Local tradition often dictates toppings of a pizza

Brad Otten remembers the days after his Settebello Pizzeria Napoletana opened three years ago as "scary."

Otten's pizza is the real deal, officially stamped authentic by no less than the Italian government. But what's authentic isn't always familiar, and it wasn't to customers looking for American-style overloaded pies.

But today, Otten says, "people seem to be really into it. They want it served the way it was supposed to be served. We don't get a lot of crazy requests anymore."

You say tomato, I say tomahto; pizza is as personal as barbecue and marinara sauce and ... well, any food we remember from childhood.

"A lot of times the requests are tied into the person's cultural background," says John Arena, co-owner of Metro Pizza and an adjunct professor of pizza-making at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "People think it's part of tradition, but it's local tradition; that's largely what dictates what people like on a pizza."

Pizza culture, he says, often is based on what was readily available in the area. Chicagoans, he says, tend to like sausage on their pizza, because at the time Chicago-style pizza came into its own, the city was the hog-butchering capital of the United States and sausage was inexpensive there. In New Haven, Conn., he says, clams are popular on pizza, because they were readily available there.

Metro Pizza used to do a cultural exchange with a pizzeria in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Arena says. The most popular pizza there? Tuna and banana.

No lie. And it makes sense to Arena.

"In the U.K., they eat a lot of tinned fish and meat," he says. The tuna tends to be salty, he says, so the sweet fruit balances it, in much the same way some Americans like ham and pineapple on their pizza.

For a while, Arena says, he had a regular customer who liked peanut butter and anchovies on his pizza. The man was a native of Thailand, known for its peanut-based sauces.

French people and those from the Piemonte region of Italy, which borders France, often will ask for a raw egg to be broken atop their pizza just before it goes into the oven, Arena says. "It's almost like hollandaise sauce."

And those from the American Midwest -- chiefly Wisconsin and some parts of Minnesota -- like sauerkraut on their pizza. Arena says he doesn't usually stock it, but since Metro's Tropicana Avenue location is near a grocery store, he'll send somebody for it if he gets a request.

Arena has extensively studied regional pizza types and is open to them all, willing to accommodate special requests, no matter how strange.

Otten, whose pizzeria must hew to a specialized set of guidelines to maintain its Verace Pizza Napoletana certification, is more of a purist.

"The most consistent American request we get is for ranch dressing on the side of a pizza," he says.

"But that's one of those deal-breakers. We'll never have that."

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.