This Watermelon Thing Is Not Pizza. Please Stop Calling It Pizza.

Jelisa Castrodale
Jelisa Castrodale
Jelisa is a freelance writer who has covered food and travel, sports and pop culture for numerous publications. When she's not on deadline, she enjoys getting new passport stamps, collecting records and shouting at her beloved Liverpool Football Club.
published Jun 1, 2018
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Remember last month when Victoria Beckham celebrated her birthday by slicing into a hexagon of watermelon with a candle in it? And remember when everyone was like “STOP IT, THAT IS NOT A CAKE, THAT IS A STACK OF FRUIT,” and wondered if someone should start showing her flashcards so she could learn the difference before her 45th next year?

Well, I have just discovered a new fruit-centric tragedy, and it is even more unsettling than Posh Spice’s not-a-cake-a-melon.

Earlier this week, your granddad’s go-to internet provider posted a recipe for something it called watermelon pizza and I shouted “NO!” with the same volume and inflection that you’d use if you saw your dog trying to get into the trash. Regardless of what AOL.com says, spreading yogurt across a wedge of watermelon and mashing some berries into it DOES NOT MAKE IT PIZZA.

“Cool down this spring with a deliciously sweet and healthy watermelon pizza,” AOL chirps. No, I most certainly will not. (And there’s no way anyone on this earth is following the final step of that recipe, the one that simply says “Enjoy.”)

I know we’re, like, two years into a timeline where words no longer have meaning, but let’s stop this right now. Just because you cut something into a triangle before you shove it into your face hole doesn’t mean that it’s pizza. Italy seems to understand this: its lawmakers have passed legislation that officially defines what can and cannot be called Neapolitan pizza. That ruling is important to pizzaioli — pizza makers — partially because it helped to secure “Traditional Speciality Guaranteed” status for Neapolitan pizza, which means that each pie must conform to established set of characteristics and ingredients to wear the name “Neapolitan.”

And those rules are ultra-specific, listing requirements for the kinds of flour and yeast in the crust, limiting the diameter to no more than 14 inches, and defining the minimum temperature for cooking the pizza. It also lists each ingredient and topping that can be used and — spoiler alert — NONE OF THEM ARE WATERMELON.

No, the United States isn’t going to restrict the efforts of any of our pizza makers and, unlike Naples, we don’t exactly have several generations of pizzaioli to honor. But can we just agree that not every triangular food should be called pizza? And that WATERMELON IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE PIZZA CRUST? Because unlike that sliced and stacked fruit salad, that’s something I’d actually enjoy.