For the last few weeks, Piaci Pizza readers have been voting on old-fashioned Christmas and Thanksgiving food: a heart or a thumbs-down under every dish in our holiday nostalgia articles. We’ve now pulled all of it into one report: 9,103 votes from 2,038 readers on 183 dishes, the reasons readers gave, and 3,428 poll answers about the holiday table.
Please note that some of the images in this article were created with the assistance of AI.
The short version: readers are fond of the old table. 71% of all votes were hearts. But not every dish made it.
Sweets lead; gelatin molds lose
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Candy and sweets (88%) and cookies (87%) lead every other type of food. The party spread (83%) and the roasts and mains (81%) come next, too close to call between them. Sides and casseroles slipped to 59%, and gelatin and molded salads were the one big group readers actively rejected, at 43%.
The dishes readers want back
Cookies take six of the top 15 spots, joined by a standing rib roast, chicken à la king in a pastry shell, the relish tray and the old party spread: French onion dip and shrimp cocktail. The humble relish tray earned 93% hearts across 270 votes.
And the ones they would leave in the past
Candle salad, tomato aspic, turnip puff and perfection salad sit at the bottom. When readers explained a thumbs-down, it was mostly about eating it: “Not something I would eat” and “Don’t like the ingredients” were the top reasons.
The full report
The Holiday Table Report ranks all 183 dishes with their ranges, breaks them down by food type and article, shows why readers loved or rejected each one, and adds 29 polls on holiday mains, Sunday dinners and hosting. It includes the full dataset.
Get the full report at StatwrenHow we did this
- Readers tapped a heart or a thumbs-down under each food photo in six Piaci Pizza holiday articles between Sep 26, 2026 and Oct 30, 2026. One vote per reader per photo.
- Votes are anonymous: no names, emails or accounts. Readers were reacting to photos of each dish, not tasting it.
- Percentages are the share of hearts. Food types are our own grouping of each dish.
- More on how we collect reader data: How our reader data works.
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