Italians indignant after Chicago and New Jersey both declare themselves ‘world capital’ of pizza

A pizza-maker prepares a pizza Margherita in Naples

Credit: Getty /A pizza-maker prepares a pizza Margherita in Naples

Italians have reacted with indignation, and a healthy dollop of irony, to claims made by Chicago and New Jersey to be the “pizza capitals” of the world.

The title of “World Capital of Pizza” was made by both New Jersey and Chicago on occasion of the United States’s National Pizza Day on Tuesday.

“Proud to be the pizza capital of the world,” the city of Chicago announced on its Twitter handle, @chicago.

“Jersey. Pizza. Number 1. Enough already,” said Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, in an online video in which he tucked into a slice.

Italians were swift to point out that pizza was invented in Italy and that its spiritual home is Naples, where Neapolitan pizza has been recognised by Unesco as part of the world’s “intangible heritage”.

Claiming that anywhere outside Italy was the capital of pizza was “cultural appropriation.”

Neapolitan pizza makers attempt to make the world's longest pizza along the seafront of Naples to break a Guinness World Record, 2016

Credit: AFP

“After Napoli, my US friends,” commented Salvatore Esposito, an Italian actor and a star of the award-winning crime series Gomorrah, based on the Camorra mafia of Naples.

No self-respecting Italian would eat a pizza slathered in barbecue sauce, sprinkled with sweet corn, or – horror of horrors – topped with pineapple.

One Italian remarked of American pizza that it “looks like that time my cat was sick”, while another wrote: “Know your history. Napoli is the capital of pizza. Pizza represents Italy. It represents the Italian flag with the red of the tomato sauce, the white of the mozzarella and the green of the basil.”

Many of the remarks were aimed directly at the city of Chicago’s Twitter handle. “If an Italian pizza maker made pizza like the one that is sold in the USA, he would be lynched by his customers,” was a typical remark, while numerous memes lampooned the American claims.

The art of pizza-making in Naples was awarded UNESCO’s “intangible heritage” status in 2017.

The Paris-based organisation highlighted not just pizza itself, but the social rituals that accompany it and the role of the famed Neapolitan pizzaiuoli or pizza-makers.

“The art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo is a culinary practice comprising four different phases relating to the preparation of the dough and its baking in a wood-fired oven, involving a rotatory movement by the baker. The element originates in Naples, the capital of the Campania region, where about 3,000 pizzaiuoli now live and perform,” UNESCO said in its citation.