This is maybe a hot take but some of the most authentically branded and certified pizza in Italy happened to also be some of the worst pizza I've ever eaten, and the best pizza I had in Italy was no better than a good quality pizza anywhere else. I mean they're damn good pizzas, but turns out baking a circle of dough with tomato sauce and cheese on it is a pretty basic thing to do well. And yeah I know there's complexity in all of this but it's not materially complex. Use the proper flour and hydration, knead it well, let it cold ferment for a day, shape it properly. Oh you didn't use the Roma tomatoes from Mt Vesuvius? Sorry not real pizza.

Also the demand for authentic Italian pizzas from foodies in North America has created some of the worst pizza abominations, because the skill required to shape a ball of dough by hand isn't widely present in the service industry workforce. Like yeah when the right person is in it's great, but even at these upper range places tough gummy dough inconsistently shaped is common. "Never frozen though so it's real!" Nobody can taste the difference between frozen dough that's been thawed, let to rise, and baked, if anything the longer ferment time makes it taste better.

If you can't tell I detest the ironic authenticity trend in these heavily market-researched upper range investment restaurants right now. That's not even to say the notion of authentic food is bullshit, but it seems like a lot of these type of places are more focused on creating a commodified form of what people think authentic food is, than actually making good food. Unfortunately this trend has plagued the humble pizza. I think the way to judge if a pizza is "real" is if you can consume it while walking down a street having a conversation, that's real pizza.

What all of this effort should really go to... Italy should invalidate the Italian ancestry of anyone involved with calling Chicago deep dish "pizza." That shit is a casserole, delicious as it may be. NOT PIZZA