Pie Robot

Pizza makers in Italy are up in arms over a pizza-making vending machine they say demeans the national food, according to a Reuters story. The Let's Pizza machines actually knead flour and water into dough, cover it with a choice of topping and bake it, all in about three minutes. That's 27 minutes less than the famous Domino's promise, which traditional Italian pizzaristas probably weren't too crazy about either.

The maker admits its products aren't first-class but they aren't meant to be. They are inexpensive (less than four Euros on average, about five bucks U.S.) and convenient, available round-the-clock. Customers seem to agree, and the units, set up in shopping malls, have been popular. Kids especially like the “exhibition cooking” feature — you can see the machine preparing the pizza through a little window.

Italy is the cradle of the so-called Slow Food Movement, a foodie luddite response to today's fast food culture that encourages traditional cooking methods and long, slow meals. For these guys, if it didn't take 24 hours to prepare and three hours to eat, it's evil. (Or, worse, American…)

Pizzas thrown together by machine hands and spit out of a slot are definitely not what they have in mind. And this could be just the beginning of the horror. What if the next guy comes up with a machine that makes Insta-Osso Buco…or Pronto-Pasta…or Scalopini-in-Seconds…