Did you know? This is a pizza. Did you also know? This is a Picasso. Actually, that is literally a painting of Picasso himself in 1896. A self portrait. Picasso is famous for his abstract paintings that isolates high resolution shapes and colours to create the subject and the story. Technically known as Cubism. But his influence within this period of art didn’t start until much later in his career. Before Picasso became Picasso, his birth as an artist was rooted in Classicism. Basically, the opposite of the Cubism style. But what does Picasso have to do with pizza, and more specifically the Tomato Pie?   

One of my favourite pastimes is learning about how food progresses from origin to the now. How it travels through regions, topologies, climates, and cultures and how it morphs and changes and evolves with each stop it makes. 

And the pizza is maybe the greatest example of food evolution. 

And the Tomato Pie is perhaps the most important origin story of the pizza. 

The Tomato Pie is a no-cheese pizza. Sometimes, you’ll find it with Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano, or other regional hard cheeses sprinkled on top, but usually, it’s just (focaccia like) bread and tomato sauce. Most of the time, it’s rectangular; sometimes it’s round like a normal pizza, but that’s called an Apizza (pronounced a-beets), which is a coal-fired pizza from New Haven, Connecticut.

The Tomato Pie has many other names. Bread or Slab Pizza. The Sicilian. Sfincione. They all have some regional variations, but the formula is the same. But the most important aspect: it’s served cold. In fact, if you eat it hot, it’s actually not good. 

The Tomato Pie predates pizza. A logical theory points to a version of an open sandwich made with focaccia and smashed tomatoes eaten by farm labourers as their plough lunch. Which then led to baking the bread and the tomatoes together, but still eaten cold as it was packed for takeaway meals. 

The Tomato Pie ain’t no looker. 

Just like how a Picasso abstract often causes confusion, the Tomato Pie does the same. It’s difficult to understand, and at first glance (maybe even the third or the tenth), it’s not appealing. But the beauty of the Tomato Pie is really the taste. It’s one of those foods that doesn’t look good, and almost seems like it has no right to be good — let alone phenomenal. But it is. 

I discovered Tomato Pies pretty late in my life. Since that first time, I’ve eaten it hot, cold, frozen, in a salad (as croutons). It all works, except hot. 

Please note: if you re-heat a Tomato Pie in the oven, the whole slab gets soggy. And if you try to negate the sogginess by cooking it longer, it becomes a crouton. That’s how I found out it would be good in salads. 

The lifecycle of many visual artist journeys begins with basic shapes. Learning to draw circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles. The peak of their journey usually includes the most complex outputs their skills allow. But as they progress in age, their life stage dictates how they express their worlds, and very often, this is done through simplified shapes and lines, whether through necessity or desire. The art from the bookends of this journey, when examine in discrete form, without knowing the whole story, can often look mediocre or even unappealing. But when you bite into that whole story and there is a connection through understanding, it all makes sense. 

The Tomato Pie looks ordinary. Modest would be a nicer word. But just like Picasso’s earlier work, it is a masterpiece. It is by far, my favourite pizza. 

So go find a Tomato Pie. 

Because the bakeries that still sell Tomato Pies to this day are almost all 100 years old or older. They’ve passed the test of time. They’re still making it for a reason. And when you bite into that cold slab of sauce and bread, you’ll be enjoying a masterpiece in history.