What I Learned from Eating Pizza Quiz

Answer: Water buffalo

Domesticated water buffalo were brought to Italy in the 600s as work animals - there is some debate over whether the Arabs, the Normans, crusaders, or someone else brought them. Being more parasite-resistant than other bovines, buffalo were more suited to work in Campania's swamps. While farmers and monks did produce buffalo cheeses as early as the 11th century, modern mass-production of buffalo mozzarella ramped up in the 1700s century, as Campania was under rule of the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV.

Today, mozzarella di bufala, much San Marzano tomatoes, have a protected designation of origin (D.O.P.).

Answer: No

Nor is there a way for me to ever get more pizza. For any arrangement of slices, we will always get exactly the same area of pizza, whether we take turns clockwise or counter-clockwise, no matter where the eight cuts meet. The only catch is that you have to divide it into a multiple of 4 slices. Mathematicians call this the "pizza theorem."

Answer: Matt Damon

Mystic, Connecticut, is a small port town with a shipbuilding museum, a couple of drawbridges, and one very famous pizza shop, which just so happened to catch the eye of screenwriter Amy Holden Jones. The real shop, operating since 1973, even renovated its storefront to match the movie, leaning into its surprise fame. (Unlike the pizza place, the Mystic River has nothing to do with the same-named movie.)

"Mystic Pizza" came ten years before Damon's breakout, "Good Will Hunting." In "Mystic Pizza," he plays Steamer, a one-line background role, in the family dinner scene. Roger Ebert famously predicted, "'Mystic Pizza' may someday become known for the movie stars it showcased back before they became stars." He was right about the movie's other stars (Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, and Annabeth Gish), but I doubt he meant it about Steamer, too!

Answer: Chuck E. Cheese's

Little Caesar's and Hungry Howie's are real chains, but for robot singers, you've got to patronize Charles Entertainment Cheese. The chain was founded by Nolan Bushnell, whom gamers will recognize as Atari's co-founder and the designer of "Pong." The chain was originally intended to showcase Atari's coin-ops, but expanded to other arcade games, playsets, and the signature shows. To settle a bankruptcy in 1984, Chuck E. Cheese merged with its corporate nemesis ShowBiz Pizza Place, which used equally disturbing animatronics. Today, kids are much more likely to recognize such characters through another video game source: the horror game-turned-movie "Five Nights at Freddy's."

Answer: Volcanic eruptions

San Marzano is both a variety and a protected designation of origin (or "D.O.P."), a special certification given out to select products. To be a D.O.P. San Marzano, the tomatoes have to be of the San Marzano variety and grown in the volcanic valley of Sarno in the Campania region (of which Naples is the capital). Neapolitan pizza itself is protected by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana ("True Neapolitan Pizza Association").

San Marzanos and pomodorini vesuviano have to be grown in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic soils there are highly basic, and thus the tomatoes have uncommonly low acidity. That also makes them great canned - just make sure to look for the D.O.P. icon, or you might be buying "SAN MARZANO...style" tomatoes. Some brands have been sued for making their labels ambiguous on purpose!

Answer: Mikhail Gorbachev

The 1998 Gorbachev Pizza Hut commercial is the most insane ad I've ever seen. Gorbachev himself sits down in Pizza Hut, across from a family sitting down to eat. The table's argument ("Because of him, we have political instability!" "Because of him, we have freedom!") is instantly resolved at the realization that without him, Russia would have no Pizza Hut. A chant goes up through all of Moscow: "Hail to Gorbachev! Hail to Gorbachev!"

In real life, Gorbachev was the last head of the Soviet Union, and ended the era of Communist exclusion of foreign businesses. Pizza Hut opened shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed, and so it perfectly symbolized the arrival of Western business in Red Square (why this symbol was chosen for a pizza commercial, I have no idea).

The commercial aired internationally, but never in Russia itself. Gorbachev refused to eat pizza on camera, so in the commercial, he's serving a slice to his real-life granddaughter.

Answer: A fresco at Pompeii

This can't *really* be pizza, can it? As we've addressed, buffalo only arrived in Italy in the 7th century. Tomatoes came later still: the Spanish brought "golden apples" (or pomi d'oro - pomodoros!) from the New World in the 16th century. So this can't possibly be pizza napoletana proper.

On the other hand... the Romans have been making flatbreads long before the redsauce-and-cheese concoctions we know. This focaccia's accompaniment with various fruits, including pomegranates and dates, suggests that it was one of these early sweet pizzas. When this fresco was discovered, some believed that one of the fruits included was pineapple. Alas, my Hawaiian pizza defenders, pineapple, like tomato, was a gift of Columbus.

Answer: "Eat Pray Love"

"Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia" was published in 2006. No points for guessing Italy is the "Eat" section. Gilbert's Neapolitan friend tells her to try a certain pizzeria: "Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me later and tell me that you did." The pizza's an authentic, buffalo mozz pie, "technically impossible" to eat: "the hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it." Gilbert calls her Italy trip a "No Carb Left Behind tour", and she starts to gain weight fast, but she also looks happier and healthier in the mirror. (If *that* sounds like a bad excuse for overeating, wait until we get to Sports.)

Answer: "Licorice Pizza"

In the vein of movies like "Dazed and Confused," "Licorice Pizza" is a coming-of-age story waxing nostalgic about the 1970s. Both Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Haim (from the all-sisters pop band Haim) made their film debuts as the movie's stars. Licorice pizza doesn't actually feature in the movie: the phrase is a deliberately dated nickname for black, stripey vinyl records.

Black licorice (which, to be pedantic, is the only twist that's flavored by the licorice pant) gets its anise-like flavor from a compound called anethole. Around half of survey respondents say they dislike the flavor. Licorice is probably my favorite sweet... but not on pizza.

Answer: Pepperoni, green peppers, mushrooms, olives, chives

System of a Down's one of my favorite metal bands because of how aggressively bored they seem to get with staying normal. "Chic 'N' Stu" is supposed to capture the feeling of ad-induced hysteria that drives you to consume (through both your wallet and your gullet).

The song is aggressive, angry, and hilarious: "What a splendid pie! Pizza pizza pie! Every minute every second, buy-buy-buy-buy-buy!/Need - therapy - therapy - advertising causes/Greed!" Like many System songs, it's got complete changes of tempo and attitude (from screaming to moody crooning).

It kicked off the band's "Steal This Album!", and can you imagine any other band starting this way?

Answer: Queen Margherita

Queen Margherita of Savoy was consort to Umberto I of Italy, and later served as Queen Mother to her son Victor Emmanuel III. She was renowned during World War I for her services to the Red Cross, even providing her own Palazzo Margherita for use as a wartime hospital.

She is perhaps best known, though, through apocrypha. The story goes that a renowned pizzaiolo, Raffaele Esposito, was tasked with impressing the Queen during a visit. Out of several options, she of course chose the one with green basil, white mozzarella, and red sauce - the modern pizza Margherita.

The BBC Food blog investigated these claims, and found many problems with the legend. For example, Esposito supposedly opened his "Pizzeria of the Queen of Italy" in 1883 - six years before Margherita's supposed visit!

Answer: Pastafarianism

The Prayer of the Flying Spaghetti Monster goes: "And lead us not into vegetarianism, but deliver us some pizza, for thing is the meatball, the noodle, and the sauce, forever and ever. R'Amen."

As you can tell, the iconography of "Pastafarianism" has just a tinge of satire running through it. Pastafarianism and Last Thursdayism (which asserts the universe was made last Thursday) both showcase and parody the fact that many religious beliefs are "unfalsifiable." There's no way to prove the world WASN'T made by a spaghetti monster last Thursday, or by the Vision Serpent in August of 3114 BC, or by the Christian God 6,000 years ago. Despite its mocking origins, Pastafarians challenge policymakers who neglect to give them equal treatment to conventional religions.

While Pastafarianism began as religious parody, "Dudeism" is better characterized as a religion of nonchalance. Its central figure is The Dude, portrayed by Jeff Bridges in the movie "The Big Lebowski." In contrast, the Church of Scientology is not ironical in any sense.

Answer: More than 30 slices

In fact, Chestnut ate way more than 30 slices: 45 slices in just 10 minutes! 2008 was right the beginning of Chestnut's dominant performance at the Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contests. He won the weenie competition every year from 2007 to 2014. However, his pizza record was beaten only a few weeks later: 47 slices by another dominant "gurgitator," Patrick Bertoletti.

How do competitive eaters keep off the pounds? They aren't just sloughing pizza and hotdogs to practice; they train with low-calorie-density foods like lettuce, cabbage, and watermelon. Many also employ the use of performance-enhancing drugs - meaning, in this case, laxatives.

Answer: French fries

"If you French fry when you should've pizza'ed, you're gonna have a bad time!" Pizza (pointing the skis inward) slows you down; French fry (pointing them parallel) speeds you up. Thumper - "your cool ski instructor," or so he introduces himself - is all about having a good time. Kyle's baby brother, Ike, French fries at an inopportune juncture and has a bad time.

Predictably, "You're gonna have a bad time" has become one of the most widely recognized memes from the long-running show.

Answer: Pac-Man

Iwatani has said a pizza missing one slice inspired Pac-Man's look. Iwatani deliberately wanted to design a game that men, women, and children would play together, in order to dispel the growing stereotype of male-dominated "Invader houses" (playing Taito's "Space Invaders"). That's partly why Iwatani chose eating as a motif: "Girls love to eat desserts. My wife often does! So the verb 'eat' gave me a hint to create this game," he told the GDC. ("Pac" is, of course, a corruption of the Japanese word for "eat," "Puck" - or rather, it was deliberately changed *before* American teenagers could corrupt the spelling themselves...)

With dozens of sequels and spin-offs, "Pac-Man" has earned over $15 billion (with a B) dollars. Perhaps more importantly, the game succeeded at its goal. The MoMA includes the game in its "Art of Video Games" collection, and specifically credits it as one of the first games to bridge the gender gap. I guess girls really do love to eat desserts.