I haven't read the article. This isn't surprising in the least. Pizza is readily available everywhere in Italy, and the quality is not just a little higher, it's extremely better than Dominos. So why would anyone pay more money to get an inferior Pizza?
The mere thought that they could set foot in that market is already funny.
> Pizza is readily available everywhere in Italy, and the quality is not just a little higher
Note that the modern Italian pizza, including in Napoli, is a post-War invention [1]. “Most Italians hadn’t heard of pizza until the 1950s;” after “Italian-American soldiers were sent to Sicily and travelled up the Italian peninsula, they wrote home in disbelief: there were no pizzerias” [2].
(19th-century pizza marinara had little t9 no cheese, for instance.)
I don't have access to the FT article, which looks to be a random opinion piece. But the Wikipedia article contradicts what you claim.
> Before the 1940s, pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian Americans. Following World War II, veterans returning from the Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine, proved a ready market for pizza in particular
How could veterans bring pizza back the US if somehow pizza was unknown in Italy? That's absurd. I really don't get why some Americans feel this need to claim that everything popular originates in the US.
It’s not, though it is a sceptical review of an Italian academic’s work. (How did you conclude it’s an opinion piece? It’s not even in the URL.)
> Following World War II, veterans returning from the Italian Campaign, who were introduced to Italy's native cuisine, proved a ready market for pizza in particular
I forgot the term, but it’s a food that’s cross influenced itself.
Pizza obviously existed in America before WWII. We have documented evidence of American pizzerias, e.g. in New York back to 1905, opened by a Neapolitan [1]. Italian Americans in Italy, influenced by the American version, spurred pizza’s development and expansion across the peninsula. Those soldiers (and their comrades) returning to America influenced our version and in turn spurred its expansion across America.
> don't get why some Americans feel this need to claim that everything popular originates in the US
I said it’s a post-WWII invention and was strongly influenced by America. Not that it originated here.
Pizza was born in Italy. What Italians call classic pizza today is a post-WWII invention, by Italians, in Italy, strongly influenced by the way it’s cooked in America. Chief among the changes was the temperature at which it is cooked. (Something they dialled up further than we did.)
For whatever reason, pizza is a food that everyone makes up myths around. This is as true in New York or Chicago as in Italy.
> It’s not, though it is a sceptical review of an Italian academic’s work. (How did you conclude it’s an opinion piece? It’s not even in the URL.)
The only thing I had access to, the title: "Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong". That reeks of "opinion piece".
> Pizza obviously existed in America before WWII. We have documented evidence of American pizzerias, e.g. in New York back to 1905, opened by a Neapolitan [1]. Italian Americans in Italy, influenced by the American version, spurred pizza’s development and expansion across the peninsula. Those soldiers (and their comrades) returning to America influenced our version and in turn spurred its expansion across America.
The italicized part is not supported by the Wikipedia article, that I trust more than some review of a book I don't have and that you selectively quote. Without it your narrative breaks down.
It's in the section about history pizza in the USA. It's saying that, in the USA, pizza consumption was limited mostly to Italian-Americans. Is that clearer? Come on...
Read the whole paragraph, it explains that once American soldiers (presumably non-Italian-American) were exposed to Italian cuisine, they brought back appreciation for it back home, which led to the rise of pizza in the general American population.
Also known as America! You asked “how could veterans bring pizza back the US [sic] if somehow pizza was unknown in Italy.” To prove that, you quoted a section that showed veterans did not “bring pizza back” to America, it was already here. (Nobody claimed pizza “was unknown in Italy” prior to WWII, so I’ll ignore that part.)
WWII caused pizza to stop being seen as an immigrant food in America. It also caused the American pizza processes to intermix with those in Naples, both changing it into its modern form and helping it expand across the Italian peninsula.
I’ll note that you’ve misquoted once source, Wikipedia, complained you couldn’t access a second, and provided zero of your own all while rejecting evidenced culinary history. Curious to be proven wrong with sources versus stubbornness.
The guy is known in Italy for being very clickbait-y. What he says is usually okay but a bit exaggerated, but in the case of pizza he is wrong.
This is a discussion between him and another guy -> https://angeloforgione.com/2022/04/04/alberto-grandi-sulla-p... Pizza became widespread in Italy after WW2 (thanks to emigration from Naples to the rest of Italy and tourism within Italy), and the global diffusion of pizza outside US and Italy definitely comes from the US rather than from Italy; but it got to America at the beginning of the 20th century almost a century after pizza restaurants were born in Naples.
> it got to America at the beginning of the 20th century almost a century after pizza restaurants were born in Naples
Everything you’ve said is correct. The question is whether 19th-century Neapolitan pizza would be recognised, by Italians, as pizza today. The answer is a solid maybe. In Napoli, yes. Elsewhere, including in America, much less certainly.
Note that I’m not suggesting people would think it’s not related to proper pizza. But if you told the average Roman or Venetian about New Jersey tomato pie [1], they’re likely to react as they would to Hawaiian pizza. Even though that product resembles pizza marinara quite closely. (Even when baked on a bubbling versus rising dough.)
Seems pretty interesting and pizza-ish (unlike Chicago pizza which is only interesting). Yeah, I would call it focaccia al pomodoro perhaps. But if you consider that New York-style pizza is commonly sold by bakeries in Italy, and it's considered to be pizza (it's simply called "tall" pizza, and I think it's an independent reinvention but don't quote me on that), I think 19th century Neapolitan pizza would be okay in the rest of Italy as well.
On the other hand, Hawaiian pizza is definitely pizza, the question is only whether the topping makes a good combination.
I remember reading this anf it's reasonable. But it doesn't matter who invented it, Italy has mastered it. The quality is so much better and the price is low (due to the very low salaries in the country I presume). Hard to compete.
Domino is still one of the worst pizzas I have ever tried in Canada.
> I really don’t see how saying it’s a post-WWII invention and was strongly influenced by America means it originated here.
> Pizza was born in Italy. What Italians call classic pizza today is a post-WWII invention, by Italians, in Italy, strongly influenced by the way it’s cooked in America.
This doesn't really make sense; an object that a 19th-century Italian would have called a "pizza" would not be called a "pizza" by anyone today. The word existed, but the concept didn't.
However, while a modern "classic Neapolitan pizza" is clearly not the same kind of thing as a 19th-century Neapolitan pizza, it just as clearly is the same thing as a 20th-century American pizza.
Flatbreads eaten with other foods placed on top of them are a common thing, and wikipedia's "history of pizza" page makes sure to say that that's where the history of pizza begins, but that's not really a defensible idea either; there is no continuity between various parallel "bread, but with flavorful foods at the same time" meals from across the world and pizza. If Achaemenid soldiers baked flatbread with cheese on it, and then that practice died out, and over a thousand years later Italian peasants put vegetables on their flatbread... why would we say the extinct Persian food is an ancestor of the Italian one?
If a bunch of American soldiers, raised to believe that pizza is an Italian food, visit Italy and learn that nobody there makes, eats, or sells pizza, what can we say about where pizza was born? The lesson there is that pizza is about as Italian as crab Rangoon is Burmese.
Huh, some overcomplicated ones and then the “pizza effect.”
> an object that a 19th-century Italian would have called a "pizza" would not be called a "pizza" by anyone today
Eh, some of the 19th-century descriptions come close enough to be recognisable as a pizza variant.
I’m not convinced a 19th century tomato pie wouldn’t be recognised as pizza today.
> while a modern "classic Neapolitan pizza" is clearly not the same kind of thing as a 19th-century Neapolitan pizza, it just as clearly is the same thing as a 20th-century American pizza
I haven’t seen a historical source (or combustion analysis) showing the high temperatures modern Neapolitan pizzas are cooked in occurring in the early 20th century here (nor 19th century there).
That appears to be the Italians taking the New York gas-oven idea and cranking it to 11. (480°C to be exact.)
> visit Italy and learn that nobody there makes, eats, or sells pizza, what can we say about where pizza was born?
That many of them didn’t go the Napoli, also, we bombed a lot of things.
> That appears to be the Italians taking the New York gas-oven idea and cranking it to 11. (480°C to be exact.)
Is that really the temperature New York pizza is cooked at? Every Napolitana pizza recipe I've made or seen is cooked around 330-350C in a stone oven with wood. Never imagined pizza would be cooked at such high temperatures.
> that really the temperature New York pizza is cooked at? Every Napolitana pizza recipe I've made or seen is cooked around 330-350C in a stone oven with wood
Neapolitan. Approximately 380 (base) to 485°C (dome) in a wood-fired oven, by regulation [1].
This is deceptive. It’s a tautology. Pizza - as Americans define it - is American. You may as well say Orange Chicken is - shockingly - not Chinese.
Most Italian food served in the US is American food made by immigrants. Just as Indian food in the Uk is. Italian American food is heavier, much more meat based, and drowning in cheese and garlic in a way Italian food isn’t.
Pizza is Italian. Period. American style pizza is a riff on that which has become popular outside the US. However claiming that pizza is American is akin to saying Chinese food is. Nonsense.
> Pizza is Italian. Period. American style pizza is a riff on that
Sure, do you have a contemporaneous source?
Because the food historians who have traced its history through primary sources do, and they point to one story: pizza marinara and its variants in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries, which had almost no cheese, sometimes no sauce (it wasn’t marinara then), and—crucially—wasn’t heated nearly as much as today’s Neapolitan pizzas, and the modern Italian pizza after WWII.
Also, I didn’t say pizza is American. I said it’s a post-War invention. Certainly in its proliferation across Italy, and strongly influenced by America’s Italians.
And I’m referring to the pizza one gets in Italy. (I’m on the Gulf of Napoli for the umpteenth time in a week.) American pizza is distinct, and also different from its own pre-war form.
“Carbonara is ‘an American dish born in Italy’ and it wasn’t born until the second world war. The story that most experts agree on is that an Italian chef, Renato Gualandi, first made it in 1944 at a dinner in Riccione for the US army with guests including Harold Macmillan.”
And “before the 1960s, wheels of parmesan cheese weighed only about 10kg (as opposed to the hefty 40kg wheels we know today) and were encased in a thick black crust. Its texture was fatter and softer than it is nowadays. ‘Some even say that this cheese, as a sign of quality, had to squeeze out a drop of milk when pressed,’ Grandi says. ‘Its exact modern-day match is Wisconsin parmesan.’”
Italy was a poor country until after WWII, when it saw in half a decade “the same kind of progress that the UK had witnessed over the course of a century during the Industrial Revolution.” That kind of abundance fuelled a fury of extravagant culinary creativity and alongside it myth making. (The “correct” formulations of which were largely not pinned down until the 1980s.)
The article is poorly-written but it sounds like Domino's was differentiating by introducing delivery pizza to Italy. When COVID hit, local pizzerias were also forced to introduce delivery to survive, and then Domino's lost it's differentiation because before if you were lazy and wanted pizza you got Domino's, but now you have local, better, options.
But the article only tangentially touches on the actual reasons so I'm not sure if that's an accurate description.
Pizza delivery has been available in Italy since the 90s at least. Not as common as it is now, with every restaurant offering it, but it definitely existed even in small towns.
Because the coffee you get at Starbucks is not the kind of coffee you can find at a typical bar and that we use to drink for breakfast or after lunch. It's a completely different market.
McDonald's doesn't have a local equivalent (it used to exist, and they got bought up by McDonald's[0]) so it doesn't have the same local (and better) competition that Domino's has, especially on a dish Italian people feel strongly about.
So basically, three completely different situations.
Starbucks is popular in North America. However, they had to shut shop in Australia precisely because there was high quality coffee available everywhere and nobody wanted to put up with the rubbish Starbucks was feeding.
> Why McDonalds still profitable in Italy and other places famous for great food?
Because McDonalds is cheap, fast, and tastes good. Seems obvious. They haven't sold billions of Big Macs because they taste terrible, no matter how much food snobs would like to pretend otherwise.
Even if you have "great food" sometimes you want a change. Something that might be "great food" to a tourist can be boring to a local.
Coffee is mostly terrible in Italy. Even Starbucks might be better than the median. McDonalds is junk food - everybody sometimes craves that and it has little tradition in Italy.
But pizza? Italy is so traditional with food that its hard to find anything else than pasta and pizza. So Dominos was competing with like 50% of all food vendors.
Might be it's just not something we are used to in NZ/AU - in Italy you get like 20ml of espresso or if it's cappuccino it's something like 50ml. Quality will be ok. But I can't remember getting 100-200ml drink (i.e. cortado, flat white) for longer enjoyment.
I don't know about Italy. I was in Poland for couple days, and we decided to check if Starbucks is any good - we've ordered filter, espresso, and few kinds of coffee with milk. It's the most disgusting coffee you can ever find, and costs higher than any other cafe. I just don't get it.
Lol. Tried coffee in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Netherlands, USA, Mexico...
Only decent coffee was made by italian machines.
Starbucks coffee is pure shit compared to an average italian one, literally very hot garbage water.
McDonald in Italy is quite different than US one, tried both. First time I went to an italian McD was 27yo in Bologna and it was terrible, now quality improved a lot, much better than McD I went in US.
Different categories of items. Starbucks is fine for syrupy dessert delivery mechanism. McDonalds is new category done well enough. But with pizza in Italy you need to compete with multiple similar options in same category. Dough with some toppings and even optionally cheese or not cheese and tomato or not tomato on top of it. Reasonably good products, with reasonable prices with reasonable availability.
For growing chain competing with anything is hard.
They are pretty big in New York. We take pizza fairly seriously. There’s a pizza shop on every block.
American-style pizza was invented in NYC. Pretty different from Neapolitan pizza, although many shops sell what they call “Neapolitan-style” pies, that are still pretty different from the original.
There's lots of terrible pizza in Italy, but Domino's probably has the wrong business model. A regular restaurant will have excellent pizza, of course, but if you go to one of those little storefront places that are open between 2 and 5, when the regular restaurants are closed, there's a good chance the pizza will make Domino's look good. I don't think Domino's is well-positioned to compete with those, though.
I don't know why you're being down voted, there are two places in my partner's home town in Italy that sell objectively mediocre pizza, but are invariably busy because of location and convenience. It's just, a different type of convenience to Dominoes - buy by the slice and sit by the piazza/street to eat.
99% of pizza in New York is garbage. I live there a lot of the time. Just because locals think it’s okay doesn’t mean it’s good. People like McDonalds and that food is garbage.
Yes when compared with napolitana, but average pizza in Italy is just as meh. Hotdog pizza at least tried to innovate. NY style pizza is on par with napolitana (and far better value for money). Italy gets all of its pepperoni from US. What never ceases to entertain me how much Italians try to get offended by it or how pizza experts try to disagree with me.
Did a quick search on the local website and the sugar content for almost all pizzas is around 1.5g per 100g of pizza and that's with toppings included. Only 2 types has more than 2g (bbq classic and bbq chicken). I generally wouldn't call it full of sugar.
1.5g sugar per 100g is very noticeable, really ruins the dry salty taste of bread. At least I associate that kind of test with low quality fast food bread, not real bread. Pizza bread shouldn't taste like that, all the pizza I've eaten the bread tastes home made because it is. Switching that to the taste of fast food is a massive downgrade.
For a long time French chefs didn't really "get" burgers. The model of a sandwich as a full meal doesn't really mesh well with French culinary theory and so it took foreign restaurants to build an audience (French burgers have since caught up and then some).
I still dream of getting the seed capital to start my beach burger shack, The Burgers of Calais...
As a french I have never heard of anyone considering a burger as a snack, like a bag of chips, and not as a meal.
Do you use a burger as a side to something else? Like you would eat it with a kebab instead of fries? Or is it the same for the kebab?
I don't think you can select a meal in a restaurant, then have a burger instead of fries/salad as "accompagnement". You will also not find a burger in the "starters" section on a menu.
I don't know how old you are but I'm talking about 20 years ago. There is now a menu category ("snackings") that handles grilled items but that wasn't there in the 90s and early 00s, and it was the encroachment of brands like McDonalds and Cinq Mecs that made brands like Big Fernand and le Camion qui Fume possible (not to mention expanding Quick's menu).
In Montenegro, McDonald’s has failed back in 2003, albeit at a small scale. McDonald’s also failed in Macedonia in 2013, this time the scale was non-trivial, 7 restaurants.
I often get caught out by this in France because I usually eat a late lunch in the UK and France is 1 hour ahead. You are cutting it fine if you start trying to find somewhere to eat at 1:30pm and by 2pm you’ve had it, game over. Suddenly the only option is Macdonalds and you know you’ve failed when you’re eating a lukewarm burger in a slightly seedy fast food restaurant; for some reason every time I’ve ended up in a Macdonalds in France it was pretty dirty.
McDonald's changes the recipes based in the country. In Italy you can find sandwiches with prosciutto and parmesan and they often use different buns than the soft, sugary ones.
Food places sell identity more than anything. Food quality just needs to be good enough to somewhat fulfill expectations implied by the price range. "We're an American behemoth selling a mockery of your national identity" certainly won't have it easy in Italy, no matter how well the pizza might be (never tried, I don't find that identity particularly appealing even as German visiting the United States). MacDonald's in France won't have any issue with identity: if you do feel like having factory food, what better match could there be? MacD certainly does not pretend being something it's not.
Launching in Italy is peak hubris to begin with. I live in Scandinavia and Dominos here can’t compete. Both “normal” and “fancy” pizzas were widely available in larger cities and unfortunately for Dominos, they’re not cheaper or better than any of them.
Pizza is a little bit of flour, yeast, water and salt; crushed tomatoes; herbs, cheese, and whatever other toppings. It's a super cheap thing to make, even fresh, in a place where all these ingredients are already cheap basic stuff.
Knowing the pizzaiolos and other southern italians I work with over this summer, this was no surprise... There's a reason there are no pineapples, in any form, on this island. They are, understandably, crazy proud of their pizza and other food. When their fast food has been clean, local, and fresh ingredients, thrown together in a jiffy, for ages, anything else is a desecration :D
The mere thought that they could set foot in that market is already funny.