Let's Not Make Boba Pizza a Thing

I can't believe I have to say this but: Putting the boba—the gelatinous tapioca balls at the bottom of bubble tea—on pizza is not "now a thing," it's not the"newest food craze," and it is not even the "epicenter of boba culinary innovation." You, a savvy food news consumer, know better than to trust those hyperlinked sites (sorry, uh, 9Gag.com) but we wanted to get out ahead of this one because the internet can be a very a dumb place and pictures of incongruous food pairings have a way of taking off.

The latest smattering of coverage of this particular unappetizing proposition (no one has been shown actually eating it, and until they are, I refuse to engage with that as a realistic possibility) appears to date back to (what else) a Reddit post from a few days ago on r/shittyfoodporn, which in turn features a photo pulled from the Instagram of a popular Taiwanese food blogger. However, pictures of cursed pizza started appearing on Instagram all the way back in 2015. It just didn't catch on because, you know, it's utterly revolting.

This looks bad! Not condescending-the-cuisine-of-other-cultures bad, or personal-preference bad, or even just-so-crazy-it-might-work bad, but full-on, flat-out anti-tasty. A cheese pizza is delicious but uncomplex; it's carb-y and dense and difficult to be improved upon unless other complementary flavors or textures should be introduced. This looks, in a word, gummy. What is the boba adding to the equation here?

Carbs belong (personal opinion) only on the bottom of the pizza in the form of a crust. Never in my life have I wished for pizza to be starchier. All that, plus it's ugly. That trypophobia-inducing photo up there is the best that a blogger in the business of making food look delicious can do. Let's take a look at some other pictures posted on the 'gram.

Hard pass! Make it stop.

The actual providence of this pairing is Foodie Star, a restaurant in Taiwan's Chiayi City. The dish is billed as a dessert pizza, which you can experience for a little over $4 USD (plus the price of a plane ticket to Taiwan). The mix of cheese and boba sounds more sickening than sweet, but knock yourselves out.