I would really like to know what goes on in the minds of those who think that Domino’s Pizza is a good deal to try to conquer the Italian market. The American pizzeria chain announced bankruptcy and the closure of its operation in Italy, the Financial Times reported this week.
Domino’s gringos had ambitious plans for branches in Italy. They spent seven years trying to get the thing off the ground. They opened 29 stores and dreamed of owning 2% of the Italian pizza market.
Yes, Americans aspired to bake the pizza of one in 50 Italians from Lombardy to Sicily. It’s as if Giraffa’s went to the United States to sell hamburgers, with the intention of capturing a market equivalent to the entire population of Tennessee.
An American selling pizza to an Italian is like a gaucho setting up an acarajé franchise in Salvador. It’s like Piracicaban wanting to make money with pamonha in Goiás.
Challenging the Italians in their kitchen is a war that is already lost. Americans love lost wars.
Domino’s executives probably knew the folly of the venture, but Yankee self-confidence speaks volumes. Americans believe too much in the ability to conquer, to make money, they accept as truth all the calculations and projections of the spreadsheets.
Italy, on the other hand, is a huge Asterix village, fiercely repelling attempts at cultural invasion (curiously, in the comic book, the Italians are the invaders).
When it comes to food, then, nationalism becomes regionalism, which becomes parochialism in an almost literal sense.
Italy has only existed as a unified nation since the second half of the 19th century. From the fall of Rome until then, the peninsula was broken up into kingdoms, duchies, marquisates and principalities. Neighboring provinces saw each other as enemies – and each clung to local tradition.
The rivalry continues to this day. In one village, pasta with such sauce is sautéed with onions; 15 kilometers further on, the onion is a mortal sin in the same dough recipe.
When it comes to defending gastronomy from outside offenses, though, Italians are united. It’s an international joke how seriously they get pissed off every time someone breaks spaghetti in half before throwing it in the pan.
There is even an Instagram profile called @italians_mad_at_food (“Italians guns for food”), which denounces the atrocities committed against pizzas, lasagnas and cappuccinos.
Brazil is a regular visitor to the page – there was a success there a bar in Paranaguá that puts whole crabs on pizza.
Food is the last pillar of the Roman Empire that is still standing. Italy colonized the rest of the world with pasta and pizza. It’s a superpower and, as such, it talks rudely to those who disrespect its dictates – putting pineapple on pizza or cream on carbonara, for example.
In pizza, there never was Pax Americana. Still worth the Pax Romana or not even that. It’s the Pax Neapolitana, really.
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