On a recent trip to Target’s Atlantic Center location, I wandered into the dollar deals section, the best place to find such delicacies as slightly battered Charleston Chews and Whales crackers, a snack that far outshines its more-famous Goldfish competitors. On this occasion another option presented itself, with the unexpected appearance of this imported Israeli snack, in a bag illustrated with two vaguely sinister, presumably pizza loving youths. Despite the label, these Bissli bites have no real hint of pizza flavor - closer to a thin, wheaty crouton with a vegetal aftertaste - likely owing to the classic cheapo ingredient trinity of corn starch, MSG and dehydrated onion and garlic, various configurations of which assure that nothing ‘Pizza-Flavored’ ever tastes anything like pizza. Of course Bissli isn’t just in the pizza business, they also deal in taco, falafel, ‘grill’ and other varieties, which pleasantly enough all come in different shapes, a choice which at least conceivably suggests that each configuration was chosen to perfectly match its corresponding flavor profile. The vague taste of these gently palatable, grid-shaped wheat snacks also brought me to another, bigger question. What is the inspiration here? To wit, what is pizza like in Israel? This is a country that’s obviously short on Italian culture, and while that hasn’t stopped any other from indulging its own pizza proclivities, there’s also the innate obstacle of certain restrictions on mixing dairy and meat, which does serious damage to your topping possibilities. Still, this apparently hasn’t affected Israelis’ taste for pizza, and while there appears to be a healthy industry of boutique shops, slice joints and fancy pies scattered around the country, I’m going to briefly focus here on the chain industry, which allows for both a more representative picture of national preferences and a view of the corporate funhouse mirror interpretation of those tastes. Both Pizza Hut and Domino’s seem to have a reasonably large presence in Israel (56 and 33 branches, respectively), although the latter avoids the complexities and challenges of Kashrut by not keeping Kosher, and consequently setting up shop in less stringently religious neighborhoods. Pizza Hut attempts to meet dietary restrictions at some of its locations, but not at others, and caters to the observant by producing special Rabbi-approved cheese and offering advice on the appropriate Berakhah to perform with specific menu items. As for Domino's, avoiding official dietary policies hasn’t saved them from cyber-attack by Hamas, but as this sketchily translated sample menu shows, their selection of pies is both ample and decidedly foreign to the American eye. It’s hard to say exactly when fast food pizza broke off from the traditional branch of the family tree, but we’re now living in a weird world where only the most basic rules of cheese, sauce and bread apply. In most cases the dish functions as an edible, cheese bedecked plate, an arena for different flavors to do battle (often with horrific results, as repeated news items from abroad keep showing). Nothing from the above Domino's menu approaches that level, but I’m curious as to what the selections have to say about Israeli food culture, specifically the few staple ingredients which, in a typical-for-a-big-chain move, find their way into multiple pies: Bulgarian cheese (the Caciocavallo-derived Kashkaval perhaps?), Kalamata olives instead of basic black pearls (reflecting the region’s taste for saltier cured products?) and onions. Many of these pizzas bear a country name, which backs up the notion that pizza ends up reflecting the most cartoonish outlines of national cultures (the old Hawaiian ham-and-pineapple combo remains unchanged here, seeming somewhat risqué in a pig-averse nation). What ends up being just as interesting as the odd toppings, then, is the countries chosen. Do the Balkan and Greek pies grow out of regional proximity or a profusion of immigrants from that area? Why does the Mediterranean pie have jalapenos? The American option here definitely says a lot about global perceptions, represented by boring green peppers, the strange inclusion of beef shoulder and ‘spicy jalapeno sauce’, a grab-bag that reflects a fractured national cuisine. The results for 'Italy,' however, stray far from the expected, applying Alfredo sauce, spinach, and more of that mysterious Bulgarian cheese. Why all this junk, instead of a more straightforward interpretation for the nation that started it all? To say definitively would involve a serious incursion into political, geographical, social and other complex topics, a reminder that, while pizza may provide answers about any specific culture's views on foreign cuisines, those answers are just as often riddles wrapped in a crusty, cheese-filled enigma.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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