Roman pizza, then and now
When I was in Rome recently, I ate a lot of pizza.
A lot.
It was a good thing to grab for fuel during on-the-go sightseeing. My main meals were in the evening, but a piece of pizza could be found in the middle of the day on nearly every street while walking, and it was uniformly very tasty.
But for dinner, I found that the menus didn’t vary all that much. Granted, I didn’t go to the five-star places, but I went to some restaurants that Yelpers seemed to like and the menus were remarkably repetitive: pizza again, and pasta.
Now, I’m not complaining too much. Pizza and pasta, what’s not to like? But I was surprised at the sameness of the restaurants. It was true not only of the ones I ate at, but also of the ones I passed, looking briefly at the posted menus. They were all nearly interchangeable.
I’ve mentioned that I’ve been in Rome once before, when I was fifteen. You do the math to figure out when that was; I’m not going to assist you. But it was obviously a long long time ago. And I remember something quite different back then.
Actually, I remember a lot of things were quite different back then. For example, even in Rome, back then there were a lot of teenage girls who didn’t shave their legs or armpits. Not so today!
I also remember teenaged girls in Italian cities walking around in small groups of twos and threes and holding hands. Not so today, unless they’re making some lesbian statement (I didn’t see that, but I suppose it happens).
There also used to be—and perhaps this might explain why the girls went around in groups—a lot of groping by young men as they passed the girls by. I was a teenage girl myself, on a tour with other teenagers, and we went around in groups too, for that reason. There was strength in numbers. In fact, there was one guy on our trip who was some sort of brother—“brother” as in, religious orders—and he had a kind of monkish outfit that he sometimes wore. He was a friend, and we often palled around with him, asking him to wear the outfit, in an attempt to discourage the worst of the gropers. It seemed to work.
I’m not a teenage girl anymore, and not the natural target for gropers, but I didn’t even witness any of that behavior anymore by the men of Rome. And there were plenty of young girls walking around, often alone, often in skimpy clothing.
And the previously-ubiquitous glove shops? Gone, gone, gone.
But back to pizza. When I was in Italy as a teenager, my recollection is that pizza was nearly unheard of. We kids would sometimes inquire about it, and we were told that it was a very regional dish (I forget from what region, but this article seems to indicate that it was Naples, where I did not go as a teen) and that it rarely appeared in any restaurants, and often had thick crust and was squarish. So we gave up looking.
The transition appears to have been complete. Italy is now loaded with pizza places.
Does anyone else remember it that way, or is my memory playing tricks on me?
As we were watching Pope John Paul II say Mass in St Peters, a guy standing behind us groped my wife and daughter. That hasn’t changed.
I don’t know about pizza in Italy, but I would like to add that my parents, born and raised in flyover country, hadn’t eaten pizza until they came to New England after WW2. A friend of Italian ancestry brought over some homemade pizza. The friend’s parents were from Lucca (Tuscany) and Sicily. And yes, Sicilian pizza was long-established. Most of the first pizzerias in the US were owned and operated by Sicilians. By the time I was in my 20s, a lot of pizzerias in my home area in New England were owned and operated by Greeks.
Hard to believe that at one time pizza was considered exotic in the US.
A female high school classmate of mine considered herself flattered when a male pinched her in Italy- in the ’60s.
I had pizza in Rome in the 80’s . . . but it was rare–and strange. A pizza that was to come with artichoke, tomato, and anchovy had an artichoke and a whole tomato and a whole fish on it, and as a bonus a hard-boiled egg. Kind of like the time in the 90’s when I had the “America’s favorite” pizza in Hong Kong, which came topped with tuna and canned corn.
I think the whole anchovy on the pizza in Rome was better than today’s all-too-familiar dodge of having “anchovy” on the menu item . . . but when asked where it is in the presented product, saying, “it’s in the sauce.”
I was in Rome for 4 weeks in July/August, 1968. I was 10. Pizza was unavailable. There were ‘pizziettes’ at little lunch counters, already cooked and served cold.
They were like little pieces of cardboard, painted with a trace of tomato sauce and a single dessicated anchovy (yuck!). There was also something fairly edible, called ‘pizza romano’, which was essentially a calzone. As neo says, pizza was a neapolitan thing, and in fact the only pizza I had in 1967-1968 was at a neapolitan retaurant in Soho (London) called ‘The Amalfi’. It was called ‘pizza neapolitano’, essentially an anchovy pizza.
The only other place I saw ‘pizza’ was at a chain in London called ‘The Old Kentucky Pancake House’, with now unacceptable decore featuring minstrels. They had ‘pancake pizza’, which was something pizza-like on a big pancake, with names like ‘pizza missisippi’. Go figure.
I was in Italy about 15 years ago and remember laughing at a sign in Siena advertising “genuine New York style pizza.” I didn’t have any there but I did have pizza in a small town outside Florence and it wasn’t very good.
Spent time in Italy in the mid ‘70’s and my memory is similar. But you forgot watching the world’s worst drivers in action.
My first visit to Italy was in 1966. We were often told that pizza was just for peasants.
Yes, the few pieces of pizza I saw in Italy as a teenager each had a lone anchovy on them.
Although pasta started in China, it is generally considered an essentially Italian dish. Similarly, although pizza started amongst poor southern Italians, it is now rightly regarded as an essentially American dish, more specifically, a New York City dish. The people of Siena have it right. (The fact that I was born and raised in New York in no way affects my impartiality.)
‘The Old Kentucky Pancake House’, with now unacceptable decore featuring minstrels.
You mean they put negrobilia in a restaurant named after one of the two Southern states where blacks are thin on the ground? John Derbyshire maintains that the British are fine cooks; they’re just terrible restaurateurs.
I remember eating pizza in a restaurant outside Naples in the early 70’s. Not what I expected.
At first I was repulsed, it looked so greasy, but it was smothered in olive oil and was quite good.
But I don’t remember pizza being ubiquitous and I worked from Reggio to Milan for a year.
When I came home, I didn’t know what to order off of a menu in Italian restaurants.
I ate in trattoria after trattoria and had always ordered “pasta di forno”.
I always ate well.
My experience is that Italy has a great variety of cuisines, which varies with regions. The liver that you eat in Venice would be tough to find in Rome. The Amalfi Coast has wonderful food and it isn’t all pasta. Florence was a different food experience for me than Rome.
Was in Spain years back with some US high school kids. Bunch of Italian guys were in the hotel our last night. Tried to be all over the girls. Real studs. Until the portly, aging chaperone with the really bad attitude showed up and they faded into the wall paper. I was really annoyed that night. But wondered…where was the studliness when a man was involved. Lousy night, but my wife did make me take off my shoes before I went to bed.
I have not read the linked article that says the pizza originated in Naples, but I do recall reading many years ago that it did originate in, where else? PISA. So the current spelling is a corruption of that name. I even remember way back when some people called it pizza pie. Remember Dino singing “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore”?
I’m interested in these glove shops you speak of, Neo. The elbow-length ladies’ gloves, I take it? Were they that popular back then? I missed out on that period.
Philip:
They were more popular before my time, but they still were worn in my childhood and teen years. Sometimes even ones up to the shoulder, for formal wear. My mother had tons of them, and I used to try them on when we played dress-up. I wrote about them here.
I have a similar history with Paris – I was there when I was 16 and only went back around 2000. Your memory, Neo, is not playing tricks. Things have really changed in Europe. Perhaps the funniest in Paris is that in ’59 bicycles including those with little motors on the forks that drove the front wheel were allowed to park on the sidewalks. Of course there were many more cars than in ’59 but the bicycles were still on the sidewalks – in the form of Kawasaki 1000s! As with your gloves, I tried in vain to buy a man’s beret which were sold in every mens shop in 1959.
Today was the annual Italian Festival in our Denver-suburb “downtown” — lots of vendors with Italian cuisine cooked in huge iron pans over gas burners, including some with fish or sausage. Lots of pizza too, of course. We had gelato and ices. There was even a grape-stomping-vat for the kiddoes.
The festival has been such a hit that the local park even put in permanent bocce courts.
We had a troupe of street acrobats, billed as The Venetian Circus, with 2 young women dangling from aerial hoops and cloth-loops hung from a 30-ft-tall metal tripod; a juggler with knives and flaming torches; a clown; and others.
The highlight for me, as always, were the Flag Throwers from Florence.
http://www.sbandieratori.it/
watch the videos
Several years ago we were in Rome, my first time. We stayed in an “Italian” hotel not far from the Vatican. There were loads of restaurants in the area that we tried for our dinner. No pizza for dinner, but there was pasta, and veal and fish and chicken. All good. Pizza was for lunch and yes good. Neo, you did not mention the table charge to sit down at a table for lunch. I ask and was told “you want clean table, table wear and plates”? Still, it was a good time. No hassles at all. But then we were then in our 60’s.
highlight … was
How quickly we forget our grammar lessons.
Pizza hasn’t just taken over Italy. In large parts of Eastern Europe it is ubiquitous. Romania say.
(As are restaurants serving largely pasta. Some of those places don’t have fabulous local cuisines, so use Italian instead most often.)
I’m pretty sure the *variety* of pasta in Rome will differ between restaurants though, based on the regional style it uses.
Ravioli in a tomato sauce isn’t particularly like Spaghetti Carbonara, despite both being “pasta”. Lasagne differs again, while still being “pasta”.
Some Chinese styles always have rice, yet it would be churlish to complain about that — it’s just what they do. (I’m well aware Chinese eat noodles and non-rice dishes, but each *region* has a standard carbohydrate, and real Chinese do not vary it too much.)
In the early ’50’s my dad had to go to nyc on business. He came home raving about this treat he had eaten called, you guessed it, pizza. Soon after that, Vic Cassano and his mama-in-law, Mom Donisi, started a pizza business that grew into a Dayton, Ohio area pizza behemoth. It still exists, altho’ on a smaller scale. Our current pizza attraction is Marion’s Piazza with multiple locations in and around Dayton. It started as an ice cream and sandwich shop before morphing into pizzas.
Never made it to Rome, just Naples back in 2011. I had lots of good food there, although I do recall a lot of the restaurants having very similar menus. But the pizza was outstanding! One night I bought a pie at a small shop near my hotel. It was so good I got the same recipe three straight nights after that. Lunch became the time when I tried out different restaurants.
“similar menus”…is it possible there is some government regulation causing this either directly or indirectly? Does each restaurant have to have some kind of official calorie or nutrition test done on each of its menu items? Are there pre-prepared counts already available for certain menu items, thereby avoiding the expense?
I lived in Paris for 2 1/2 years working for the French CNRS (National Scientific Research Center) as a research physicist. The EU had recently passed a rule that any citizen of an EU country could work in any country without a work permit. That meant that you could get great Italian food in France. The prices were below the equivalent French ones. There were wonderful pastas you’ve never even heard of in the US. The same was true in Rome and Florence.
MacDonalds was another question. The French government resisted the (yuck) American food. Thus there were three such stores in Paris, one on the Champs Elysees, one on the Blvd. St. Michael. They were always full. The Elysees store attracted the French version of youth motorcycle gangs. They all dressed up like Marlon Brando in Wild One, but all of the bikes were honda 50’s or 90’s. That was because there was a displacement tax, and no kid could afford a big chopper. When the gang would leave, it sounded like a herd of a thousand mosquitos revving up.
My wife and I have been to Italy five times, she has been six times, and I do not particularly recall the pizza. We had it, the most memorable being in a village in the Dolomites. Memorable because it was a typical Italian thin crust pizza with a bunch of rocket (arugula) thrown on top, also because we spoke no Italian and the staff knew no English. It was really good.
Otherwise, we had many typical multi-course meals of pasta, protein, and salad. My favorite, in Tuscany, was cinghiale (braised wild boar).
No pizza in Rome in 1969 – except at the Hilton!
steve walsh:
I had quite a bit of wild boar this time in Tuscany.
It basically tasted like beef stew meat to me.
We lived in Italy 1982-84 on the island of Sardinia. Pizze were common but not ubiquitous in the local restaurants. The local cuisine was Sardo-Galluresan, with a fair amount of pasta and “frutti di mare” (seafood). IIRC, Naples also commonly had pizza, but northern Italy did not. Don’t remember much of Rome, but don’t recall any food complaints, either.
Pizza is largely American. Best pizza I have had was in Paris. French flat bread, garlic white sauce, covered with artichokes, tomatoes, scallions, and smoked oysters. Free range pizza.
William Graves on September 9, 2018 at 5:07 pm at 5:07 pm said:
MacDonald’s in Germany is/was a haven for US tourists for two reasons: iced tea and free restrooms.
@ Chester – pizza is still big in Romania, or at least Transylvania.
In 1998, Romanian girls and women would still walk arm-in-arm downtown, but no longer.
As for McDonalds, despite all the raised noses by locals and the tourists trying to impress them, they remain popular in many places because of the clean restrooms.
I traveled to Florence, Venice, Tuscany environs, and Rome in the mid ’80’s. I recall seeing exactly John Reinitz’s “pizziettes.” I never tasted one, as they looked quite unappetizing. I usually saw individual slices on the those chrome pedestal platters with a glass cover, displayed just like a donut or Danish.
We strolled a beach on the Adriatic outside of Venice and encountered a lavish antipasti buffet set up on the sand by some large hotel, only a couple dozen yards from the shoreline. Every imaginable type of sea creature was laid out whole on crushed ice, as though it had just been pulled out the nets. Had any of it touched boiling water?
I was in Rome in 1971. There was a pizza truck outside the youth hostel.
Most of the art of the pizza is in the quality of the water and bread ingredients.
So….making home made pizza with the Cub Scouts tomorrow night (their choice).
I don’t think they will notice the quality of the water and bread under all the sauce, cheese, and pepperoni.