Bill de Blasio embroiled in yet another pizza debacle

Bill De Blasio
(Image credit: Giovanni Marino/Getty Images)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is wading into the pizza topping wars.

The New York mayor spent several minutes at a press briefing on Thursday ranking his favorite pizza toppings, looking to demonstrate how ranked choice voting works ahead of the city's upcoming mayoral election. Coming in at number one? Green peppers.

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From there, de Blasio ranked olives at number two, a take he acknowledged may be "a little controversial," but "I have had very good experiences with olives," the mayor said. The next picks were sausage and mushrooms — he mused that the latter is "often maligned" and "misunderstood" — and, finally, down at number five, peperoni. One topping, though, de Blasio refused to even rank.

"Pineapple does not belong on pizza!" he shouted. "We're not in California, okay! This is sacrilegious in Italy to put pineapple on a pizza."

The mayor, who's no stranger to pizza-related criticism, quickly sparked an extremely important online debate on the subject, generating plenty of raised eyebrows with his ranking — though not as much disagreement over his anti-pineapple stance.

Assuming these critics aren't already busy lobbying for impeachment proceedings due to these alleged pizza crimes, they can weigh in online with a sample ballot, and de Blasio urged all New Yorkers to make their voice heard by submitting their own pizza rankings. Not only would this help serve as practice for the election, but, de Blasio declared, "I think this is going to be an important moment to clarify what New Yorkers really want for the future of pizza in this city."

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Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.