Whatever else they may be, the Paris Olympics are definitely….strange.
Hong Kong (is that China or not? I can’t quite figure it out…) won a razor-thin fencing Gold over Italy, 15-14. There was a bitter dispute over the final, decisive point: referees replayed the video three times, and each competitor was convinced he had won. Cheung Ka Long of Hong Kong was ultimately declared the victor, and became the first athlete from Hong Kong to win two Olympic gold medals. He’s historic, see, so that must mean he deserved to win.
The Italian Fencing Federation, meanwhile, said it would file a formal complaint over what it called “unacceptable refereeing.” “Filippo Macchi is the real winner,” Paolo Azzi, the federation’s president, wrote on social media. “He was denied the gold he deserved.”
The New York Times immediately declared that the claim the fencing gold was stolen is “baseless.” (Kidding!)
To slap back at Italy, Pizza Hut’s Hong Kong and Macao branch announced that it is offering free pineapple toppings on its pizzas, a desecration of the dish that, understandable, Italians consider blasphemy. I think it’s funny, but maybe not. Italy truly feels it was robbed. Is the pineapple pizza ploy more like taunting than good-natured joshing? Is Hong Kong disrespectfully rubbing in the pain of a close defeat, or sending a message of “Come on, let’s laugh and be friends!”?
If I ran a Chinese restaurant chain in Italy, I’d announce new menu items like Peking duck with tomato sauce.
Ethics Alarms 
Our favorite pizza these days is tomato sauce and cheese and basil and roasted corn and fresh (uncooked, added just before serving) avocado.
Also, it’s my understanding pizza has never really been that much of a deal in Italy. Supposedly, the Greek stone masons who were imported to do the masonry on the Princeton campus introduced pizza to the U.S. Who knows.
I never heard that. The first pizzeria in the US was Lombardi’s, a decidedly Italian place in New York’s Little Italy. Pizza really took off in the US after Americans returned from the Italian campaign of WW2. So-called Greek style pizza, which means cooked in an oiled shallow pan rather than on the floor of the oven or in a deep pan, and a little bit airier dough like focaccia, was supposedly invented in 1955 by an ethnic Greek man from Albania named Constantinos “Charlie” Kombouzis, at his restaurant Pizza House in New London, CT. There are all these stories, so, chissà?
The biggest, most popular, long standing lunch restaurant in Downtown Phoenix, The Matador, served Mexican food, and was run by … Greeks. And by the way, their original location was in the restaurant space where, before it was used as the original Matador, none other than Ernesto Arturo Miranda was murdered, I believe in a knife stabbing.
Pizza was and is a very big deal in Italy. It was street food originating in Naples for the dock workerss. Today there are organization and associations of pizza makers to contil quality and hsitory of pizza.
As my Italian neighbor explained, the pie base served as the plate for all of the toppings.
Pineapple and Canadian bacon are popular pizza toppings here in the US…. probably my go-to one. It works as a filler for the calzone, too. Italian blasphemy or not, it does taste good.
Oh my god….
The horror! The horror!
jvb
Pineapple on pizza is desecration beyond description. I can feel the sting of China’s “Italian smackdown” on my face from here.
If pineapple pizza is considered a credible threat, this generation is truly doomed.
This should be easy to judge, given a little time. If it were good natured joshing — ‘Let’s all be friends’ said to Italians? I’d expect the owners of that Pizza to be arrested for sedition and treason. Communists are not known for a sense of humor.
Speaking of which, how come the Olympics still allows a Hong Kong team? I could be wrong, but I don’t think Quebec has a team, and they have a lot more independence than Hong Kong does these days.
Barbecue chicken pizza …..
Dear God! That is an abomination!
jvb
PS: cool WordPress handle. How can you remember all those numbers?
BBQ chicken pizza, thin crust is delicious!
The numbers seem to have been assigned …. I use Grandma Lisa
Never had it but barbeque chicken has got to be better on a pizza than pineapple.
There is just something intrinsically wrong about pineapple pizza.
Perhaps like inviting Sauron to your family picnic?
Why do Italians see the pineapple on their neighbor’s pizza, yet ignore the pineapple on their own?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/naples-new-pineapple-pizza-1.7107921