The Pizza from Hell

Last night was interesting. As a flat, we usually don’t order out food a lot. But yesterday Tamsin got an email from a chain called Hell’s Pizza, saying that there was a special deal on—gourmet pizzas for only $13! And we didn’t really know who was supposed to be cooking that night anyway, so we decided to bite the bullet and order in. I surrendered my laptop to Tams and we started to decide what to have.

This soon proved to be far more difficult than I would have ever imagined. I started off with: “I’m really just fine with cheese pizza. That’s what I like. Just cheese pizza!” Now, I had already encountered the New Zealand and Australian obsession with PILING things on their pizza, but I didn’t think this was such a foreign concept to them. But I was suddenly faced with everyone staring at me blankly. I think it was Tamsin’s boyfriend Daniel who finally said, in a tone of the utmost incredulity “cheese pizza???” I started to get a bit worried. “Um, yes. Cheese pizza. Y’know… tomato sauce. Cheese. That’s it.” The New Zealanders looked at each other. “Like a margherita pizza?” “Well… yes, basically.” I don’t think I’m making things up here when I say that most Americans think there is an important distinction between plain cheese pizza and a margherita pizza. Mainly that a margherita pizza is, well, fancier… you can usually SEE bits of mozzarella in it. And there are sometimes whole tomatoes! I just wanted your bog-standard greasy cheese pizza but I didn’t want to get into semantics with this lot.

The Hell’s Pizza web site seemed to be malfunctioning. We couldn’t get at the menu. So Tams started researching other pizza places in Wellington… apparently now that we had seized on the idea of having pizza, nothing but the best would do. She found a few and showed me pictures, asking if this was what I was imagining when I said “cheese pizza” (always said with audible air quotations). None were a perfect match, so I acquiesced to going local and having their crazy pizza, if we could ever order it.

Finally the Hell’s Pizza site seemed to kick into gear. But now we were faced with options. So many options. Not only do all of these pizzas seem to have at least five toppings, they had names all in keeping with the “hell” theme. This was going to be an ordeal. We started browsing. I liked the sound of “Sinister”… salsa, re-fried beans, jalapenos (and about a thousand other toppings), it sounded pretty delicious, if not quite what I imagined pizza should be. The others agreed this could be one of our options… and look, there was even a button to add cheese! Moving past the fact that this was being called a pizza when it didn’t even have cheese to begin with, I tried to explain to them that I it wasn’t that I needed cheese on my pizza, it was that I wasn’t really interested in all these other toppings. They seemed unconvinced. Obviously I was a cheese addict, if I wanted cheese pizza. It was suggested that I could just “go crazy” on the block of Edam in the fridge.

It was a few minutes after Tamsin discovered that there was an option to add or take away any topping, including salt, that I retired to my room and left them to their ordering. I would eat whatever came.

So when I re-emerged ten minutes later, I assumed they had finally ordered. Oh no. The site had malfunctioned again. But we knew what we wanted now… so couldn’t they just call? Well apparently our special promotion involved saying the phrase “show me the money.” Perhaps because of their extreme aversion to exhibitionists, none of the New Zealanders would stoop to that. They were apparently content to starve. So I put aside my intense fear of ordering food over the phone and called up. An hour after we had set out, dinner was ordered.

Then we hit the next roadblock. Between five of us, the meal came to $50. I had $35. Daniel had some “shrapnel.” Nobody else had cash. New Zealanders rarely carry cash—they can charge almost everything (except, apparently, pizza deliveries) to EFTPOS cards (like debit cards). This seems at once smart (less chance of being mugged for cash!) and extremely inconvenient to me, but there you go. So off the others trooped to the ATM in the village. Of course the pizza arrived before they did, meaning I had to run around the house looking for cash (and thankfully discovered that we did in fact have enough).

So, after that epic adventure, how was the pizza? Well, it was no American pizza. Other than the Mexican-themed one, we had “Grimm,” with an apricot base, chicken, pine nuts, spring onion and a few other things, and a meat-heavy one. In this and my other pizza-eating experiences over here, focus seemed to be on the toppings rather than the crust, which was neither New York-thin nor Chicago-deep. Just non-descript, doughy, blah. The one I had chosen (which remained my favourite) was the least favourite of the others because it “didn’t really work as a pizza.” None of them really worked as a pizza to me, but then I’m just an ignorant American. They were fairly tasty, and I ended up disgustingly full. And I guess that's really the point of pizza anyway.

And now if you think I am done talking about takeaway food Down Under, you are so wrong. I already had a 2-page post written up before last night, which I will post soon. But to give you a break from food I’ll provide a short anecdote from last weekend, entitled “The American on the Bus”:
Last Saturday I was getting on the bus with my flatmates. The fare was $1.50, I paid $2 and then walked down the bus, forgetting to get my change. I dashed back as soon as I noticed and the bus driver looked at me and then said to Tams, “she’s crazy!” In way of explanation, Tams told him I was American. I was now walking off, but the bus driver said something to Tams. When we sat down I asked what he had said. “I’m not sure… maybe ‘no problem!’” Daniel, who had been behind her, swiftly corrected her, “oh no. He said, ‘we don’t want the Bomb here!’”
I may never live that one down.
Good night.