While looking through my photos for this recent post about a great fish pizza I had in Kansas City, I made a terrible and yet not altogether shocking discovery: I have eaten more pizza in this last year than possibly all of my adult life combined.
I guess I’ve always known I was a closet pizza addict, but had never really admitted it to myself. As someone who still remembers all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles names from my childhood, I guess my respect for their apparent pizza addiction even at that tender age should have set off alarm bells.
This last year, however, I have been able to let my inner pizza aficionado loose.
It hasn’t been difficult. Pizza by the slice is available on almost every street corner in much of eastern and western Europe. Even in Asia, where it is often difficult to find a decent “Western-style” pizza, there are still several large international chain restaurants serving a good pie. In fact, pizza constituted most of our meals in Serbia, particularly at one local restaurant whose crust and toppings were so good we visited the place seven times in total while we were there. Even the waiting staff seemed to think that was too much.
So I thought I would compile a collection of my best pizza experiences from this last year. Feel free to thank me later.
Italy
I had to start with the birthplace of pizza: Italy. I learnt the true meaning of a “margherita” pizza here, and seriously had some of the pizza of my life in Bologna.
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| Margarita pizza with fresh basil and mozzarella |
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| Pizza with artichoke, mushrooms, ham and olives |
Malaysia
There often comes a time when you’re travelling in Asia when you just can’t take any more Asian food. As great as it is, sometimes a girl just needs some cheese. This was were Papa John’s stepped in.
Criticise me all you like, but this pizza tasted damn good when I hadn’t consumed bread or cheese in a looong time. And the garlic butter? Yum.
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| Papa’s “Special” with jalapenos, mushrooms, ham, green pepper, onions and olives |
Croatia
I only spent around six days in Croatia, but while I was there I consumed pizza on at least two of the days. This pizza was my favourite, simply because I’d never had egg on a pizza before and it was surprisingly delicious.
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| Pizza with ham, prosciutto, mushrooms and egg |
Germany
I took total advantage of having a kitchen at my disposal in Munich to regularly make homemade pizza. There was fresh pizza dough and delicious toppings at the supermarket, plus pizza places in the city weren’t as abundant as in other European countries.
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| Homemade pizza with mozzarella, ham and jalapenos |
Serbia
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| Pizza with prosciutto, ham, spicy peppers, sour cream and mushrooms |
Montenegro
You may already be noticing a pattern emerging here with the pizza we were eating in Europe…..it mainly all had ham and mushrooms on it. It would appear that that is the most popular pizza topping in that part of the world, yet I’ve never really cared for having mushrooms on my pizza.
I quickly had to get over that though, otherwise I would have starved (*slight* exaggeration).
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| Slice of ham and mushroom pizza….again |
Amsterdam
Again in Amsterdam I had my own kitchen, so I took to making my own pizza topping concoctions, with delectable results.
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| Homemade pizza with beef, green peppers, mozzarella and anchovies |
So, there you have it; some of my best pizza experiences of the last twelve months. As I’ve still a lot of travelling to do, I’m pretty sure this new trend won’t end any time soon.
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