Most people in this country love pizza. On any given day, 13 percent of the country's population eats the tasty Italian culinary treat in one form or another. Despite its European origin, it's difficult to imagine a time when pizza wasn't a major part of the American food scene.
Unsurprisingly, pizza entered this country with the enormous population of Italian immigrants who settled here in the early 1900s. Since the majority of those early immigrants were poor people from the southern part of Italy, pizza was originally a cheaply made peasant food created in their homes. Pizza's rise to dominance as an all-American comfort food was a slow one initially. When it moved from the kitchens of those Italian immigrants into eateries open to the public, pizza was still mostly available only in cities like New York and Chicago, where large numbers of those immigrants had settled. Even then, pizza was still almost exclusively viewed as a strange ethnic food, only eaten by poor people of Italian descent.
Many things changed in America after the end of World War II, and pizza was no exception. Returning soldiers who had been introduced to the joy of eating pizza while overseas in Europe wanted to enjoy the delicious treat stateside, and pizza places began springing up all over the country. By the late '50s and early '60s, giant chain restaurants like Pizza Hut and Domino's began to appear. While they spread far and wide, increasing exposure to pizza and creating total mainstream acceptance, they also steered their pizzas away from the traditional recipes into the fast food style pizzas that those chain places specialize in.
And don't get me wrong, I ate many a thin crust Pizza Hut supreme with a sixer of cheap beer when I was a struggling musician not too many years back, and I still enjoy the greasy, salty cheap culinary thrills that some of those fast food pies can provide from time to time. I'm no snob, I'll eat pizza in Rome and I'll eat it at Pink's in the Heights just as happily. And yes, every once in a while I'll eat a Pizza from Mr. Gatti's or another national chain, and I can like those, too.
