Pizza Man: Not

When you’re spending time with someone, in particular someone who professes interest in you romantically, watch how he treats your pizza. Why? Because pizza is, at least in this country, a canvas that can be painted any number of ways depending on your mood, whim, personality, budget, company, region, and/or ethnicity. And how open-minded, reasonable, and generous the players are can come into play. 

Because there’s so much room to play around, so to speak, a pizza order can speak volumes, serve as a litmus test, predict a lot about your interactions with the person with whom you’re doing the choosing. It can serve as a gauge of how amenable someone is to such things as change and compromise. You can determine how discerning someone is regarding matters of taste and balance. You may be able to see, in something as simple as a pizza order, how much someone cares about you, or put another way, how stuck on himself he is.  Is it all about him? Is he open to learning something? Is he a tad cheap? Does getting everything he can for his dollar (as he sees it) trump a tasty, well-balanced pie with a firm crust?  

Of course, this all applies to you, too. I try. I object to multiple toppings and indiscriminate combinations, but you could probably talk me into a pie with pineapple or something barbeque. Once. 

Topping a crisp ring of dough is an opportunity for creativity, perhaps, but it shouldn’t necessarily be, given the simple rules of the game:  

*Don’t overload your pizza with toppings, or you’ll detract from the, we hope, expertly rendered crust**, sassy sauce, glob of boring, pointless mozzarella, or other, more worthy, cheese. 

*Toppings should be lovingly prepared but considered supporting players to the main events, the aforementioned sauce, crust and cheese. 

*Too many vegetable toppings (say, more than one) result in a soggy, droopy crust. 

**A tip: When ordering a pizza for delivery, consider ordering it well done. I don’t advocate for well doneness any other time, but as the pizza will steam in the box on the way over to your house/gathering, having them cook it just a bit longer than standard can prevent a soggy crust. My friend Tom, owner of a pizzeria, supports this idea. “The pizza you eat in the shop is not the one you eat at home,” he says, referring to the differences in crust due to the boxed trip. 

And now for our story. Some months back I invited a friend over for a movie and pizza. I supplied the movie and of course, the venue, he the wine. He may have paid for the pizza - I can’t remember, and his paying may have something to do with what followed. We’ll call him Kurt. It went something like this: 

Kurt, perusing the pizza offerings on the takeout menu of a respected local establishment: They have a special; you can get five toppings. 

Me: Oh. I’m part Italian-American. Italian Americans - We think anything over two toppings is disgusting. [The special he was interested in featured pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions and mushrooms, I believe.] 

Kurt: But they’re having a special.  

Me: I’m pretty open – anything except mushrooms – most places use canned. And I’d rather not have more than one meat, unless we do a half and half. 

Now, this was actually me stretching a bit. I knew three vegetables, for example, would be a disaster: They release water as they cook, making the crust soggy. But I had decided to let things happen more often in my life, to not seem to be trying to teach my friends things so much. But really, I was practically retching at the thought of a mountain of crap topping our order.  

I thought of ordering a hoagie, as the place doesn’t have a small pie fit for one. He could get the smallest pie and take the leftovers home. But maybe this wasn’t such a “social” suggestion, and I felt sick of being a tiger in a lions’-pride kind of world. 

Kurt: But they’re having a special – five toppings. 

Me: But I don’t like that. [Translation: What good is a special if I don’t want to eat it?] 

[Insert dramatic pause, a pause that seems to indicate that I’m tampering with his happiness and wallet here.] 

Me: Okay: I can do two meats and maybe a vegetable.  

Aside: Now, if you think I complicated this matter, realize that I’ve said “I can’t eat that” and he’s not relenting. I’m being flexible and trying to make sure I can eat what we order. 

I’m not sure what happened next, except that he ordered a pizza with a minimum of four toppings. There may have been five. The slices hung vertically when picked up, they were so soggy. I slogged through two pieces because I was really hungry and several hours later threw the leftovers in the trash without hesitation, unheard of for me. I was proud, though, that I let this happen, sat back and saw where the night (and his less than stellar pizza taste) took us.  

The lessons: It’s hard to have any kind of sustained fun with someone who doesn’t listen to what you want, doesn’t take your pizza seriously. Subsequent events, not important here, proved this. I never considered Kurt a boyfriend, but if I was moving in that direction, the pizza incident would have sounded an alarm. (It’s funny: I’m not a pizza girl anyway; I suggested pizza with the movie as an easy, democratic way to have a meal.) Overall, it’s simple: With pizza, and in life, it’s easy to adjust up or down one or two ingredients. It’s not that difficult to be considerate as well as satisfied in most situations. I, for one, will continue to work on it.

This entry was posted on 23. January 2009 at 17:49 and is filed under Sugar Plums Dancing In My Head. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.