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Pizzagate

There's a thread on Chowhound (Food Media board) about Mayor De Blasio's use of knife and fork to eat pizza. Here's what I wrote yesterday. Link to the thread follows.

I grew up in Manhattan when pizza, at least outside Little Italy (AFAIK), meant a slice eaten with your hands standing up. I used to go to the one on 86th and Lex before catechism class. Sometimes you just had to fold because it was too floppy or gloppy, but I recall usually trying to get the tip into my mouth first. My family never ordered pizza in, and my mother, who instilled many dainty eating habits in me, was not from New York (or Italian) and never ate it at all. Later, when I was living in Ann Arbor, I used to order from Domino's (not yet national), and of course the slices were pre-cut, as everywhere (I think), and meant to be eaten by hand out of the box. Really, what else are you going to do with a cardboard box?

But I have lived in Italy now for 35 years, where it is considered proper to eat pizza off a dinner plate with a knife and fork, which is what I do until I lose patience and then I pick it up. Also, you pretty much have to start with utensils because it doesn't arrive presliced. Of course many things are considered proper in Italy and ignored, and indeed my Italian husband, who is 6 foot 3 and always starving by the time he reaches the pizzeria, eats it with his hands and then reaches over to eat whatever he finds on my plate, also with his hands.

The mayor, having survived a snowstorm practically his first day in office, was sitting at a table and wearing a yellow necktie. The knife and fork were appropriate. Cut him some slack!

What I really want to know is whether he eats his spaghetti with a spoon, which is how to tell if all this "I'm Italian" business is for real (if he uses a spoon, he's not Italian-Italian). And, of course, if he puts ketchup on his hot dogs, it's grounds for impeachment.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/930962
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