Aart Heering
"It's fast, hot, and cheesy, but are the Romans going to eat it?" If even the New York Times asks itself that question, then I don't want to be left behind and at least try to find an answer to it. The subject of discussion is a vending machine that serves pizza baked on the spot. A month ago, the first pizza vending machine was installed in Rome, an experiment that could easily be interpreted as a provocation in the homeland of pizza.
The local press was rather dismissive, with the exception of the gourmet magazine Red shrimp, which devoted a thorough article to the new phenomenon.
The machine pizza is produced by a pioneering Food-Tech start-up, Yay Food Technologies, which is located in the futuristic Nature of Innovation Techpark Südtirol in Bolzano.
Let's Pizza, the first pizza vending machine
The intention is to set up a chain of vending machines under the name Let's Pizza in all major Italian cities. On the website www.letspizza.com reference is made with verve to the advanced technology and high-quality raw materials, which must guarantee a 'gourmet pizza' within 3 minutes, 'without waiting in the restaurant'.
The operation thus starts in Rome, where the first branch as being marketed under the name Mr. go. That is daring, because if things go well in the capital, the rest of the country will follow. But if the Romans turn their nose up at it, you can shake it as an entrepreneur.
And it's quite something, in a country that values gastronomic craftsmanship, tradition and authenticity as highly as Italy to offer a product that is prepared in 3 minutes by a small machine. And to give it the name pizza!
Frozen pizza tolerated
Frozen pizza is already tolerated at its highest by most Italians - because why would you also, when you can pick up a fresh one everywhere around the corner -, but then this so-called quality product, which is also presented as fresh? No, that smells like swearing in church.
When these kinds of doubts and dilemmas arise, the journalist is left with only one option. That of the empirical finding. So off to Via Catania 2, an address I know well because I've lived nearby for years.
It is the top of a narrow slice of pie between two obliquely intersecting streets. Where not so long ago a sad company manufactured copper mailboxes and nameplates. Apparently that did not survive the corona crisis, so that the craft had to make way for technology here too.
Voglia matta di pizza?
Just like its predecessor, Mr. Go not impressive. A screaming billboard in the place where the glass facade used to sit indicates that if you have a giant sentence (voglia matta) in pizza, you can go here 24/24.
The point of sale itself is an equally red booth where, in addition to pizza, you can also get soft drinks from the vending machine. The range consists of four types of pizza, for € 4,50 to € 6: margherita, piccante, pancetta and quattro formaggi.
The ingredients are fed by the device of the moment removed from their airtight container. You can partly watch the preparation process through glass: mixing and kneading flour (150 grams) with water, crushing it to pizza size, adding the toppings and infrared baking at 380 degrees.
And then the brand new pizza falls into the box and it's time for the test. I have deposited 5 euros in the machine for a pizza with spicy sausage, which I use because I don't have a chair or sofa but sitting on the sidewalk.
Plastic cutlery (which is not nearly as critical in Italy as in Northern Europe) is available in a bag that is hung on the inside of the cabin. A waste bin is missing and that of an adjacent shopkeeper is hermetically closed to outsiders. So it took me a while to find the rest before I could get rid of it again.
More American than Roman
In terms of culinary experience, I must say that the filling did not disappoint me. A somewhat sweet tomato sauce and a hefty amount of melted cheese (more American than Roman) and a few wafer-thin slices of sausage. The latter is no different in the pizzeria.
But then the dough. That's the secret of a good pizza and it simply can't get light enough in 3 minutes. The bottom thus acquires a heavy, solid, somewhat cardboard-like consistency that stands in the stomach but is difficult to describe in jubilant tones.
But hey, I'm not picky, I'm hungry and I paid for it. So as a good Dutchman I just eat the box empty. But now I do have an answer to the initial question. No, this will not be a serious alternative for Roman citizens who can pick up a better product for less at their neighborhood pizzeria.
At night the pizza machine can be a godsend
But it changes when it's closed. You won't find vending machines in Rome and for late night students and tourists – and there are quite a few of these in the area – the vending machine pizza can be a godsend, when at a late hour the stomach is empty and the papillae is numb. Especially now that the curfew has come to an end.
Apparently that is also the target group, judging by the chubby foreign-looking young man on the advertising poster, whose head you can see that he is not averse to beer and junk food.
This makes the vending machine pizza a Roman alternative to the bamibal and the frikandel special that I was happy to eat with a sip in my younger years.
If that realization sinks in, I foresee a golden future for Let's Pizza. But I also endorse Gambero Rosso's conclusion: The pizza of quality, però, è altra cosa: The quality pizza, that's something else.
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