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Originally Posted by someone123
This seems a little mixed up to me. You're responding to isaidso's subjective claim about quality by making an abstract appeal to history and culture that seems to include a bunch of presumptions about what Nova Scotia doesn't have. Nova Scotia is a place that, understandably, Americans tend not to know the first thing about, so I am usually a little suspicious when see arguments like yours. In any case, you don't have to be Italian to make or eat good pizza, and a region doesn't have to be full of Italians in order for pizza to be popular there. Italians could make the same argument about New Jersey that you made about Nova Scotia.
I am also suspicious whenever I hear claims about food that are based on numbers of restaurants, how big the food is, how cheap it is, or how long it's been around for. I'd rather live in a city with a couple of good pizza places than a city where there's a mediocre one on every corner. The West Coast is not so bad now that Neapolitan-style pizza has become trendy (you are supposed to use San Marzano tomatoes, 00 Italian flour, etc., and each major West Coast city has a few of these places now), although that is a different animal from what you find around NYC or Chicago.
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My original point that certain regions of the continent can claim to be meccas or certain cuisine, including pan-American foods like pizza or burgers. And tha there's nothing arrogant about recognizing NJ as such a region. Similarly for barbecue in TX, etc. Perhaps the number of Italians living their is important, perhaps not; I tend to think it is.
(Side note: I would be interested to know how many Italians were living in Toronto in 1900 vs today, and compare this percentage to that in NJ or Philly. Some people on this site want to overstate Toronto's history as a locus for immigration, which it really hasn't been until comparatively recently).
In New York City, there is indeed a crappy pizzeria on nearly every corner. NJ > NY pizza anyday. Thus, I'm certainly not arguing that quantity alone makes a region's specialization in a given cuisine. I'm also skeptical of any pizzeria that claims to only use Italian tomatoes and flour; shouldn't we support local ingredients and farmers?! This kind of uppity artisanal attitude usually means the cuisine in question is novel to the area, doesn't have the pedigree there etc...
isaidso seems to perceive that there is a US media bias or conspiracy to neglect Canadian contributions to North American culture, thus Halifax pizza isn't receiving its due. Halifax may be many things and not known to Americans, but can we really claim it as a "node" for good pizza? If we allow this to Halifax, shouldn't we allow it to about 50 other N. American cities and areas?