Presumably caused by the Tralfamadorians.
I thought it was Vogons. Something about intergalactic highways or some such.
Ah, the poetry!
“If you want to see true audacity, do an image search for ‘Altoona-style pizza.’”
I am a bit disapointed to see that even xkcd is a provincial US-American in some regards, unable to think beyond the East and West coasts.
Which not-so-big city’s style is at the high point of the shaded area? (I’m guessing New Haven.)
I’m not sure I get what your complaint is. I think the panel suggests that a large city is unlikely to have an awful “regional” type of pie, while small cities can have regional styles that range from excellent to disastrous. I’d expect that Chicago, Detroit, and Naples all fit in nicely to this “various regional specialty” pizza. And Altoona is getting the shade it deserves.
But New York’s famous floppy grease triangle is getting more credit than it deserves.
My complaint is that I don’t see Naples, Italy, fitting in that graph. I will assume you meant the Italian city, not the others further down in my disambiguation link.
I don’t believe there are small cities that have regional styles for pizza anywhere but in the USA. There is no Marseille pizza style, or Brighton pizza style, or Bamberg or Nürnberg pizza style. Not even Berlin pizza style. No Copenhagen pizza style, or Roskilde pizza style. Or Oslo, or Moscow, or Nairobi pizza style. Jeez, calling a pizza a pie is already a sign of culinary US depravation, though it probably is correct, in a sense. Just don’t call it that.
BTW: Nice username / avatar / post combination. I feel it supports my argument, but I guess you feel differently.
Hot dogs, OTOH:
I still say that there’s no such thing as “New York style” pizza. What New York calls “New York style” is just what the rest of the country calls “pizza”, and if New Yorkers deigned to recognize the existence of the rest of the country, they’d realize that.
Naples is pretty sizeable town, like a million people so maybe by the Y in “CITY” on the graph? Neapolitan is their style of pizza, and there’s definitely part of the graph up there with high tastiness, way higher than NY even. The only way it wouldn’t fit is if their pizza is Altoona quality.
I’m not so sure about that. At least to my mind “New York” pizza is categorized by rather large, thin and very floppy slices, to the point it’s sometimes difficult to eat them without spilling toppings. “Standard” pizza is thicker and sturdier.
And, for that reason, they’re usually ordered with no more than one topping per slice.
That’s why you fold them. Sheesh.
Exactly what I mean. Neapolitan is their style, they use the demonym for the name of the recipe, not the name of the city followed by “-style”. So we get:
New York-style pizza. Not New Yorker pizza.
Altoona-style pizza. Not Altoonish pizza or Altoonian pizza.
But Neapolitan pizza. Not Naples-style pizza.
I see a difference. The “-style” ending is US exceptionalism provincialism.
I thonk we can safely assume that although xkcd’s usual topics, science & nathbore universal Earth-wide if not farther, all his cultural commentary is US,centric to the point of being US-limited.
The diagram could have had a some asterisks about US city size and tastiness as perceived by US audiences, but that’d have been over-explaining the joke.
There was that one time Randall tried to show how provincial Americans are…
I’d love to order pizza and reliably get New York style pizza, like I used to get fresh from the oven (in New Jersey admittedly) when I was a lad.
Lotta national & regional chain & franchise pizza nationwide is, as @Chronos says, de facto NYC-style. IOW USA-style which Gotham City provincials wrongly assume is from their hometown
It’s the local chains & MomnPops who deviate from the US standard towards whatever local standard, be it nice or horrific.