Irish people have a very strange understanding of "pizza"
I've been a fan of Blindboy Boatclub since I first discovered "Horse Outside," his hit(?) song with the Rubberbandits (and later, by complete happenstance, ended up staying at the same hotel that's featured in the video). His podcast consistently delivers a random, rambling mi(C)nage i trois of weird knowledge, cultural connections, empathy, and utter hilarity, and his delightful short story collections take the traditions of Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien and thrust them erotically into the social media sphere.
Or, if you want a perfect microcosmic metaphor for his career, there's this Twitter thread, where Blindboy talks about his misconceptions of pizza while growing up in Limerick, which goes from silly childhood observation to profoundly resonant insight about cross-cultural communications in a post-colonial edge. And Ninja Turtles.
I finally had a pizza, It was on one of my childhood birthdays, a small frozen one from dunnes, my ma refused to put the oven on for it due to the extravagance of putting an oven on for one item. So she fried it in a pan instead.
- Rubber Bandits (@Rubberbandits) January 1, 2020
Blindboy was not alone in this strange experience, as the replies swiftly reveal:
I have a memory of my late grandfather taking us to get pizza at the Parkway Dunnes in Limerick in the early 90s. You assembled the toppings yourself, and he insisted on piling on a mound of ham cheese &sweetcorn to make a proper feed of it.
- Eoin Daly (@eoinmauricedaly) January 1, 2020
Because of TMNT I thought marshmallow and pepperoni was a proper pizza topping. So I asked my mum to top a standard frozen pizza with marshmallows and pepperoni. It was absolutely gross, as per the warnings I ignored previously.
- RappingPresence (@grumpy30ishnerd) January 1, 2020
Way way back in the day, before tomatoes were brought to Italy from South America, pizzas were made with garum, a delightful concoction made of fermented fish guts. Any fatty fish would do, but anchovies were preferred. So in a way you were right, just really really old school.
- AgTuiteiil (@LMacMuiris) January 1, 2020
I grew up in Irish-American family in New Haven, the birthplace of American pizza, so I had genuinely never thought about the appropriative abomination that might happen to those delicious pies in other places in the latter half of the 20th century.
But then my friend Darach i Seaghdha, host of the Motherfocloir podcast, took this even further, with some deep-dive research into historical Irish newsclippings on pizza:
An article about "pizza" from the Evening Herald in 1974. pic.twitter.com/NuoG6fEs4L
- Darach (@darachos) January 1, 2020
In 1977 the Irish Independent suggested making pizza with a scone base.
Because scones are reassuringly Irish and familiar. pic.twitter.com/aBTNHFpZjc
- Darach (@darachos) January 1, 2020
SCONES.
Irish Press, 1966.
Pizza is a round cake filled with anchovies, tomatoes and cheese. pic.twitter.com/7P8W4PLRgK
- Darach (@darachos) January 2, 2020
CAKE.
Irish Press, 1971. A social diarist on the women's page is impressed by a suave bachelor friend who offered her pizza. pic.twitter.com/T7oFdXYlGV
- Darach (@darachos) January 2, 2020
I knew that pizza was a versatile thing. I just " never thought about the ways that other places might interpret it before the Internet. My mind is sufficiently blown.
(Also I'm " kind of morbidly curious about that scone pizza)
Image via Jackie/Flickr and deliberately chosen to piss off my Irish friends who hate the American trend of dying everything green and calling it "Oirish."