There were times, in the more profligate days of my youth, when I would venture beyond the cozy familiarity of the cheese slice. These were, of course, the same times when my body functioned as a bottomless garbage disposal perpetually in search of fresh sustenance, and so putting away an entire pepperoni pinwheel between lunch and dinner would have little effect on my digestive system or my waistline. I might have even scarfed a beef patty sandwich or twelve. Ultimately, these sideshow items are not what distinguishes a good pizzeria, but it does help to differentiate one from another. Left out of this rundown will be pasta, breads and sandwiches, things which tend to show up at pizzerias but really only due to aspirations to partially occupy the role of a proper Italian restaurant (even if a pizzeria is usually the best place to find a good parm). Whatever their quality, these items are intrinsic to discussions of mainstream Italian cuisine, and so they will not be discussed here.
As far as history goes, the word itself means “pants”, which I’d like to imagine is a clever reference to the pastry’s “pocket,” but likely just serves as a nod to its oblong shape. They originate in Naples, alongside their pizza cousins, at some point in the late 18th or early 19th century, although like pizzas they were probably significantly smaller at this point. Each nearby region has its own version, although I’m sure if you were to get down to brass tacks you’d find dozens of others, spanning beyond facile distinctions between Basilicatan Pastizz, Apulian Panzerotti, Molisean Calcioni and Sicilian Schiacciata, not to mention whatever may be going on in Calabria.
Stromboli - What, exactly, constitutes a stromboli?. As I’ve always understood it, these are just calzones with tomato sauce inside, approximating the lava flows of the famous Sicilian volcano, although most seem to agree that it’s actually named after the 1950 Roberto Rossellini / Ingrid Bergman collaboration, their first of three together. Doing a quick image survey, I find some versions that look significantly more bready, and others that barely seem to contain any sauce at all, although all seem to involve a rolled-dough style that I’d forgotten was a part of the enterprise, not having seen the inside of one of these things in twenty-odd years. I think that rolled structure, and possibly the contents, are what specifically separates this one from the:
Sausage / Chicken Roll - One of the main priorities of Non-Pizza Pizzeria Items (henceforth referred to as NPPI) is using up excess pizza dough, which gets repurposed into dozens of different configurations. I think that’s the main reason these exist, although unlike Garlic Knots, another classic NPPI item, I’m not sure these really justify their existence. They are, admittedly, what I’ve said calzones should be, in terms of size at least, but I find that the fillings are usually insufficient. Chicken in pizzerias tends to be dry, utilizing thick wads of sauce-swaddled breast meat that don’t do well in this context. The sausage used on your standard pizza, meanwhile, tends to be of middling to low quality, which means it exudes too much grease when encased, creating a slick flow of oil inside the pastry. These qualities are not definitive, of course, but I haven’t spent enough time sampling either of these rolls to discover any standout examples. I will note that sausage rolls have a marked similarity to many different Sicilian delicacies, as described in an earlier post on Rosticcerias.
Pinwheels - Another item I haven’t touched in decades, I do retain fond memories of eating these after school, in particular unwrapping them to full length to examine their innards. Pinwheels seem to split into two distinct varieties: the Pizza Pinwheel, and the Pepperoni Pinwheel. The latter seems more common pizzeria fare, in my experience, which is strange considering the former is more easily constituted from the ingredients on hand, and the latter usually involves the thinner cold-cut form of pepperoni, not the hard kind used on pizza. Pepperoni is an American invention, a compression of a variety of different Southern Italian sausages into one crowd-pleasing product, which means that attempting to trace these back to Italy is probably a non-starter, placing them on a similar sawn-off branch of the family tree as West Virginia Pepperoni Rolls (and the much rarer Upstate NY Pepperoni Roll, by extension). Philadelphia Oreganata, as found as Marchiano’s Bakery, also appears to be related.
Garlic Knots - This is another classic that’s usually found in sub-par form in the pizzeria environment, although they’re often provided as bonus appetizers on large orders, which means I’ve consumed many more of them than I would have otherwise. One of the problems lies in the fact that pizzerias so rarely have actual fresh garlic on hand, which means you get either dehydrated bits (best case scenario) or just a dusting of garlic powder (worst) for flavoring. Excessive oil usage also tends to be a problem. When made at home, quality control is a little easier, and presentation can be improved via the method detailed in this recipe, which works well even when not applying the extra Thanksgiving fixins’. In Pittsburgh, meanwhile, the concept of old dough made new again gets pushed even further with the “Wedgie,” a sandwich formed from pizza dough. These seem to me like another new-world Calzone variant, although I think things have wandered a bit too far afield once French fries are introduced to the equation.
I’ve seen some suggestions that the trend started in Wisconsin, as a means of offloading excess cheese product, although I’m not sure such excess needs to be localized to the land of squeaky cheese curds, considering the state of U.S. dairy industry subsidies in the ‘70s and ‘80s. As a viral tweet once made abundantly clear, these are really just gussied-up string cheeses, a fact which, to my mind, confirms that they are only Italian food in the loosest possible sense. I will still invariably grab one when offered, then immediately regret it, as the slug of oversalty cheese slimetrails its way down my gullet. It’s worth noting, however, that they eat these with melba sauce in the Albany area, a bizarre combination that as with anything else, I am willing to try at least once.
Rice balls - A strictly rice-averse child, I first ate one of these due to peer pressure in 8th grade Italian class, where the heir to a local pizzeria had brought them in as a supposed sampling of the type of culture we were studying. The teacher tried to draw a line from them to the Sicilian Arancini that serves as their source, which was difficult considering the balls were by now cold, oily masses of sodden matter. This remains one of the worst eating experiences of my life, biting into a gummy ball of gelid rice, studded with the explosive charges of equally frigid peas, and forced to choke down the whole mouthful by the social restrictions against spitting food on your desk in the middle of fourth period. I have never eaten a pizzeria rice ball since, and remain convinced that this is the most accursed offshoot of the Arancino family. I may still be proven wrong, but the chance that I will ever order a rice ball at a pizzeria, with so many other options on display, is slim to none. They serve as one of the few examples of a food whose Americanization has only made taste more wan and bland, no increase in richness, no excess, no gluttonous thrill. Who is eating these?
Zeppole - These are a rarer item, and when they do appear are obviously not the Rhode Island kind, or the traditional Italian kind, but the lumpen version found at street fairs and feasts all over the Eastern seaboard. It goes without saying that they are not good at pizzerias. They are not really good at street fairs either, but they must be purchased, larded into white paper bags that immediately become damp with fryer sweat, and then half eaten, leading to the desperate move of trying to toast one for breakfast the next morning, finding yourself with an inedible mass of spongy, half-heated dough, scorched on the outside but cold in the middle. This is the only appropriate zeppole experience, in my opinion.
Bureks - An even neater example of cross-pollination has been is occurring of late in the Bronx, where the historically Apennine Arthur Avenue has become far more Balkan in the last decade or so, a shift presaged by the takeover of many ostensibly Italian restaurants by Albanian immigrants, former refugees who already spoke the language before arriving in the U.S. At places like Tony and Tina’s you can find the pizza options being edged out by a wide selection of bureks, with fillings ranging from basic cheese and meat to pumpkin. While I appreciate this cohabitation, I have to note that the best bureks in the borough are found in places that serve as their own version of local slice-shops, like the estimable Dukagjini, which serves its fresh-from-the-oven cheese pies on the same thick frilled paper plates, and will even send you away with a pizza box if you order a full one to go.
I know there are other examples I’m missing, and also that even as I write this other abominations, hybrids and cross-breeds are being tinkered with, some of which may one day enter the pizzeria lexicon. As it stands now, an exhaustive survey might continue, getting into Jalapeño Poppers, breadsticks, and wings of all sorts. Yet I’m not going to, because I do not care about any of these items at all, at least not in this context, and thus refuse to recognize their validity in any way. The line must be drawn somewhere, and it is up to each of us to decide for ourselves where it is set down.