Of course. The pizza ordering scene made no sense, unlike the scene in which a Vulcan mind-melded with a humpback whale, which is completely realistic.
I get what you are both saying but, for some reason, we are ok with allowing the hocus-pocus of the movie to work. Time travel, warp drive, transporters, mind melds with whales and so on. We accept that as part of that universe and it just works.
Maybe it is an uncanny valley type thing. Obviously weird tech is ok but something that is almost normal but wrong stands out.
Like in the movie “Inglorious Basterds” where the American orders three beers and uses three fingers but they were not the same three fingers a German would have used. That is what stood out and betrayed the Americans as the infiltrators they were.
True; it may be that it being set in the 1980s, and in a location that some of us know well, triggered more BS alarms.
I’ve only been in a place that sold slices once. And I was buying something that wasn’t pizza.
Do you actually specify the size of the slice when you order? I’d like a large slice! No, wait, medium!
Not in my experience. Places that sell pizza by the slice are usually cutting them from a standard pizza size, typically cut into 6 or 8 individual slices; if you want “large,” buy two slices. 
In reality, the director just wanted to minimize the ordering bit so that we could move onto the conversation between Kirk and Gillian. It’s like how when TV and movie characters find parking spots right in front of their destination; no one wants to see them hunt around for a parking space.
Also, you don’t specify topping when buying by the slice. They have whatever they have (usually cheese, cheese/sausage and cheese/pepperoni). You can’t order your own toppings for a slice (maybe there is some place that can do that but that would be unusual).
You guys are overthinking it. The crazy spaceman from the future doesn’t know what a pizza is and orders another one because he doesn’t know they’re meant to be shared. That’s it. That’s the joke.
Right, if the order had just been “two mushroom pepperoni”, then it might be just conceivable that the place happened to have a pie like that to slice (when I was working food service in college, when I was on the pizza-by-the-slice station, I always put one in the warmer that was at least a little unusual), but specifying “extra onions” makes it clear that it’s going to be a custom order, therefore a whole pie, therefore not by the slice.
I dunno; I think it’s even more ludicrous to assume that pizza would fall completely out of the public consciousness in a few hundred years. At least, not without the complete fall of civilization.
The Eugenics Wars were totally notorious for having nearly destroyed civilization. In exactly one episode of TOS and one movie. Even worse, pizza was forgotten.
I was going to say why is the server rushing over with the bill? Is the place so busy they need to turn the table every 15 minutes?? Maybe Jim wants another beer!
But its perfectly conceivable he saw them start to get up and ran over with a bill.
And yeah, I also thought “Is Gillian testing him??”
Poor Gillian. Got stuck with a bill for two large pizzas and 2 beers…so…$18 with tip. Considering that truck she’s driving, rent may be late. Which reminds me of something
Gillian had no one? NOOOO ONNNE?? She didnt have any pets? She didnt have ANY family? Cause she just took off.
I think she’s a time traveler and just hitched a ride back. She sure got a Science ship job quickly.
"KHANNNNNNN!!!: …annnnnnn…annnn
“You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable.”
Or in other words, mind melding can be whatever the writers say it is - but pizza is pizza.
Well put…I might steal that. I think that can be used in other conversations.
And World War III, and the Post-Atomic Horror.
I always interpreted it as both: an attempt at the latter made ridiculous by the fact that he has no idea what a pizza is and so his attempt to be suave comes across as bizarre.
And this is a valid criticism of the joke. Maybe, just to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, the ascension of pizza to a pillar of the American (and therefore Federation) diet was not assured in 1986?
Time-travellers being unfamiliar with the local food is a standard sci-fi trope. Futurama had a similar joke in the episode where the gang travels back to Roswell in 1947, and Leela and the Professor try to blend in at a diner. She’s wearing a beehive hairdo and a poodle skirt and orders the Soylent Green, while he’s in a zoot suit and orders a mutton shank, paella, and a flagon of mead.
Realistically, you would only have to go back in time a few centuries to find an era where “pizza” was an oblong disk of baked dough spread with lard and sprinkled with salt, garlic, and unmelted cheese. It’s equally possible thatz by the 23rd century, pizza means something that would be unrecognizable to us now.
Food replicators only make individual portions. Kirk thinks he is ordering a large “individual” pizza. The idea of a shared meal outside of a home cooked setting is alien to someone from the 23rd Century.
OK, now that I can buy. Pizza still exists, but the standard order sizes for it have changed.