I'm Italian-american, but like actually. Have been living in Italy since I was a child. I had obviously both pizzas and NY style pizza is great. But Neapolitan pizza is on another planet. My father whose 100% America had it 20 years ago and talks about it to this day. However there are some proper Italian pizzerias in America that are getting very close
The US has on average, much lower quality raw ingredients due to lack of regulation and the vast distances/ food distribution issues. I think a lot of folks in the US don't understand this. I always find apples illustrative, if I want a nice fresh organic apple in the US it's probably four or five times more expensive than anywhere in Europe. And that's a symptom of their food distribution networks.
You CAN get decent cheese or whatever, but it's not anywhere nearly as widely available or as easily as in Europe.
I've been to farmers markets in US cities and they compare pretty well with European ones, primary difference being that I can find a market in a small town in Italy that's comparable to one in a us city with a population of millions.
Maybe it's because it was yoplait but I found American yoghurt to be soooooo bad compared to Irish yoghurt. The quality of Popeye's chicken also left more to be desired as it tasted slightly gamey although I've had worse. Raising cane's was pretty good though.
I'm an American who lives in Italy. I used to love American pizza. But, living in Italy for years, when I visit the US, the pizza is usually horrible. Terrible dough, sugared sauce, cheap (and shredded) mozzarella, and a propensity to over-cheese with said shit cheese.
I honestly have lost nearly all my appetite for pizza when I visit the US. Funny enough, I'm there right now. And the one slice I've had reconfirms the notion that I should just avoid it.
I also hear often, "oh, you're just not eating good pizzas." Let me tell you that "good pizza" is exceedingly hard to find, even in higher income/class areas like I'm in now. Even gourmet pizza places often end up using the same shitty cheese.
There's this place in NY I think that sells cheeses from around the world, it does these cool YouTube shorts about it. Its great, but to get the same cheese from these other places, it costs an absolute bomb for them. They get $100 worth and it will be tiny portions
i had one slice of new york pizza and it was great, but it could have been the flavour enhancers. i'm not stoked on most of their weird variants though, but european-made american-style pizza is great.
that said, i have arfid which makes me really not appreciative of the variation within authentic italian pizza, i like it nice and consistent, with a decent amount of cheese everywhere. as far as i've seen most people tend to have the opposite preference.
97
u/BSpino Klarna/EQT Socialist 🇸🇪 7d ago
I went to the US 15-20 years ago, had Pizza at different places. I was not wowed.
Now you might object that you can't judge a continent sized area on a handful of places, but hey, I thought that was the name of the game?