Thanks for picking up on that. This is exactly correct — the pizza ovens in Venice are simply different, which means Venetian pizzamakers can’t cook the same kind of pizza as elsewhere in Italy.
I’ll come back to that in a moment, but turning to the Americans in the thread, here’s an analogy that might provide some context and help them understand the distinction.
A Chicago-style hot dog doesn’t have ketchup on it. Full stop. This doesn’t mean anything about your own personal preference for or against ketchup on a hot dog. Your preference, indeed, may rise to the level of insistence, that, when you get a hot dog, ketchup must be included or excluded. It’s perfectly fine for one or the other to be your preference. But what’s not fine is that a Chicago-style hot dog specifically cannot have ketchup on it.
To be very clear: You can go to Chicago, and you can get a hot dog, and you can put ketchup on it. You can then call it delicious. What you cannot do is call it a Chicago-style hot dog, because that kind of hot dog has a specific definition, entirely separate from one’s own personal taste.
Regarding pizza, the American concept is pretty flexible and wide ranging. Thin crust, thick crust, stuffed crust, deep dish, and on and on: if you have a bready base, covered in toppings, it’s pizza. You could chop up some hot dogs, mix them in ketchup, spread that on the bottom half of a hamburger bun, sprinkle cheddar cheese on it, and bake it in the oven, and most Americans, I think, would be comfortable saying that resides within the large circle of the “pizza” set. It might be close to the edge, but it’s inside the circle. And, in fact, depending on certain conditions, it might actually be quite delicious. I can imagine the making of these as a hands-on activity for a kids’ birthday party, and I bet the partygoers would be happy to eat them, without quibbling over terminology.
But for the purpose of understanding pizza in Italy, these ketchup buns neither qualify nor compare. Pizza means something more specific to Italians than it does to Americans. There are actual rules and definitions. The much-shared factoid about pineapple pizza being “illegal” or “outlawed” in Italy is definitely false, but there is a small nugget of truth underneath it, insofar as the Italian understanding of pizza is narrower than the American version.
The point is, in Venice, the limitation on the ovens means they can’t make pizza the way Italians expect it to be made. To whatever extent they may be attempting to replicate or simulate the kind of pizza you’d find elsewhere in Italy, the lower-temperature ovens mean they simply can’t achieve the same level of quality. And to whatever extent they’re therefore changing the recipe and making something else that’s more appropriate for their ovens, it’s not the same product.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be delicious. As LHoD noted, he has fond memories of a pizza “full of fresh herbs.” I wasn’t there to taste it, but I can definitely see how an herb-laden flatbread with a few toppings would be quite enjoyable. It would, however, necessarily, be a compromise to the reality of the lower-powered oven. If you don’t have the ability to blast the crust and develop the flavor in the Italian style, then you need to bring flavor by other means. And when you do that, you’re diverging from the Italian pizza tradition. It can, indeed, be delicious, if made well. But at a certain point, you’re departing from the Italian style. I’ve had a lot of pizza in Italy, and being loaded with herbs is not something I’ve really seen anywhere. Some torn basil, of course, but not more than that. Sure, it could be good. But it’s not the norm, at least in my experience.
You are free to reject this perspective. You can choose to shrug at the distinction. If you want to order focaccia with embedded olives and a dusting of Parmigiano Reggiano and believe you’re eating pizza because it has bread and toppings and cheese, you’re free to do so, just as you’re free to go to Chicago and put ketchup on your hot dog. If you want to say that you personally like a Papa John’s pizza better than anything made by the greatest pizzaiolo in Naples, other people might raise their eyebrow at you, but your palate is your palate.
But if you want to eat pizza made the Italian way, you shouldn’t order it in Venice. There are much, much better options. That’s all I’m saying.