Tomorrow is December 31st, 2019, the last day of the decade!
The decade started off with a bang when Slice was established in 2010 to help grow the pie for mom & pop pizzerias. Over the next ten years, things only got bigger and better in the world of pizza.
Before we roar into the Twenties, let’s take a look back at the 10 best pizza moments that defined The Tens:
10. The Random Acts of Pizza community
In 2010, Daniel Rogers was out of work and feeling disconnected from society. In his malaise, he came up with the idea for “Random Acts of Pizza”, a Reddit community dedicated to getting pizza to those in need. The community has since become famous for sending pizza to thousands of individuals nationwide, as well as to first responders at disaster and emergency sites.
9. McCauley Culkin’s Pizza Underground.
In 2013, McCauley Culkin started a Velvet Underground cover band, except with pizza-themed song names and lyrics. The band even gave out boxed pizzas to people who attended their live performances. There’s, uh, really not much more we can do to explain this one.
8. Totino’s Pizza Rolls SNL skits
As far as we’re concerned, SNL’s (parody) Totino’s Pizza Rolls commercials were as timeless as Celebrity Jeopardy and Wayne’s World. Live Taped from New York, Vanessa Bayer played the role of a suburban housewife taking care of her “hungry guys” with the popular snack. Some of the most memorable commercials featured turns from Larry David, JK Simmons, and (our favorite, embedded below) Kristen Stewart.
7. Community: “Remedial Chaos Theory”
During its 2009-2015 run, Community received acclaim from both critics and fans alike, especially for its heavy use of meta-humor and pop culture references.
Considered one of the best of the entire series, the 2011 episode “Remedial Chaos Theory” is centered around the study group playing Yahtzee at Troy’s housewarming party, exploring separate “timelines” of what would happen if each main character went downstairs to collect a pizza from the delivery guy.
Our favorite is undoubtedly Troy’s timeline:
6. Italian people react to pineapple on pizza
We here at The Sauce have blogged about pizza’s most divisive topping on several occasions. Our favorite moment, however, is this video from 2017 – watch as Italians react to pineapple being included on their delivery pizza:
5. Jon Stewart rants about deep dish pizza
Continuing on the theme of strong pizza opinions, the second-most passionate pizza debate is New York Pizza vs Chicago Deep Dish. Both cities are fiercely proud of their signature style, and for good reason: both are delicious.
During a 2013 spat about which city had the tallest building in the United States, New York (well, New Jersey) native, Jon Stewart, famously took the Windy City to task for its signature cuisine:
4. Breaking Bad: Walter White lands a full pie on the roof
If you ask the public about the best TV series from the last decade, AMC’s Breaking Bad is sure to feature high on most people’s lists. It’s certainly a contender for the top spot on mine.
The show had several iconic moments — “I am the danger”, Gus Fring’s end, the near-perfect finale — but perhaps one of the most famously unintentionally hilarious scenes is from the 2010 episode “Caballo Sin Nombre” where Walter White, during a moment of frustration, lands a full, unsliced pizza pie on the roof of his family home.
3. Eat Pray Love: Pizza Margherita in Napoli
One has to wonder how much the 2010 Julia Roberts movie Eat Pray Love did for tourism in Italy. The film follows a newly divorced woman’s trip of self-discovery, which includes a tour of food in the country (the “Eat” part of the title).
One of the more famous scenes from the movie sees Roberts’ character champion the value of margherita pizza in Naples. At one point she even declares “I’m in love! I’m having a relationship with my pizza!”.
2: Ellen orders pizza to the Oscars
In 2014, Ellen DeGeneres had several notable moments while hosting the Academy Awards. She opened with a great monologue, she took a famously A-list selfie which became one of the most retweeted tweets of all time, and she dressed as Glenda the Good Witch. Our favorite, however, is obviously when she had pizza delivered to the hungry celebrities in the audience.
Want to live like an A-lister and order your own pizza from Big Mama’s & Papa’s Pizzeria in LA? Good news: you can, on Slice!
1: Pizza Rat
There’s little doubt that New York’s favorite food is pizza. Residents of the Big Apple are known for working long hours, and the simple slice is an oft-treasured reward at the end of a long day. In 2015, we discovered that this is true not only for the city’s 8M+ human residents, but members of its sizeable rodent population too.
Pizza Rat captured the nation’s imagination and sparked the imagination of many, inspiring a ton of pizza rat merchandise. It even resulted in a local minor league team, the Staten Island Yankees, to temporarily rebrand to the Staten Island Pizza Rats, something that they still do for every Saturday game.
Honorable mentions:
Getting this list down to just 10 was very tough, so here’s the other moments that just missed the cut….
- The outing of Dan Janssen, the man who ate pizza every day for 25 years.
- Scott Weiner (of Really Dough and Scott’s Pizza Tours) sets the world record for the world’s largest pizza box collection.
- Lady Gaga orders pizza without pants on.
- Patrick Stewart HAS HIS FIRST SLICE OF OF PIZZA(WTF?!)!!
- The mayor of New York City (Bill DeBlasio) eats pizza with a fork (no comment).
- A Texas restaurant sets a new world record for the largest pizza.
- Pizza to the Polls makes the democratic process more appetizing in 2016.
Happy new decade everybody!
P.S. I absolutely wanted to include the famous Alfredo’s Pizza Cafe vs Pizza by Alfredo debacle from The Office in this list, but then realized this happened in 2007.