoride in water. Same thing. Our taxes will go to make Pizza with our daily dose of calcium, protein, and an experimental government ingredient that makes every other pizza taste disgusting so we’re forced to only eating the public option pizza. Thoughts?

Jenn: Oh, man. Food and litigiousness and policing and all that really irk me. I’m a traditional person generally, but I’m also socially liberal, so yeah, I’m a big believer in letting other people pick what they consume, even if it’s garbage, because I expect to have the same right. Maybe minor things like taking soda machines out of public schools, those seem okay, but I don’t know, man, it’s such a slippery slope.

I’m not okay with dosing tap water with Fluoride, for instance, maybe just because it seems so soylent green to me. I feel like I’m starting to get sort of self-serious with a funny question, but I really demand transparency when it comes to sugars and additives or whatever. I mean, I’ll still eat crap, but I like having the option of making an educated, bad decision.

Pizza Review: Pizza Pescara on the North Side

It’s not often I travel to the North Side. If I do it’s for the Mattress Factory or heading to the Pour House for Rock N’ Roll Karaoke. One time I even planted a tree on the North Side! But that was so long ago. In my adventures, I never would have once stumbled upon Pizza Pescara. It’s on the highest heights of of the North Side surrounded by graveyards, defunct businesses, and a car wash that would probably make your car dirtier. It’s not the thriving cultural epicenter of pizza. 

A few months ago I handed out a coupon for a free pizza to the coworker that could come up for the best name for a new product. Justin won and yesterday he decided to redeem his coupon. It wasn’t quite a “break glass incase of emergency” situation, but we were both craving pizza pretty hard. Ready for a pizza adventure we piled into a car and drove to the summit of Brighton road to visit Pizza Pescara.

Preparing for the trip wasn’t easy. There’s no web presence whatsoever save for a few Urban Spoon reviews.  Sometimes the best pizza is also the hardest to find. Mostly because they aren’t trying to impress anyone, they’re just plugging along doing what they do best. 

Pizza Pescara has been open for three years and what do they have to show for it? Almost nothing save for a simple mixer behind the counter. I wish we could’ve showed up while they were mixing dough, maybe that’s something I have to call ahead for? Their “dining area” is bare, save for Pittsburgh sports memorabilia. So, pretty typical Pittsburgh pizza experience.

The first thing I noticed about Pizza Pescara was that their prices are out of this world cheap. We went into this expecting to order a medium pizza. The perfect size for two adults who don’t want to overeat and suffer the latter half of the work day. Unexpectedly, the cashier directed us towards a cruddy black-and-white coupon laminated to the counter. He was kind enough to inform us that by using the power of this coupon we could get a large one topping pizza for less than a medium plain pizza ($8!). That’s my kind of pizza logic. A large it is. 

There’s the pizza, in all its Pescara’s glory. Note how the cheese isn’t evenly cooked and, in fact, is even missing from a few areas. It’s not a bad thing, but something I’ve never seen before. I’m digging the crispy-cheese line halfway down the pizza, almost like a checkpoint of your pizza progress. “Congrats, you’ve made it halfway,” it’s saying. Beautiful and functional!

I found the cheese to be too thick at some times and almost non-existent at others. Most of the cheese laid atop the pizza like a shell, waiting to be removed to get to the guts of the slice. Which is fine, because the sauce here is outstanding. I spoke to the owner about it and he told me they purposefully make the sauce thicker than most other places. It’s spicy, hearty, and is the real star of the pizza show. 

I found the crust to be fluffy and a bit chewy. It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t think it added anything to the situation. 

Pizza Pescara is just plodding along and just making ends meet, according to Mike, an employee (and maybe owner?). It’s a shame, because for it existing in North Side equivalent of Everest’s Dead Zone, it’s fairly good pizza. That sauce is unreal and worth the trip. Not the best pizza, but an interesting take on the classic. 

I give it four out of five pizzas.