Name: Pizza.
Age: In its modern incarnation, about 200 years old; in its origins, positively neolithic.
Appearance: Flat, round, topped with expressionistic arrangement of red, white and green.
What is it? It’s a pizza. Everybody knows what a pizza is.
So you’re referring to the popular foodstuff. Yes, but pizza is so much more than that: culinary classic, cultural touchstone, stuffed crust abomination, index of civil disorder.
Index of civil disorder? You can tell a lot about a society’s deterioration from its pizza, if you know how to read the signs.
Speaking of signs, I was once served a pizza that looked like Jesus, but I sent it back because it had anchovies on it. To be fair, we’re talking more about pizza deliveries.
And after they took the anchovies off, it looked more like Billie Jean King. Are you paying attention?
No, I’m thinking about pizza. Where were we? In the United States, where during a year of political turmoil and civil unrest, foot traffic at restaurants is about 5% down.
I guess it’s hard to choose appetisers when you think you’re about to be shot. Pizza delivery, on the other hand, is up, to the extent that delivery chain Papa John’s has seen its share price nearly double between December and July. Domino’s stock has also risen dramatically.
So American consumers have transferred the unacceptable risk of going outside to delivery drivers? It would seem so. Let’s hope they’re tipping well.
Pizza is a big deal in the US, isn’t it? It is. First introduced to the US by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, pizza is now a $30bn industry. It is said that Americans consume about a hundred acres of pizza a day.
Is this trend for holing up and ordering in set to continue? “We expect this phenomenon will play out at least through the general election in November,” says restaurant analyst Chris O’Cull.
Or, if Trump gets in, for the next four to eight years. If Trump gets in, I expect people will start cooking their own pizzas, on discarded hubcaps over open fires.
Do say: “Pizza is like sex: when it’s good, it’s amazing; when it’s terrible, it’s still pretty good.”
Don’t say: “And also, when you’re feeling bad about yourself, you can always order some online.”
