The day I ordered pizza that 'doesn't exist' | Hacker News Reader

The day I ordered pizza that 'doesn't exist'

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65 pointsinm91 comments

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.

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.

There's a similar crime going on in Florence - people order a well done "bistecca alla fiorentina", not knowing that the meat has been dry-cured for at least 2 weeks in special refrigerators just so the proteins break on their own, making the meat perfectly digestible when cooked rare.

There are no hygiene issues either, so people ruining that expensive dish with their foolish requests don't have any excuse.

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.

I knew a guy in Vancouver that frequented a hotel restaurant with particularly good burgers, and went through such extensive discussions with the manager on this issue that they eventually had him sign a waiver and agreed to cook burgers rare only for him.

Hamburger meat in Canada doesn't have to be overcooked to be safe of course. Food safety laws are just very conservative compared to europe. A few years ago BC passed a law that made it really hard for people to continue selling home-baked goods at farmers market, or for farmers to self-butcher without doing it in expensive approved facilities.

Yeah, home baked goods shouldn't be a problem with basic hygiene (it's usually the frosting that is problematic though)

> the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked

This is an exaggeration. The law originates from 1974 after a prominent TV news investigation found a few cases of contaminated beef that made no one sick. Rather than institute a new set of nation-wide inspections, the government thought it was easier to just tell people they had to cook burgers medium-well at restaurants. Several US states have recently added these laws too, but it doesn't mean US beef suddenly became unsafe.

Unless you're in a high risk category (very ill, very young, or very old), you'll be just fine with a medium rare burger.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medium-rare-burgers...

I notice you stopped short of rare.

The distinction between medium-rare and medium-well is a lot more important than rare and medium-rare. First, very few people want truly rare burgers. Second, it's not particularly smart to eat rare burgers anywhere. Unless you're in an at-risk category you'll still be very unlikely to die from eating rare burgers, but your rate of getting ill will be much higher than it's worth.

(To be clear, I was responding to the commenter's claim that burgers in Canada need to be "well cooked", not to the original story about a parisian ordering a rare burger.)

I had a similar conversation at YYZ, interestingly enough it was on the side that is considered "US soil" (leaving Canada for the US, post customs).

It was burnt to a crisp, worst burger I've ever paid more than $2 for.

It has long been law in Canada that hamburgers be cooked well done for food safety reasons . . . Canadian restaurants will never give you the choice; it surprised me to be asked how I wanted it cooked when I was in the US and other countries. However, I take issue with the idea that the beef is unsafe. It may be slightly riskier than say a steak (which you can order rare), but if there was any suspicion about the beef, it would never be sold.

For years, I've just asked for my beef to be cooked "As rare as the chef is willing to", or some similar formulation.

Given that it's anecdote hour, I'd like to share that the reverse works too: You can prank unwitting foreigners into believing you have all kinds of weird local culinary habits.

In my student days, I helped run a local Dutch branch of an international student association. We made it a habit to tell visiting foreigners that the Dutch, in the winter, like to heat up their beer, add whipped cream and a whiff of cacao powder, and drink it all from mug. Especially popular after ice skating. Rude to refuse.

Over the years i think we got over 200 people to drink warm beer with whipped cream voluntarily.

You are evil.

> and the beef used for hamburgers in Canada really wasn't safe unless it was well cooked

Well.... except it would be amongst the safest in the world.

These countries that eat different food are not safer. Just different. This is the excuse we make to excuse why we won't do it.

Sashimi chicken in Japan is not different to raw chicken in the US for instance. This is the cultural divide I think the article is about.

Both Japan and the US have requirements on what temperature and for what duration meat for raw consumption is stored. Most chicken in the US isn't meant for raw consumption, so it isn't handled that way; so Sashimi chicken in Japan is safer than most raw chicken in the US. You certainly can buy safe raw chicken in the US, but that's not what most of it is. It's not a matter of the animal itself, it's a matter of how it's handled.

FWIW, In most places in the UK it is unusual to get a burger that's even slightly pink. In fact several times I've seen people send pink burgers back. I believe this is due to the uncertainty as to whether it's deliberately pink or simply.

If they ask you how you want it cooked then its fine to ask for it rare. If they dont ask, its not worth trying as its probably not good quality. Lots of places in UK do ask.

Depends on the place, most pubs default to well done yes but dedicated burger places that seem to have been popping up all over London in the last few years seem to mostly default to medium rare.

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.)

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

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

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.

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

Apropos of nothing much, I spent six months working in Naples, billeted in a run-down coastal resort town some 15km west of the centre, on the coast. There was some adequate pizza, and some truly awful pizza, and at one point we got so sick of the only food options being pizza or pasta that we flew a cook in from England to make us a curry. A local cook was tasked with preparing the rice, which he got wrong.

I suspect that out of the cities, the quality of food drops off significantly, and the range of foods, which was always pretty unimpressive in Italy, certainly drops off. This is going to be true everywhere, of course, but I suspect countries coasting on a reputation of good food suffer this to a greater degree.

> the only food options being pizza or pasta

> the range of foods, which was always pretty unimpressive in Italy

You know nothing, Jon Snow: http://www.giallozafferano.it/ricette-cat/

The fact that what you eat before the main course is called the before-pasti makes it pretty clear. The word for meal is basically also the word for pasta.

The last time someone took issue with my opinion on this, they gave me a list of foods demonstrating the huge range. It was a few different kinds of pasta, and some sauce that goes on pasta. You have done better than the last person, but the point isn't that there's anything wrong with Italian food. It's that in many parts of Italy, that's all there is, and they seem to be proud of this limited range. Just Italian food. Compared to the richness of food from a much broader range of origin countries that is on offer in many other countries, it can't compete, and it appears limited and dull.

I had to look up the Jon Snow reference. I though it would be some clever quip about the veteran British journalist. Turned out to be a meme based on a similarly dull soap opera. Spare me (although as a way to soften telling someone they don't know anything, it's not bad).

Here's someone else failing to find a curry in Naples: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g187785-i421-k2751875...

The word for meal in Italian, "pasto", comes from the Latin for "fed" ("pasco"), whereas the word "pasta" derives from a word meaning something like paste or dough. So "antipasto" means "before the meal", not "before the pasta".

I stand corrected and I thank you for the mature, sensible way you went about it.

> The fact that what you eat before the main course is called the before-pasti makes it pretty clear. The word for meal is basically also the word for pasta.

pasto (plural "pasti") = course, pasta (plural "paste") = dried paste made with wheat and watter

> It's that in many parts of Italy, that's all there is, and they seem to be proud of this limited range.

That's wrong. Regional cuisine in Italy is obviously richer than the cuisine of the whole UK, and if all you can manage to find in a city like Naples is pasta and pizza, maybe you need adult supervision.

Here are some hints for the next time you end up in the area:

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d669844...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d800185...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d532823...

- http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187785-d483081...

etc.

> dull soap opera

It's from Game of Thrones, not Downton Abbey.

> failing to find a curry in Naples

At some point you're going to need to learn how to cook. The sooner, the better.

> if all you can manage to find in a city like Naples is pasta and pizza, maybe you need adult supervision.

To be fair, he said he was 15km (9 miles) from the center of Naples. Wikipedia tells me that Naples is 117km² (45mi²), which simplifying to a circular city, means a ~6.1km (3.8mi) radius. So, it sounds like he wasn't so much "in Naples" as "near Naples".

Four Italian restaurants. Did you completely miss the point? Of course you did.

Regional cuisine in Italy is obviously richer than the cuisine of the whole UK

I live in a town far smaller than Naples. I have, almost on my doorstep, Thai, Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, on and on. Repeat around the country. Britain is far better for food than Italy. I can far more easily access a far greater range of food in Britain than Italy. I bet that violates some ingrained cultural belief, but facts have to be faced.

It's from Game of Thrones, not Downton Abbey.

Game of Thrones is a soap opera.

At some point you're going to need to learn how to cook. The sooner, the better.

That was an immature, juvenile response and you know it. Grow up.

> Four Italian restaurants. Did you completely miss the point? Of course you did.

The point was that Italian food is more than pasta and pizza.

>Britain is far better for food than Italy I guess that this statement summarizes the real root of the problem

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.

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 :-)

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!)

What's wrong with pineapple on a pizza?

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.

Nothing, really (if it works for you!). It's just extremely far removed from the usual way pizza is consumed in Italy. I'm usually annoyed by the many culinary debates we like to have (e.g. when should you put cheese on your pasta), but this one I can relate to :-)

When I read the title, "the pizza that doesn't exist", I actually thought of chicken pizza. In Italy they would kill you only for suggesting the possibility of it.

food is an important part of the tradition, even more about pizza

Not for all Italians. My paternal grandmother is from northern Italy, but moved to the UK with her new husband shortly after the second world war. My father, growing up with an Italian housewife as mother, experienced a lot of Italian cuisine, but never saw pizza until he went away to university in the mid-60s.

Upon returning home one vacation, he said to his mother "I discovered a wonderful Italian dish at university called pizza... why did you never cook this?" -- only to be met by the scornful reply "Pizza? That's what poor people eat!"

Salmon and oysters used to be poor people's food in lots of European countries, as well. Tastes and fashions change.

And there was a law passed in Maine restricting prisons from serving lobster more than twice a week.

In my experience (in the South, Naples region), the tradition of the food is more important than the actual food. I got so sick of Italian cuisine when I was living in Italy; the range of food available is surprisingly limited. People wrote to their local papers decrying foreign restaurants.

The bit about tradition is true. Some of the worst pizza I've had was in italy, right next door to the best pizza I've ever had. Once made the mistake of telling this to an Italian.

Once made the mistake of telling this to an Italian.

God yes. It's a matter of faith for some that they have the best food, that's all there is to it, and there's no point in having food from other places.

when I hear an order with pineapple or chicken I feel worst than that. I don't want to be graphic so I will just say it's like putting something really unpleasant on a pizza.

I'm sure you can easily evoke a similiar parsing error in any programmer ("we want a waterfall process that's agile") or designer ("make it green, but without the green").

The reaction / reactance may or may not be rude or agressive, but that's just how people react individually to confusion / irritation / cognitive dissonance.

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.

The problem is that mozzarella doesn't keep at sea.

Untrue

This may be the case in the current age, where ships have freezers. But this article[1] says that in a refrigerator (not freezer), mozarella lasts for just a couple of weeks. I have no first-hand knowledge of this myself.

http://www.eatbydate.com/dairy/cheese/brie-feta-mozzarella-s...

It is untrue because you don't make pizza onboard of an old ship: you can't have the oven over there! You make pizza on the coast, where mozzarella, flour and tomato are produced

Maybe Popeye eats cold leftovers.

lol

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.

I don't know. If you specifically ask for a "pizza rossa with mozzarella", that's a contradiction. But to ask for an item that just happens to by itself be a type of pizza rossa, and then ask for mozzarella on top, I don't see the problem. You're not asking for a contradiction, you just want two items put together.

If I go to a burger joint that offers an option with no burger patty, and I order "cheese sandwich with a burger patty added", I've gone a bit roundabout but I haven't asked for anything contradictory or 'nonexistent'.

the black coffee with milk is the right example, as you don't order a veggie burger with meat.

I order veggie burgers with bacon on top all the time, it's delicious.

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

Though you are right it is black coffee + milk, but it's not called black coffee.

In practice it might seem that a Marinara + Mozzarela might be the same as a Marguerita + Garlic but in practice it may not (for example, amount of sauce, cooking time, etc)

Veggie burger with meat, vanilla ice cream with chocolate flavour, mild peppers with a bit of extra spice, etc...

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.

I want a cheeseburger without any cheese.

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

But it Italy.

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. "

One of the bars near my University back in the days only had cheeseburgers on their menu.

So I ordered a cheeseburger without cheese. Laughter ensued and I was forever stamped an idiot.

That's why I moved to Japan.

Exactly. This is such a stupid, nonissue article. Relying solely on ignorance of what pizza names mean.

A friend of mine who used to work at McDonalds, told that "custom" burgers are always made to order, so he advised that if you want a fresh hamburger, order a cheeseburger with no cheese - you'll get a fresh made to order hamburger and cheese on the side.

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/

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. :)

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

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.

Agree.

Italian fast food usually is squared sliced pizza that you eat standing in the shop, or on the go. It's fast because it is continuously produced and therefore, by the time you walk in, it's always already available, steamming and waiting to be cut.

Take away round pizzas usually take more because the are made JIT for you and are considered more of a way to have regular dinner at home without cooking.

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

> 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.

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.

Wow, thank you for posting this. Pizza alla Bismarck suddenly transported me back to a very happy place!

My favourite

Yeah, but to call it a violation? That's quite a bit overkill, and I think everyone in the story reacted as such. Except for the confused person that just wanted his needs fulfilled in exchange for money. If he wanted an authentic Italian recipe, exactly the way it was meant to be done, then fine. But he asked for a recipe, with a modification that catered to his "sense of taste" or personal preference.

What is fine for one person, doesn't make it fine for everyone else. Personally, I would have been incredibly offended, and told them so. After-which, I would have cancelled my order, promptly left and gone to another pizza place that would give me what is asked of them.

You would have had a long walk, then :) Apart from joking, you have to try to understand the deep respect Italians have for their roots.

Trust me, nobody would have complained for "a pizza with tomato, mozzarella and garlic". A "pizza margherita with garlic" is a very different thing.

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?

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.

As I suspected, irrational dogma.

Italy's best part is in its tradition. That's why it's maniacally kept alive.

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.

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

It's like a "quesadilla sin queso"

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.

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

Enjoy your McDonald sandwich

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