Pizza Tastes from Around the World

I've just been to Romania, and made a rather startling discovery there. One of the most common foods in that part of the world - if not the most common food - is pizza. Regular, old, ordinary pizza. And they don't even have another, highly exciting word for it either. The Romanian word for pizza?

Pizza. The Bulgarian word for pizza?

Pizza? The Turkish word for pizza?

You guessed it. The fact is, the world loves pizza. But they don't love it in exactly the same way as we do, and that can make ordering pizzas around the world somewhat necessary.

Now, I'm not a pizza-eater. I eat it to be social, or because it's an easy food to get my hands on quickly. I have never liked it very much, even when I was a child. In fact, as a child, I refused to eat it under any circumstance whatsoever. While I'm not much more fond of European pizzas than I am of American pizzas, I do find them a bit more palatable, and that is because, for the most part, they are somewhat less...everything.

In Romania, they use very little cheese and almost no marinara sauce. As greasy, melted cheese and marinara sauce are two of the three things I dislike most about pizza, that endeared Romanian pizzas to me somewhat. At least I could eat them without experiencing a raging stomach ache. In addition, Romanian pizzas are also thin-crust, almost without exception, which takes care of the third thing I dislike about American pizzas - too much bread.

Romanians also handle toppings differently. While American pizzas are conservative, to say the least, with toppings, Romanians really pile them on. And, since most Romanian produce is organic (they don't even have a word for organic), the mushrooms and peppers and olives are very strong-tasting. To me, American pizzas taste downright muddy, because, unless you're looking or pay attention to texture, you can't really tell whether you're eating a pepper or a mushroom. The tastes on a Romanian pizza stand out, each from the other.

And they use corn. A lot of corn. You may even find a menu proclaiming a pizza to have "Mexican vegetables." In that case, you'll have corn and peppers.

Perhaps because of the lack of marinara, the waitress will bring you a bottle of ketchup with your pizza. Before doing so, she may even ask you if you want dulce (sweet) or picante (hot). Try it. It's good. Well, insofar as pizza can be good.

In Bulgaria, you may be more likely to find sweet green peas on your pizza than corn, but the effect is very similar - except that sweet peas are nowhere near as cheerful-looking.

When you travel, it will probably be as much fun for you to order at least one pizza in each country as it will to try the traditional native cuisine. Who knows? When you return, you may have discovered you love some toppings that you never would have dreamed of before, and you can serve your friends exotic pizzas when you invite them over for a movie night.