A Brazilian ad agency has built a campaign for Domino's "Pizza" that uses a heat-sensitive coating on rented DVDs; when the disc is played, the heat from the player heats up the coating and causes it to emit a pizza-like odor; the coating also changes appearance and becomes a picture of a pizza with an ad for Domino's.
In partnership with 10 video rental stores in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the brand used rented DVDs as media. About 10 discs each of 10 different new release titles such as Argo, 007, Dread And Dark Knight were stamped with thermal ink and flavored varnish, both sensitive to the heat.
While people were watching the movie, the heat of the DVD player affected the disc. When the movie ended and they ejected the disc, they smelled pizza. They also saw pizza: the discs were printed to look like mini pies, and carried the message: "Did you enjoy the movie? The next one will be even better with a hot and delicious Domino's Pizza."
A mechanical engineer (awesomely) named Anjan Contractor has won a NASA grant to prototype a 3D printer for food -- specifically pizza. It will lay down layers of food and flavor powder and melt them together; the powders are room-temperature stable for long periods and can be made from relatively abundant, sustainable foodstocks like insects and soylent green. He prototyped the concept with the 3D chocolate printer in the video above, and he holds out hope that food-printing could solve world hunger by allowing billions to feast on low-wastage, low-energy-input, low-carbon-footprint foods that are printed to order.
Contractor's printer is RepRap based, and is open source hardware; he promises to keep the plans open and free.
I suspect that there's a lot of nutritional subtleties lost when you turn food into processed elements that are recombined (in the same way that beta-carotene in carrots is reliably shown to have health benefits, while beta-carotene supplements are far more questionable). But as a form of food processing, it certainly is exciting!
Pizza is an obvious candidate for 3D printing because it can be printed in distinct layers, so it only requires the print head to extrude one substance at a time. Contractor’s “pizza printer” is still at the conceptual stage, and he will begin building it within two weeks. It works by first “printing” a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, “which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil,” says Contractor.
Finally, the pizza is topped with the delicious-sounding “protein layer,” which could come from any source, including animals, milk or plants.
When a new pizza place opened up next door to my favorite happy mutant cafe in Salem, MA, I had to wander in. The delectable smells wafting out certainly helped nudge me through the doors. Inside, I found the place brimming with SF memorabilia, including a life-size Borgified Picard statue acting as maitre'd and framed pictures of all eleven Doctors, with an empty frame reserved for Number Twelve.
All the pies have excellent names. I am particularly fond of the Geidi Prime, and but I also love the vegan Twiki for its phenomenal eggplant. And what could better finish off dinner than the Zhaan, a blueberry-topped dessert pizza.
As it turns out, Flying Saucer Pizza Company is owned by the same folks that own the aforementioned Gulu Gulu Cafe next door, where the bar is festooned with comic action figures and they make the best freaking creme brulee lattes ever. Add this to the enormous Harrison's Comics right across the street, and you've got a little slice of mutant heaven.
As I watched competitive eater Takeru Kobeyashi consume a 12" Domino's pizza in one minute, I realized that I could probably do this, and that if it wasn't Domino's, I could probably do it twice. Not that I'm supposed to. Carbs don't agree with me. But if you need to dispose of evidence in pizza form, and Takeru Kobeyashi is busy, I might be your guy.
John Lehmann, a photojournalist with the Globe and Mail is travelling through China and documenting his experiences on Tumblr. An article in the Globe highlights some of the best posts so far, including this: "A hotdog encrusted shrimp tempura pizza with mayonnaise" from a Pizza Hut.
December 4, 1974: Donald Sherman, who lives with the neurological disorder Moebius Syndrome that results in impaired speech among other challenges, used a computer to order a pizza over the telephone. The system was developed by computer scientists Jerome (J.J.) Jackson and John Eulenberg, director of Michigan State University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Domino's hung up on Sherman and the computer. Several tries later, Mr. Mike's Pizza patiently took the order for a 16" pie with mushrooms, pepperoni, ham, and sausage, and this "high-tech sociolinguistic experiment," as Eulenberg described it, was deemed a success. (Thanks, David Steinberg!)
Pizza Hut Canada produced a limited-edition perfume. Apparently, Eau de Pizza Hut has "“top notes of freshly baked, hand-tossed dough." I guess it beats smelling like pepperoni or anchovies. (TODAY, via NextDraft)
A1 Concepts "Let's Pizza" vending machines are robots that scratch-bake pizzas in three minutes, to order. In this video, the Let's Pizza is demonstrated by a model (made extra weird by dubbing from some unknown language) in the world's most painful looking stilettos, who stresses again and again how hygienic the machine is, producing pizzas "untouched by human hands" and "in a human-free environment." Your robo-pizza is thus prepared "with a guarantee of total hygiene." The dubbing, the rubegoldbergian gadgetry and the strange, squeamish emphasis on hygiene (as though pizza from a mere human kitchen comes covered in boogers, stray pubic hairs and a thin film of DNA) combine to make this the greatest product demo of all time, ever, in the history of the universe.
The brainchild of Italian entrepreneur Claudio Torghel, the machine will be distributed by A1 Concepts, based out of the Netherlands. It's expected to hit our shores later this year, according to the industry website Pizza Marketplace. The company is expected to set up its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta.
Kevin Nutt (who loves pizza, cats, and Boing Boing) writes,
I wanted to share this awesome (I think) picture. My wife's co-worker (who happens to be named 'Cat'), just celebrated her birthday. Her husband sent over this special pizza order for the office to share. Pretty clever I thought. I love how they arranged the toppings for her name, and then there's the finishing touch of the pizza that looks like a cat!
So this is Cat's Cat & Cat pizzas! (that's the best I could come up with...sorry)
I'm a HUGE fan of Boing Boing! Since the site is 'Cat Friendly' I thought I would be a good place to share. Oh, and I know it's Friday and not Caturday...
In this performance from 1991, presidential candidate Herman Cain sings (splendidly) a version of Imagine in which the lyrics have been changed to be about pizza. [via Gawker]
Kari Schuster constructed a "pizza" out of pizza-flavored snack-foods harvested from gas-stations and grocery stores. The process stained her fingers orange and clogged her nostrils with the "gentle aroma of fake cheese and tomato." She claims it was delicious.
It occurred to me that up until now I had been limiting myself to pizza only in its natural state. It was obvious what I had to do next — find as many pizza-flavored items as I could and turn them into a pizza.[Editor's note: Sweet Jesus.]
Serious Eats' primer on NYC pizza is a mouth-watering education in the many ways that a delicious pie can be made and consumed. Pizza being my most deadly downfall, I'm finding this hard to read.
One thing you might not be familiar with is the fact that some NYC pizzerias use anthracite coal to cook their pizzas. (Then again, I know that Brooklyn-based Grimaldi's has made inroads into Texas, so maybe you do know coal-fired pizza.) Pizza geeks have long been into coal-fired pizzas. The ovens cook at a hot-enough temperature that a skilled pizzamaker can create an amazing crust that is both crisp and chewy at the same time and that is not dried out and tough. Also, the way that most of these old-school coal-oven places make the pizza, they just sort of know how to make a nice balanced pie, one that doesn't go too heavy on the sauce or pile on too much cheese.
Most of the coal-fired pizzerias in NYC are part of an old and venerable family tree of pizza history. Lombardi's is widely thought of as having been the first pizzeria in NYC and indeed the nation (at least on paper). That's probably oversimplifying things (see this post on Lombardi's for its history), but the fact remains that many of the other beloved coal-oven pizzerias in NYC were founded by people who once worked for Gennaro Lombardi in the early 1900s.
Scott from Scott's Pizza Tours is obsessed with pizza box engineering, and posts YouTube videos about the pizza boxes people send him from all over the world. In this installment, he explores a fantastic box from Eataly that is coated with a recyclable, reflective finish that keeps the food hot and prevents the grease from getting on the cardboard. Pizza boxes with grease on them can't be recycled (and they really screw up the recycling system if they slip through!), so this is a major breakthrough.
Kevin Nutt (who loves pizza, cats, and Boing Boing) writes,
One thing you might not be familiar with is the fact that some NYC pizzerias use anthracite coal to cook their pizzas. (Then again, I know that Brooklyn-based Grimaldi's has made inroads into Texas, so maybe you do know coal-fired pizza.) Pizza geeks have long been into coal-fired pizzas. The ovens cook at a hot-enough temperature that a skilled pizzamaker can create an amazing crust that is both crisp and chewy at the same time and that is not dried out and tough. Also, the way that most of these old-school coal-oven places make the pizza, they just sort of know how to make a nice balanced pie, one that doesn't go too heavy on the sauce or pile on too much cheese.