Saturday 31 December 2011

Meat and Cheese Only Part 1: The Rage Introduced (a.k.a. How To Order A Pizza)

Superman says:

As a man of habit I stick to things I like and know and stick to the mantra “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. My intention with this blog is simple – I am fighting the good fight of people who would like a plate of food without the bullshit. Don’t feed me vegetables with a side of steak. If I order Mongolian Lamb I didn't order a plate of fucking onions and capsicums - stop cost-saving and give me my lamb! A pizza doesn’t come with eighteen toppings – have you been to Italy? A burger should not contain a pickle, nor should it contain cheap tomato sauce (unless at Oporto, in which case give me extra kthnxby). In case you haven’t worked out the theme yet, meat and cheese only derives from a simple ordering technique that one needs to employ to alleviate the mess that finds its way onto my plate – tell them to hold the shit and put only the good stuff in. 

This isn’t without flaw. The good fight against the foods one doesn’t like is certainly not without incident.  In high school I went into a McDonalds and ordered a burger “meat and cheese only” (a.k.a. The Burger known in a very non-P.C. way as being somewhat irregular, deviate or unusual). Sidebar: censorship on my first post! Oh no! ... Because such a simple concept is too creative for the employees, I ended up getting a bun with nothing on it. McDonalds 1 Superman 0.

Also, ordering pizza can be a struggle. When asking for “meat and cheese only” (or in pizza’s case: “ham and cheese only”), this concept can be too non-conformist for knob employees. When met with that 10 second heavy-breathing silence as their brains try to process the order that is clearly not explicitly on the menu, you must do the heavy lifting for them:

- Option A (works 33.33% of the time): Margherita plus Ham. Tell the half stoned, 12 year old employee that they need to bill you for a margherita pizza with the additional cost of the added ham. It can also be polite to call them a moron at the end of such an explanation.

- Option B (works 66.67% of the time): Hawaiian minus Pineapple. Now I don’t know what Hawaiians have to do with a traditional pizza menu, but OK, I’ll roll with the punches. Pineapple on a pizza? I’d rather a turd sandwich. Anyway, telling the employee that you will pay the normal Hawaiian cost, despite the missing ingredient is a MUST. I can’t begin to tell you how many times their pea-sized heads shrivel into obscurity trying to deconstruct the pizza costs to work out the individual costs of toppings trying to work out how much the Pineapple is worth on a pizza. In my mind, fiscally speaking, the true cost of Pineapple on a slice of pizza is a slap in the fucking head. Next you will be putting all the other ‘juices’ on a pizza: oranges, apples, mangoes. What the fuck? Give me my ham and cheese. And hold the spit when you make it. I don’t like the taste of your disdain.

Now that you get the idea of the eternal fight, my next posts will revel in the ingredients I don’t like. As a preview, it is internationally agreeable that coriander is Satan.

Superman out. The fight against bullshit food continues. We will prevail.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Superman

    Mate your food fight is not one about fighting for “good” food – its fighting for something so neo conservative and bland that taste and flavour are devoid from the dish…..

    Your objective is not to get rid of the “mess” but to just have a tasteless pile of meat and cheese on your plate

    To start with the “mess” you are talking about is added for a reason, normally to add or develop, season something on the dish. Sure in fast food it might be filler but 99% of time
    Well Mongolian Lamb isn’t even Chinese (or Mongolian) its just a fusion overseas Chinese dish that has taken on. And the onions, garlic, herbs etc are added to give it FLAVOUR, TEXTURE and TASTE. To preclude them would simply stuff the dish….

    Now you indicate pizzas are simple ingredients put together in a simple manner. The fore fathers of pizza making in Italy and even to this day wouldn’t have access the variety of ingredients and fusions of flavours that are now available in Australia. Meat and cheese is generally all that is readily available. I can tell you right now if the poor peasant cook in Italy had access to Persian feta, Asian herbs and spices etc etc they would have chucked them on their pizzas for sure. As they are illiterate peasants the pizza concept never changed nor were these ingredients available.

    Your problems in ordering pizza’s of that type are simply not because the person is an idiot or you are…. It’s just not done anymore… it’s a minor subset of their sales. If there was a market for meat and cheese pizza’s there would be one on the menu. People’s tastes have changed, moved on and developed with all that is available and people who don’t change, are generally left behind.

    Pizza, like many things in Australia has fused with the waves of immigration to bring out an explosion in different tastes and style. To not partake in this is literally not enjoy the changes in food culture in the past 60 years. Literally this is a conversation we should be having with someone who grew up in the depression and world war 1 and 2 and deprivation… not someone who grew up and has access to the fantastic results of the mixes of food cultures in Sydney….

    The day of 3 vegs and meat with prunes and custard for dinner / desert are over…. I’m not saying these aren’t great but not trying to explosion in taste in flavours of what’s available is simply the equivalent

    I’ve had to eat a fair few dishes with tastes and flavours outside ANYTHING I’m used to. There is a particular Persian dish called ghormeh sabzi

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghormeh_sabzi

    I’m telling you now its deadest 1.01 that there would be less than 1% of western diet based Australians who could even eat this dish, its foul. To an Iranian it’s the height of food culture. Yes my palate can’t handle this BUT its just something that other cultures are still bringing into Australia and changing what we eat, hey maybe in 10 years’ time this foul dish will be a pizza.

    It’s to do with perspective. If you try new tastes and flavour combinations on existing food types and new ones you might actually discover a few you actually like. That filler / mess might be just be some taste you really like or really missing out on!

    Sticking to a strict subset of flavours and what you are use to is not really superman behaviour. There is so much going on with food in Australia, a lot of good things and you simply are burying your head in the sand on them

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  2. Sharpy

    Drop.

    Love,
    Superman
    xoxo

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  3. I Ana Ivanovic agree with Sharpy on this subject. There are lots and lots of different flavours going around these days that by not giving them a chance all you are doing is denying your self a chance to feel full filled.

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