by Lore Sjöberg

Extra Cheese
Extra cheese? If you need extra cheese on your pizza, either a) the pizza service you patronize is made up of a bunch of skimping dairy-misers and you should find yourself another pizza source, or b) your dietary needs would better be served by simply eating a bowl of hot cheese. C-

Pepperoni
Violently, tragically overrated. I'm convinced that the pepperoni tradition was begun by early pizza guys who wanted to foist the cheap, vile sausage off on the unknowing early pizza patrons, saving the good stuff for cute girls and especially heart-wrenching urchins. C

Sausage
Now this is a meat topping. If you get it at a good place, which is to say a place where you can distinguish the pizza crust from the refrigerator magnet that came with it, it can be a truly rich and rewarding food experience. And if not, it still beats hell out of the bright red grease-saucers they call pepperoni. B

Pesto
Are you ready for pesto? Can you handle pesto? I've seen strong men crumble before a good pesto pizza, begging and drooling to be allowed another bite! Writhing in the torture of pure basil ecstasy! You're afraid, aren't you? You fear pesto! Bastard! Coward! Bastard! A-

Little Red Pepper Flakes
Man, I love these. You know, the ones in the big shake-jar next to the Parmesan powder? You shake them all over your pizza slice and they taste like an invading pizza army. It's like eating pizza sacked by Ostrogoths. B

Anchovies
Let's give fish particles their due, shall we? They're not really very good tasting, but they serve the dual purposes of being a funny topping and being the topping nobody orders. Say you're telling a joke, and the guy in the joke orders a pizza. Just put anchovies on the pizza and it doubles the comedy, if it's a pretty pathetic joke in the first place.

As for the second point, the fact is that there has to be one topping that nobody orders, and if there wasn't anchovies, the entire Canadian Bacon market would vanish and Canada itself would collapse into ruin, forcing us to send them billions of dollars in aid just to keep the "For Better or For Worse" cartoons coming. B+