Last night I went to an event at a local establishment where the food supply was a number of different pizzas from Donato’s. When I decided to go over to check out the pizza options, I saw a cheese pizza, a pepperoni pizza, an appalling vegetarian pizza, a chicken pizza, and then at the end of the line, a pizza with pickles on it. I had to do a double take to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.
Sadly, it was true. Donato’s is now putting pickles on pizza. We’ve apparently broken through the longstanding, previously inviolate “no pickles on pizza” barrier. With that sorry development, it is not clear whether there are any remaining restraints on decency in pizza preparation, and apparently anything is possible. It’s just another tangible sign of a once-great civilization’s unholy slide into degeneracy.
We’ve seen new frontiers in pizza preparation over the last few years, but I had thought there were still thoughtful pizza makers who recognized that the Hawaiian pineapple pizza was as far as you could or should go in pushing the pizza envelope. Experiment with non-traditional pizza meats like chicken and ham? Check. Drizzle toppings like buffalo chicken sauce over the toppings? All right, sure. Create breakfast pizzas and dessert pizzas? Okay, I can adjust my world view to grudgingly accommodate that.
But at least respect the pickle boundaries that your learned pizza-making forebears had intuitively created! Understand that sodden, lumpy, sour-tasting pickles should be reserved (if at all) for a cheeseburger or a fried chicken lunch, and should never be permitted to soil the top of an otherwise well-made pie and pollute it with pickle juice that will leave an unmistakable taint even if the pickle itself is carefully removed!
What’s next? Have all unwritten but important standards that help to establish and regulate a well-ordered society gone out the window?
Webner House 