Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I have a soft spot for my Chinese cleaver - it's just such a versatile tool!

Truck name: Patty Wagon

This New Year's was a disastrous symphony played in the key of tequila. I credit my survival the following day to Gatorade, much of a bag of Salt & Vinegar potato chips, and a hot mug of turkey broth, graduating later in the day to boxed mac and cheese. Not a particularly gourmet day, but that and a computer full of Top Gear episodes pulled me through.

On pizza with arugula, parmesan and lemon ...

My first time cooking pork belly, braised in apple cider and broiled to crisp. So amazingly good.

Fondest pork memory has to be the first bite of my own home-cured and smoked brown sugar/black pepper bacon.

On a plate with cheese, olives, fruit, and crusty bread.

Sweat some shallots, crisp some bacon or pancetta, add roasted grapes, with a hit of fennel and red pepper, tie it together with a splash of cream, some parm, and some basil or tarragon - a nice, atypical pasta dish.

Sliced with salt, or on pizza!

I wish I knew more about the regional variations in Indian cuisine.

Some of the examples in this article, and some of those raised in the comments (pizza-themed ice cream pies and pizza-flavored Combos, for instance) are quite clearly not pizza, failing to have really *any* of the associated characteristics. As for many of the other offerings in the comments, and elsewhere on this blog, I feel I must in complete honesty take a stance counter to much of the vehement discussions about apparently strict definitions: does chicken "belong" on pizza? Is Buffalo Chicken Pizza "pizza" or not? Is pineapple anathema?

My gut response to this kind of debate is to ask, "Who cares?" Are you so offended that someone might offer you something unorthodox on a pizza? Here is the one rule that matters, the *only* one that matters: is it good? Do you like it? Does it have something of quality or substance to offer? If so, then eat it, happily, and without the slightest worry about what to call it. If not, leave it by the wayside. I'd rather eat a fantastic pineapple jalapeno pizza than a mediocre "authentic" Margherita any day.

It's precisely the same thing that bothers me about the VPN designation. That label means absolutely nothing to me, save that it encodes some characteristics that typify quality pizza of that style. Does it matter if the crust is 4 mm thick instead of 3? Not in any conceivable way, except if 3mm is tastier than 4. Neopolitan pizza is delicious, no doubt, but its quality is not derived from a stamp from across the seas, but from good ingredients, prepared with skill.

Make the kinda of pizza you want to make, eat the kind of pizza you want to eat, that is the only rule worth consideration. Taking refuge behind labels and draconian definitions, making appeals to a sense of authenticity or purity -- to me, these seem to do little except help enforce an arbitrary feeling of superior authority, and are the kind of crutches that make me shudder anytime someone describes me as a "foodie".

Tom Colicchio.