"You Can Eat Pizza Anytime"

Katherine Mangu-Ward | March 27, 2009

Pizza vending machines are coming to Rome, and despite the fact that Italians have the most vending machines than any other country in Europe, this is apparently a slice too far. The Slow Food people are not happy:

Purists say the Italian pizza—invented in the 18th century in the southern city of Naples -- cannot be rushed: the dough must be mixed and left for 12 hours, the ingredients kept fresh, and the oven pre-heated to around 300 degrees.

"This machine is a toy," Pino Morelli of the Association of Italian Pizzerias said. "Perhaps it will find a niche overseas, but Italians are born with pizza: their mothers feed it to them as babies. They understand it."

Screw the purists: I, personally, would kill a man in order to have a pizza vending machine in front of my house. It would be like that old commercial for pizza Bagel Bites (sing it with me now, children of the '90s):

Too bad they're not installed yet. Buying and eating pizza from a vending machine would be a great way to hold a counter-celebration for Earth Hour tomorrow.

I blogged about the new hot dog vending machines on Capitol Hill here. I blogged about pizza in North Korea here.

Help Reason celebrate its next 40 years. Donate Now!

Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.

|3.27.09 @ 4:12PM|#

Ok, ok, but you cannot DEFINITIVELY have a Taco vending machine! Not the soft kind, anyway.

What a bunch of happy horse shit. I've been to Italy. Ate pizza in Rome, Florance, and Naples. Italians make the worst pizza in the western hemisphere.

Brian Sorgatz|3.27.09 @ 4:12PM|#

I watched plenty of TV during the '90s, but I missed that commercial.

Jeff P.|3.27.09 @ 4:14PM|#

I want a vending machine that dispenses pizza slices topped with live bait and wrapped in girls panties.

This would truly be the pinnacle of culture.

Warty|3.27.09 @ 4:15PM|#

Italians make the worst pizza in the western hemisphere.

Ahem.

T|3.27.09 @ 4:18PM|#

Gee, I was gonna turn on every light in the house and go out to dinner for my Earth Hour counter protest.

Colonel_Angus|3.27.09 @ 4:18PM|#

"Italians make the worst pizza in the western hemisphere."

~~Ahem.~~ Amen.

Little Caesar|3.27.09 @ 4:20PM|#

If you're worried about competition from a pizza vending machine, you probably shouldn't be in the pizza biz in the first place.

Kreel Sarloo|3.27.09 @ 4:20PM|#

"Purists say the Italian pizza-invented in the 18th century in the southern city of Naples -- "

If they're talking about the thin crusted classic Margharita it was invented in the 19th century by a chef in Naples and named in honor of the wife of the King of the newly united Italy. The toppings tomato sauce, frsh mozzarella (from water buffaloes) and basil represented the colors of the new national flag. Since then many variations have been introduced, but they tend to all share the ultra thin crispy crust of the Margharita.

Of course rustic Italians had been eating flat bread baked with various toppings for centuries. Those pizzas were closer to American style pizza since it was the italian immigrants who first made them here. And each made pizza according to the region whence they came.

Reinmoose|3.27.09 @ 4:24PM|#

Meh
It can't be so bad Americans wouldn't eat it

|3.27.09 @ 4:26PM|#

"hold a counter-celebration for Earth Hour tomorrow."

fuck yeah

Seriously I'll be playing

REM

"its the end of the world as we know it"

"AND I FEEL FINE"

really fucking loud, tomorrow on earth hour

and drinking a fine solution of vermouth, gin, olives and ice

If anyone wants to have a gooey feel good global unity climate resistance moment with me

feel free

because

they havn't taken that feelin away yet

Shatner|3.27.09 @ 4:26PM|#

Kreel's post ... too dry ... must have water!

|3.27.09 @ 4:27PM|#

*sigh

I miss the 90s...

Paul|3.27.09 @ 4:30PM|#

Purists say the Italian pizza-invented in the 18th century in the southern city of Naples -- cannot be rushed: the dough must be mixed and left for 12 hours, the ingredients kept fresh, and the oven pre-heated to around 300 degrees.

According to Episiarch, even this probably isn't really good pizza.

|3.27.09 @ 4:30PM|#

Damned Eastern Hemisphere. Our natural enemies.

|3.27.09 @ 4:31PM|#

Buying and eating pizza from a vending machine would be a great way to hold a counter-celebration for Earth Hour tomorrow.

I was planning on releasing a case of CFC's into the atmosphere, doing a couple lines of DDT, and kicking the first transgendered dwarf I can find on craigslist.

Conrovio Mescad\'leetiuppie|3.27.09 @ 4:31PM|#

[...] and the oven pre-heated to around 300 degrees.
What the fuck? No pizzeria cooks pizza at 300 degrees. They heat it to at least twice that, closer to 700 - 800 degrees for a few minutes. That's how you get that delicious char on the bottom, while incinerating the top just enough to melt the cheese and cook the tomatoes.

|3.27.09 @ 4:33PM|#

I think they meant 300 C

Kreel Sarloo|3.27.09 @ 4:33PM|#

I know, next time i'm in Taintsville I'll have to stop in and see if the URKOBOLD can give me any instruction on snark, insult and irrelevant banter. :)

That's because Episiarch is pizza retarded.

Actually, I might as well say this: While I'm a pizza snob, I also have no problem eating bad pizza. Like Pizza the Hutt, even. I have the same attitude towards barbecue--it's only proper if it comes from a 200-mile radius of Huntsville, Alabama, but I'll eat Arby's, too.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

Kreel Sarloo|3.27.09 @ 4:36PM|#

Conrovio Mescad'leetiuppie

Since it's a dago speaking i's assume he's using those communist centigrade readings.

In other words, about double good American Farenheit ones.

Kreel Sarloo|3.27.09 @ 4:38PM|#

I mean Half American ones....or something...oh shit... you know.

Reinmoose|3.27.09 @ 4:39PM|#

Pro Lib -
I'll eat the crap too, but it's not for the same experience. If I'm going to eat Pizza Hut I'd better not be paying for it (or at most chipping in a couple of bucks), I'd better be drinking beer, and I'd better be doing something social with a whole lot of people. And of course, there'd better not be a vastly superior option that's easily obtained.

|3.27.09 @ 4:46PM|#

Reinmoose,

That's more or less where I am. I think the odd Arby's insanity is tied to me driving off campus in high school to eat the neither beef nor cheddar with not-BBQ sauce and sorta Horsey sauce.

Pizza, well, maybe a numbness to the crap can be attributed to college living? I drank horrid drinks there, ranging from Milwaukee's Beast to stuff out of bathtubs, so it's not a bad theory.

EJM|3.27.09 @ 4:47PM|#

Unfortunately, according to the article, the machine is called "Let's Pizza".

|3.27.09 @ 4:51PM|#

In theory, a vending machine could be built that would make good pizza. It'll need a brick oven, of course and great ingredients will be key.

Frankly, I doubt the Italians are up to this. Maybe the Japanese? With consultants from Chicago, of course.

Conrovio Mescad\'leetiuppie|3.27.09 @ 4:55PM|#

Kreel, you're probably right. That's still only 572 degrees F, or so Google tells me, which still doesn't seem hot enough.

Jeff P|3.27.09 @ 4:56PM|#

Pro-Lib: you do realize that "pizza retarded" will now become an actual syndrome. It will treatable with a prescription of Dominox.
Side effects include diarrhea, scrotal rashes, and craving Olive Garden

a Joyful Pie machine in Tokyo|3.27.09 @ 4:59PM|#

Please to be eating such pizza!
Hunger and smile yes!
Penis is happy!

|3.27.09 @ 5:03PM|#

Jeff P,

Sorry, but pizza retardation is now a deprecated term. It's now know as Pizzeria.

T|3.27.09 @ 5:11PM|#

I have the same attitude towards barbecue--it's only proper if it comes from a 200-mile radius of Huntsville, Alabama,

That just ain't right, son. You should get help.

Idiota|3.27.09 @ 5:16PM|#

"What a bunch of happy horse shit. I've been to Italy. Ate pizza in Rome, Florance, and Naples. Italians make the worst pizza in the western hemisphere.

It's because they bake it a 300 degrees.

|3.27.09 @ 5:18PM|#

No, I think that's about right. I'm not calling Huntsville the epicenter, or anything. Just defining an area.

If you refer to Texas, I laugh and laugh. Beef-ha!

|3.27.09 @ 5:38PM|#

Personally, I like my pizza and barbecue all mixed up, which is why I'm a fan of the S.O.B. pizza: sausage, onion and bacon with barbecue sauce mixed in with the pizza sauce.

D'oh! Gotta close my tags.

SIV|3.27.09 @ 5:39PM|#

I have the same attitude towards barbecue--it's only proper if it comes from a 200-mile radius of Huntsville, Alabama

I wouldn't go that far north or west of Huntsville.You are fine in a slightly South -of-Easterly direction all the way to the Atlantic Ocean

|3.27.09 @ 5:54PM|#

I remember strolling on the beach in Pensacola Florida near thirty years ago with a terrible case of the cottonmouth when I happened upon a drink machine that sold cold beer in a can. Right there next to the soda machines. That is when I knew, without any doubt, that there was a God.

</|3.27.09 @ 5:57PM|#

Has the young libertarian goddess KM-W been promoted to Senior Editor yet?

duderman|3.27.09 @ 7:04PM|#

almost as bad as the mr. bucket theme.

Gino|3.27.09 @ 7:36PM|#

Frankly, I doubt the Italians are up to this.

HEY! How about I brick oven you face?

Kerry Howley|3.27.09 @ 8:42PM|#

If you're worried about competition from a pizza vending machine, you probably shouldn't be in the pizza biz in the first place.

Market Fundamentalist!

george|3.27.09 @ 10:28PM|#

Pizza from a machine has just got to be microwave pizza, which is just barely better than no pizza at all (except when it's worse).

george|3.27.09 @ 10:32PM|#

Okay, I RTFA and it isn't microwave. Still looks like a way to make bad pizza, and I'm no purist.

JB|3.28.09 @ 3:00AM|#

I'm turning on all the lights, flushing the toilet about 20 times, and letting the shower run the entire hour.

Then I'm going to go out and tell every 'environmentalist' I see that they are not serious people. If they were serious, they would commit suicide and make the world a better place. But they are selfish twats who hate the world.

Jeff Balla|3.28.09 @ 3:28AM|#

Here's what it would look like:

(Couple videos of news segments on a pizza vending machine)
http://wonderpizzausa.com/June06Video/mediaindex.htm

|3.28.09 @ 8:06AM|#

More bad news for my arteries.

Strangely enough, I caught a friend eating Pizza Hut last night. He was thoroughly rebuked. I'm just wondering if vending machine pizza is going to be any better. I sure hope it is.

re: Italian pizza: I thought it was okay. It's just not what we lucky folks who have been exposed to New York-style pizza are accustomed to. The dough tastes different, they layer the toppings differently, they drown the whole damn thing in olive oil, and there's as many varieties as there are locales.

|3.29.09 @ 8:41AM|#

Was that the real Kerry Howley?

|3.29.09 @ 1:52PM|#

Italians make the worst pizza in the western hemisphere.

You've obviously never had a pizza with corn and slices of raw tomato from the Happy Eater motorway stops in the UK.

Also, I'm with Pro Lib -- pizza's like sex; when it's good it's great, when it's bad ... it's still pretty good.

Reason Magazine

Get Reason E-mail Updates!

Site comments/questions:

Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:

Editorial & Production Offices:

advertisements