Things No Self-Respecting Adult Should Do While Eating Pizza

Cole Saladino/Thrillist
Cole Saladino/Thrillist

Legendary Iron Chef Morimoto once personally confided to me, "For food, the only rule, is no rules." He clearly never witnessed the warped ways our society messes up the simple act of noshing pizza (also, let me pick up that name I dropped back there, sorry). In my opinion, gastro-etiquette is the bedrock that holds society together, so I urge you, if you consider yourself an adult, anyway, to abide by these 21 pizza-eating rules. Forgive me for disagreeing with you, Chef. 

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Cut the slice with a fork and knife

Commit this cardinal pizza-eating sin and slight against the Italian-American gods and you'll be required to recite at least four Frank Sinatra songs and watch Goodfellas twice before receiving reconciliation. It's even worse than using cutlery with your Snickers (sorry Seinfeld). Prime offender: NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. Rudy Giuliani might not have a soul, but at least he knew how to eat a slice like a New Yorker.
 

Complain when people fold it

The standard New York/New Jersey method of folding your slice before you shove it between your gums has some (admittedly well-spoken) detractors. But the tri-state area is a pizza mecca, and as such the only right way to eat your pizza is like a sweaty Italian in a wife beater on a Brooklyn stoop. Testa di cazzo!
 

Eat chain or frozen pizza if other options are available

Speaking of Italians, unless you are in a marinara wasteland, void of any Famous Ray's, Little Johnny's, Fat Tony's, Uncle Luigi's, and all other generic-but-equally-mom-and-pop pizza shops, please don't resort to ordering from a big pizza chain or firing up your nuke-machine. It's almost never as good. Exception to the rule: it's 3am and you can't leave the house because you are really, really sto... um, tired.

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Soak up the grease with a napkin

If you have any semblance of man/womanhood, you won't dab your grease. You ordered a pizza, dude, not a wedge salad. You knew you were going all in. And... if you must, must, must get some of the grease off, prop your pizza up on one side, and let the excess grease drain out into the box. It's like an Aztec aqueduct, but with way more calories and a lot more awkward looks from the waitstaff.
 

Put pineapple on top

There should be no fucking fruit on top of pizza. Unless that fruit is a tomato or pepper, because no one considers peppers or tomatoes fruit except for Wikipedia. And farmers, I guess. "Well, what about Hawaiian pizza, you dick?" you ask? Well, interesting specialty pizzas have their place on counter displays... but ultimately they're kind of irrelevant novelties, like the Full House reboot or Bernie Sanders (prove me wrong kids, prove me wrong).
 

Not tip the delivery guy at least $4, maybe $3

I was a delivery boy. You get all greasy, people yell at you, you have to do simple math in your head, and mainstream pornography vastly overestimates the amount of random sex acts that occur on the job. Give a little love to the little guys out there, or they might lick your crust next time... and that's not a euphemism. 

Cole Saladino/Thrillist

Dip the slice in ranch dressing

Listen, ranch tastes good on everything. You know it, I know it. You could put ranch dressing on Steve Harvey's head and half the people in his studio audience would have no problem licking it all off, and the other half probably just ate. We, as a society, need to demonstrate condiment self-control. Ranch on pizza is just too much. You might as well wrap your slice around a stick of butter and book an appointment with your local heart surgeon. The same goes for hot sauce, Sriracha, applesauce, maple syrup, Funfetti dip (all things I've seen people dip pizza in), and anything else that doesn't already come on pizza.  
 

Shake the pepper, garlic, or Parmesan cheese more than three times

As my grandpa once told me over a urinal cake, "If you shake it more than three times, you are just playing with it." A similar concept applies here. If you cover your pizza with more than three tips of a pungent tableside accoutrement, you mask all the delicious flavor that makes pizza noble and holy in the first place.  
 

Eat stuffed crust of any kind

Do you really need hot dogs, chili cheese, and peanut M&M's jammed inside your pizza's butt? Forget booking an appointment with your heart surgeon, you should probably hit up the funeral parlor. 

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Drink milk with a slice

This is only acceptable if you are 7, or had your tongue scraped clean by an industrial sander (it's gross... that's what I'm trying to say). 
 

Top it with more than two meats or one vegetable

Anything more dilutes the true essence of your pizza. On second thought, three meats is probably OK. Actually, three meats is always OK.
 

Or, by extension, order a supreme pizza

Eating a supreme pizza is like funneling every spirit on the bar simultaneously into your mouth. It sounds good... in theory. But then again, so did Communism and the live-action Garfield movie.

Cole Saladino/Thrillist

Eat it upside down 

Putting your cheese on the bottom of your burger? That, I get. But flipping your pizza around will leave you with a cheese/sauce stain on your lap, some awkward stares, and the disapproval of almost everyone.
 

Eat it crust first 

Some people are so back-asswards they even eat their pizza that way. 
 

Call it 'za, and be serious about it

Like wearing a Puddle of Mudd T-shirt or reading Atlas Shrugged, some things are only acceptable to do if you know full well how stupid they are. Here's a nice alternative: just call it "'izz."

Cole Saladino/Thrillist

Tear the cheese off or squeeze out the sauce

Unlike your IKEA FLUKTOR dresser, or the sex doll hiding in your closet, there is no assembly -- or in this case, disassembly, required with pizza. Removing any key component of the pizza renders it as useless and flaccid as you after assembling your IKEA dresser or spending an afternoon with your sex doll.
 

Reheat it in the microwave

There's no "pizza" setting for a reason.
 

Reheat it at all

Eating slices of a cold pie in the early morn' is a rite of passage. Then you throw away what's left, and your slices ride off into the sunset in a raccoon's mouth behind your garage.

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Not eat the crust

There is a special circle in hell reserved for the inventor of the Hoverboard, Vlad the Impaler, and the entire roster of the 2007 New England Patriots. Those who fill pizza boxes with discarded crust will join them in the eternal flames.

Only eat the crust

Just get breadsticks, ya dummy.

Ask to remove any of the basic three ingredients

I worked at a pizza shop for an uneventful six months during high school. We would regularly get requests to make pizzas without cheese (lactose-intolerant!), sauce (not sure, weirdos!), and one time (I shit you not) without any bread. Yes, this woman wanted a pile of cheese and sauce -- I'm not even sure how she wanted us to cook it.

Pizza is simple. If you don't like red sauce, cheese, and crust, you don't like pizza. And if you don't like pizza, well... then I don't like you.

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Wil Fulton is a staff writer for Thrillist. He actually really, really likes ranch dressing on pizza. Follow him: @wilfulton.