A Gift from the Ancients

It was Antonio’s idea. He was confident his version of a 2000-year-old recipe could arouse the curiosity and entice the taste buds of his customers, boosting sales at his modest, Mediterranean-style pizzeria whose walls were decorated with photos of Italian baseball heroes, show biz celebrities from Sinatra to Sebastian Maniscalco, and a woman in a space helmet.

“Actress?” I asked about the identity of the space-helmeted beauty.

“Astronaut,” Antonio said. “I’m waiting for her to plant her feet on the the moon.”

“The moon?”    

“It’s just a question of time, Samantha Cristoforreti is the first Italian woman in space. Now she’s considered likely to become the first woman to walk on the moon.”

“She may have a bit of a wait before she can walk,” I said, noting that the Italian space program, news of which Antonio followed  closely,  had suffered another setback. The nation’s most recent lunar test rocket had blown up on the launch pad.                                  

But not all the news from that fabled land of Caesars, chefs and sportscars was negative. Antonio seized on the fact that excavators in Pompeii had found the entrance to an ancient banquet hall filled with stunningly well-preserved frescoes of food and wine, mythological heroes and immortal lovers. What more could one ask?

“I have an idea to spin something from that—something original, something unique to enable me to attract customers and jump ahead of the competition,” Antonio confided as I sat eating a vegetarian pizza that he’d concocted for me with secret ingredients, Tuscan tomato sauce, and a zesty garlic that he said health scientists believed could offer a key to the mystery of longevity. 

“Something two thousand years old is going to appeal to modern eaters?” I asked doubtfully.

“Sample this,” he nodded, placing a circular flat bread before me on a plate that depicted diners clad in the flowing robes of ancient times and reclining on couches where they were fed by servants.

“Romans?” I asked.

“Pompeiians,” he answered.  

“Who?” 

“You know—the town wiped out by an explosion from a volcano named Vesuvius?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“79 A.D. and they’re still excavating—and still surprising themselves by what they find.”

“And what did they find this time?”

“They uncovered a banquet room with art work on the walls. I saw it on the travel channel. One splendidly preserved fresco showed a circular flat bread with something on it that culinary historians found to be a medley of rare cheeses, robust meats, exotic fruits and zesty peppers. It’s a combo unheard of today, so the thought occurred to me—if this was a favorite dish of the ancients, and I could recreate it, how would  modern pizza lovers react to the idea? How much could I bank on their curiosity?”

“I can see where you’re going with this, Antonio, but quite frankly, in advertising, outdated products don’t sell.”

“I’m going to replicate it the best I can, put it on the cover of my menu and promote it with a bit of snappy advertising.”

“How do you plan to make 79 A.D. snappy?”

“By selling it as authentic Pompeiian pizza—authentic, so the experts say, because the evidence comes from the earliest known artistic rendering of a pizza.”

“Okay, but if you’re going to advertise, you’ll need to sell it with what I like to call a come-hither temptation.” 

“I thought of one. How about this? Good Enough for the Caesars, Great for You.”

“The Caesars ate pizza?”

 “Hey, they were human, just like us.”

 “Can you prove that?” 

 “My idea may be a bit ahead of the game, but—“

“Some folks might feel your slogan is, well, a bit overstated.”

“This is no ordinary pizza.”

“Correct, but some critics may claim you’ve hyped the discovery  to extol an unproven product.”

“I want this to bring excited pizza lovers here on the run. I want the line to extend out the door, down the block, around the corner and back home.”

“You might try alerting your patrons with a window sign and decorating your menu with cute, cartoonish figures of Roman nobles or Pompeiian aristocrats. Customers will get the idea.”

“But will they buy the pizza?”

“As I see it, the key for you is to find a way to bring the product into the modern age without sacrificing the glamour and mystique of its origin.”

“And just how do you think I can do that?”

“You have all the tools you need. You have the circular flat bread. You have the ingredients that you say you can  replicate.  You  have the authenticity of scientific excavations. To bring 79 A.D. into 2024 A.D., you need to convince the pizza-eating public that your newly unearthed wonder can not only be recreated, but is ideal for modern feasting and  pizza parties.”

“If you can help me do that, my friend, I will give you free meals, any way and any day you want them, for the rest of your life.”

“Can I have your solemn promise and a handshake on the deal, Antonio?”

I got both with a slap on the shoulder. I immediately set to work on the problem and drew a blank until I learned about the Italian government’s plan to attempt another rocket to the moon despite previous failures and frustrations. I helped Antonio get in touch with key officials to offer an idea that might give the moon venture incredible publicity. And when at last a new and improved moon rocket landed safely, to the great relief of its crew and astonishment of the world, we learned that the mission had given itself a Latin motto: Ad astra per aspera, ardua et pizza (To the stars through struggle, hardship and pizza). The motto was designed to celebrate the occasion in classical style and inject a note of humor into one of the most memorable of all lunar ventures. 

“What left the earth in the Italian rocket wasn’t only the crew,” a television science reporter announced.  “It was a specially prepared pizza for astronauts to take with them to the moon. And now, other European astronauts are demanding the same for their own missions because the pizza is a remnant of history that may bring them luck, not to mention interesting flavor.” 

After the news hit the networks and got viewers wondering and hungering, Antonio put a large sign in his window that I had specially prepared for him. It read: “Pompeii pizza goes to the moon! Try this gift from the ancients and the astronauts. Take a bite of history!”

When I drove past the pizzeria a short time later for a look at the local response, the lineup at Antonio’s extended out the door, down the block, around the corner and home again. 

There was no need for a musical loudspeaker blaring “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie,” but that, too, was Antonio’s idea. 

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