Pizza Facts

Hey have you ever wanted to know the origin of pizza? Well here you go.

Pizza used to be a royal dish (so I guess we are royalty) it was first created in 1889 for Queen Margherita of Italy. The colours represented the Italian flag!

Here are a few more interesting points about pizza's history:

• Ancient Flatbreads: The concept of flatbreads with toppings dates back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all ate versions of flatbreads topped with things like oil, herbs, spices, and cheese. The Greeks had a flatbread called plakous.

• The Birth of Modern Pizza in Naples: Modern pizza, as we mostly know it with tomato and cheese, was born in Naples, Italy, in the late 18th to early 19th century. Naples was a thriving waterfront city with a large, poor, working-class population (lazzaroni). They needed cheap, easy, and quick food, which street vendors provided with flatbreads topped with simple, affordable ingredients like garlic, oil, anchovies, and eventually, tomatoes.

• Tomatoes were a late addition: Tomatoes, being a "nightshade," were initially viewed with suspicion and thought to be poisonous by many Europeans after being introduced from the Americas. They were embraced by the poor in Naples because they were cheap, making their way onto the flatbreads.

• The First Pizzeria: The world's first documented pizzeria, Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba, opened in Naples in 1830. Before that, pizzas were typically sold by street vendors.

• The Margherita Connection (with a twist): While the Pizza Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, basil) is famously said to have been created in 1889 by baker Raffaele Esposito for Queen Margherita of Savoy to resemble the colors of the Italian flag, historical evidence suggests that a pizza with those exact toppings was already common in Naples years before that. The Queen's royal approval, however, definitely helped elevate the dish's status beyond the food of the poor.

• Pizza in America: Italian immigrants, particularly those from Naples, brought their traditions to the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first documented pizzeria in the U.S., Lombardi's, opened in Manhattan in 1905.

• The Post-WWII Boom: Pizza's popularity exploded in the United States after World War II. American soldiers stationed in Italy came home with a taste for the dish, turning it from an "ethnic food" into a widespread American favorite and leading to the development of regional styles like New York-style, Chicago deep-dish, and St. Louis-style.

• UNESCO Heritage: The traditional art of making Neapolitan pizza, known as "Pizzaiuolo," was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2017.

Well is that what you wanted to know?