Ciro De Luca/Reuters
ROME—In a move that many will consider in good taste, American pizza maker Domino’s is closing the last of its 29 branches in Italy after a dismal appearance on the Italy’s rather hard-to-beat food scene.
Twitter applauded the news with one user summing it up: “went all the way to Italy to taste a slice of Domino’s #SaidNoOneEver.” Another bid farewell: “Goodbye, please never come back with your atrocious imitations of pizza: we don’t need them, we have the real deal, we invented it!”
The Daily Beast predicted this fiasco when the American pie maker first opened, scoffing at the idealism of Alessandro Lazzaroni, who led the charge. “Domino’s is a global brand, with American roots, and we’re proud to be able to introduce it to the Italian people—with a twist,” he said then. “We will be using a recipe created by us, using locally-sourced wheat. Everything else is purely Italian.” While they did use Italian products, their plan to reinvent Italian pizza with their own recipe clearly wasn’t what Italians were looking for—or, it seems—what tourists wanted either.