Do You Like Pizza? How About Pizza Perfume? – Undina’s Looking Glass

I started thinking about this topic when I read that Domino’s Pizza, an American multinational pizza restaurant chain, for the recent Valentine’s Day had launched a limited edition perfume, Eau de Passion, inspired by their most popular pizza, Pepperoni Passion. It wasn’t openly sold, but you could enter to win a bottle of it somehow (I’m not sure about details). They liked that idea so much that recently they continued the theme in their April’s Fool FB post. It wasn’t a completely novel idea: Demeter had their version of Pizza perfume in 2012, and it looks like it’s still in production. And it looks like at least a couple more of the less known brands cooked up their own pizza-inspired perfume recipes. So, let’s talk about pizzas and perfumes. And taking into consideration how geographically diverse my loyal audience is, I thought this topic might be deeper than it seems on the surface.
Saturday Question #259:
Do You Like Pizza? How About Pizza Perfume?
Do you eat pizza? If yes, do you have a favorite? Have you ever smelled any of the pizza-inspired perfumes? What do you think about the idea?
My Answer
Story time! Since I haven’t done real perfume stories for a while, I’ll use this SQ post to tell one of my stories.
I grew up without pizza in my life. We just didn’t have that in my native country. I am not sure I even knew about that food. Many other foods, even more exotic, I knew at least from books or movies, but somehow pizza wasn’t a part of that learning avenue. And then around the time I started university, the first pizza restaurant opened in my city. Chicago-style deep-dish pizza was the closest our first pizza resembled. It smelled divine, it tasted great, and it seemed totally worth the 40-50-minutes waiting in line to get seated and order it.
Even before coming here, from the friend who came here first with his parents and worked for a while delivering pizza, we learned that local pizza was completely different from what we knew as “pizza” back at home, which was confirmed when we moved to the US. The fact that pizzas would be usually ordered from (as I still think horrible) chains didn’t help. I refused to eat it.
After many years in the US, I kind of accepted the tradition of ordering pizzas to the office or improvised parties and resolved to eating just toppings leaving most of the crust on my plate. My co-workers and friends laughed looking at me scraping the toppings from the next slice, but at least I participated.
And only decades later, I discovered that pizzas made by good Italian restaurants were quite tasty. So, from time to time, we order a pizza at one of my favorite restaurants (to dine in or to take home). The one I like the most is a pizza with prosciutto, burrata cheese, eggplant and arugula. I am still not a fan of any “traditional” pizzas. Pepperoni is not something I would eat in any form, and as a pizza topping it seems even less attractive.
As to pizza perfume… Definitely no. I am not even curious to smell it. There are not that many food-related scents that I would find attractive as a personal scent. And nothing about pizza, even the best one, is associated for me with perfume I would wear.
How about you?
Do You Like Pizza? How About Pizza Perfume?