Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai for Vice:
Apple employees who work at the company’s futuristic headquarters in Cupertino — called Apple Park — can eat fancy pizza every day for a discounted price compared to similar pizzas sold in the Bay Area and throughout the United States.
And that pizza, according to four sources who’ve had it, is very, very good. Like, so delicious that at some point Apple had to limit orders to three pizzas per person, according to a source.
“I swear, it’s the best pizza I have had in the United States,” said Italian citizen and iPhone hacker Luca Todesco. “It’s really good.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Caffè Macs pizza – all of the food, really – is excellent, but it’s not the best pizza in the United States.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ladd” for the heads up.]
No way. I live in LA, but the best pizza resides on the east coast.
I’m fond of Numero Uno thick (and thin) pan style pizza here in the San Fernando Valley. Really good.
The best pizza I’ve ever had was Gino’s East and Duo’s in Chicago. A kind of pizza and taste I’ve never had before. Unfortunately, I’ve only had the opportunity to eat that pizza once, as I live in Southern California.
Perhaps someday I’ll have the opportunity to try Apple’s pizza.
Would apple slices on a pizza taste good? 😉
Hey MDN, isn’t Grimaldi’s still closed by the health dept.?
Sorry, MDN, any place that puts celery on bread (among other things) and still calls it pizza does not deserve the right to call itself a pizza place let alone be considered by anyone the best pizza place.
I keeping with HQ building, I want the Apple Donut 🍩 instead of 🍕😋
So tell me MDN did you taste it?
Pizza, as we know it, was actually developed between the two world wars in the NY area. The pizza in Italy is simply a copy, and not a very good one (I’ve had pizza in Italy: trust me). Originally peasant food served on pita bread (hence the name “pizza”), Southern Italy and Sicily were populated by Greek-speaking people. As they became Italian — they were Italicized, so to speak — pizza became known as Italian food. But if you go to NY, the Italian sandwiches known elsewhere as subs, grinders, po’ boys, torpedos, etc., are still called “heroes,” from the Greek “gyro” — pronounced “yee-ro.”
I’ve had pizza outside of the NY Metro area, and it’s entirely a different food, and tastes like the crap our school cafeterias served: tomato sauce on cardboard. Pizza Hut couldn’t get off the ground in the NY area, until they offered kids meals with toys, so eventually the parents had to oblige the youngsters. But no self-resecting NYer would’ve touched crap like Pizza Hut for its first 10-20 years (1960s-1980s) in the NY area.
NY pizza has a tangy flavor that no other region provides. My guess is that the low-moisture mozzarella cheese sucks the garlic out of the seasoned tomato sauce during the bake process (mozzarella is normally bland). I think those who live in middle America can’t accept such a spicy — not hot, just garlicky — flavor. All those pizza chains, such as Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, Domino’s, Godfather’s, and the others are simply crap. They serve a facsimile that’s not even reasonably similar. If you want REAL pizza, you’ve got to get it from Luigi’s, Salvatore’s, Borelli’s or a place like that in the NY Metro area (NJ and SW CT are included). And get it with ONE extra topping: EXTRA cheese! Mushrooms, meatballs or sausage are okay, but pepperoni pretty much subtracts from or obscures the flavor.
Margherita pizza is Italy’s response to REAL NY pizza. It doesn’t have enough cheese to be considered REAL pizza. And NO self-resecting NYer eats his or her pizza with a fork and knife. Pick up your slice and FOLD it, so the cheese doesn’t drop off the slice. If you’re afraid of getting your hands covered with the olive oil, then buy a hot dog instead, because you’ll never understand NY pizza, just like NY Mayor (and Boston Red Sox fan) DeBlasio doesn’t understand it or NY.
Revisionist history.
Pizza as you know it originated from NAPOLI. It was once called “picae” and its recipes have been documented to about 1000 AD. The dough in picae was evolved from focaccia —that is, wheat dough — spiced and doused with olive oil and whatever toppings were available. These original pizzas did not have a tomato sauce.
Greeks did NOT invent anything like a modern pizza. They, like middle eastern predecessors, cooked various flat breads made with yeast leavened multigrain dough designed for dipping in sauces like hummous, or formed into pockets to receive stuffings as a portable meal.
Tomatoes were not present in ancient mediterranean diets — the tomato was cultivated by south American civilizations and brought back to Spain and Italy starting in the late 15th century. Greeks eventually added tomatoes to salads but they were not an ideal addition to pitas, for obvious reasons. Modern plastic packaging has changed this but only recently.
As soon as it was available, the wonderful people of Napoli took a pure wheat moderately thin, slightly crunchy flatbread crust ( modernized the old olive oil flatbread picae) with a perfect addition of tomato (pomodoro), basilico, e mozzarella di buffola. it is today commonly called a “margherita” pizza. Low cost fisherman’s dinner for those unlucky mariners who didn’t catch any fish.
It is truly unfortunate that Americans today forget that the first Italians immigrated to your shores starting in 1492. A couple centuries later, New Amsterdam became New York, and the New York diet of the late 18th century was largely Dutch and English boiled slop. But being the biggest city of the colonies, it naturally became one of the biggest immigration ports. Then real good food was introduced. Italian immigrants (most of them economic, religious, or war refugees “illegals” like almost all European settlers) flooded in growing numbers well before the world wars. All were welcomed by northern factories for cheap labor. Boston’s North End was mostly Italian speaking throughout the first half of the 19th century. Rome NY was founded in 1870. Like other immigrant groups, Italians branched out to key cities wherever work was available. Currents of Italian immigration rippled across NY state and then west to Detroit (Domino’s, Little Caesars) and Chicago (Uno, Duo), and points west. Pizza Americano evolved in all directions. Not to mention Canadian pizza.
Sadly, Americans have a way of ruining what was a healthy delicious natural cuisine in an effort to sell franchises and pad profits by introducing industrial food fillers: mozzarella that is predominately potato flour; pizza dough and sauce both chock full of corn syrup. Dough made from genetically modified corn. Sausages with all manner of fillers from soybean byproduct to pink slime. Thanks for nothing, Pizza Hut (Wichita, 1958), and the dozens of frozen pizza brands selling junk food in a box paired with a 2 liter bottle of fizzy corn syrup. Then Americans wonder why they have an obesity epidemic.
The original pizza is, was, and ever shall be evolved to what you see today on the west coast of Italia. It is still made fresh every day by people with discerning taste, Italians. If your hand tossed pizza isn’t cooked in front of you in on an open oven, covered in fresh ingredients, you may not be eating good pizza.
For the record, the Alsacian French serve a delicious flatbread dish called Tarte Flambée, which has a cream sauce and typically ham and mushroom and onions (legumes forestieres). Very tasty. Hard to find in America. And if you look up “flatbread” on wikipedia, you’ll see that practically every culture has a variation of a flatbread dish. The Napolitani were the first to offer a Margherita Pizza and all the derivatives thereof.
Thanks for confirming everything that deltanick said.
Bread with cheese aint pizza. So the teeny tiny omission means they didnt have squat.
But thanks for playing mr super defensive and wrong
I remember Borelli’s in Long Island.
Went there after going to Jones Beach.
Great place.
Thumbs up on the Jersey mention! I grew up in suburban NJ, 15 minutes from the GW bridge. Whenever folks turn a conversation into best pizzas and NY comes up I gently defer to New Jersey as generally having the best slices. Thin but not “crispy”, foldable and flavorful with some giant slices abounding. Manhattan shops often went too thick on their crusts whereas NJ shops are almost universal in their hand-tossed styles and taste. Where it came from, I don’t know. Where it peaked…..that I do.
what a bout an article about the quality of Apple Headquarter’s toilet paper
I suggest that the Americans eat a lot less Pizzas. Maybe their obesity levels would decline.
Grimaldi’s? Even that stuff in CT trashes Grimaldi’s.
Mmmmm, pizza. Oysters on pizza is the best. Squid (calamari, so Americans will eat it), octopus, mmmmm, the best.
Let’s NOT forget that Napoli — originally Neapolis, which means, literally, New City in the Greek language — was largely Greek, as was ALL of Southern Italy some 1,000 years ago.
Much of what Paoli writes actually DOES confirm what I wrote last night. I’ve had the pizza in Italy, and it ain’t worth talking about, although the rest of the Italian cuisine is absolutely WONDERFUL.
In 10th grade, we got a new student mid-year who sat behind me. I asked him where he’d just come from, and he said, “Rome, my father’ s a diplomat, is now assigned to the UN in the (NY) city.” I next asked him, “How’s the pizza there?” He responded, “The Americans opened a new pizza place, and it’s a BIG HIT!” This was back around 1964. As I previously wrote, I visited Italy in 1985, and the pizza was … JUNK! I’m sure it was much better at that American place.I very much enjoy the Italian cuisine, but didn’t like the pizza at all.
Giordano’s in Chicago. If God ate pizza pie, this would be it.