We didicate this page to the origins of Italian cuisine and to shed some light on the names that are used for the many Italian dishes. And to present a Taste of Italian History. As time goes on we will update the page with we hope that this will be informative, educational and historical information.

A Piece of History: Unlike the wealthy minority, these Neapolitans required inexpensive food that could be consumed quickly. Pizza—flatbreads with various toppings, eaten for any meal and sold by street vendors or informal restaurants—met this need."Judgmental Italian authors often called their eating habits ‘disgusting."

These early pizzas consumed by Naples’ poor featured the tasty garnishes beloved today, such as tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies and garlic.

King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. Legend has it that the traveling pair became bored with their steady diet of French haute cuisine and asked for an assortment of pizzas from the city’s Pizzeria Brandi, the successor to Da Pietro pizzeria, founded in 1760.

An ocean away, though, immigrants to the United States from Naples were replicating their trusty, crusty pizzas in New York and other American cities, including Trenton, New Haven, Boston, Chicago and St. Louis.

The Neapolitans were coming for factory jobs, as did millions of Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they weren’t seeking to make a culinary statement. But relatively quickly, the flavors and aromas of pizza began to intrigue non-Neapolitans and non-Italians.

The first documented United States pizzeria was G. (for Gennaro) Lombardi’s on Spring Street in Manhattan, licensed to sell pizza in 1905. (Prior to that, the dish was homemade or purveyed by unlicensed vendors.) Lombardi’s, still in operation today though no longer at its 1905 location, “has the same oven as it did originally,”

In general pizza standard is set by the Neoplolitans, they pride themselves on their original recipies and traditions.

No such thing as a Peperoni Pizza! The word Peperone in Italian means Bell pepper, peperoni is the plural of Peperone. The item that is placed on a pizza that everyone calls peperoni is really called Salsiccia Picante which means Spicy Sausage. In Italian, the word peperoncino means hot spicy peppers. Pepperoni" is a borrowing of peperoni, the plural of peperone. The correct definition is spicy saussage not peppers.