Let’s face it — when you think of a pizza in all its glory you are bound to picture a slice oozing with cheese, tomato sauce and a variety of toppings. Now be honest — did pineapple make the cut? If it didn’t, you have…*insert drum roll* … perfectly functioning taste buds. If it did, well, it’s time to set up an appointment with the ENT specialist. Pronto.
Pineapple on pizza was the brainchild of Greek immigrant Sam Panopoulos who settled in Canada during his early days. One can hypothesise that culinary inexperience and the bafflement of locating to a new place manifested as pineapple on his pizza? Canada, a sparsely populated country, simply did not have enough critics to nip this culinary experiment in the bud. From here, the controversial topping crossed borders and made its way to the U.S. It took on a new identity, the “Hawaiian Pizza”. Emboldened by its phony façade, the Hawaiian pizza shot to overnight fame, living the American dream. The Hawaiians, wanting no credit for this accidental creation were quick to declare that the only thing Hawaiian about it was the pineapple. Many chefs begrudgingly added it to their menus while admitting that they simply did not approve of pineapple’s fling with the pizza. While the tenets of democracy urge us to accept opposing views, diverse palates — the pineapple pizza begs us to dig deeper and ask ourselves the inevitable. Are we willing to dip Sushi in Nutella next?
Since its inception, the topping has become so notorious that even world leaders have set aside pressing affairs to weigh in. Iceland’s President has gone as far as to say that he would have banned this topping had the law granted him with the power to do so. It’s evident that the pineapple is guilty of much more than making the pizza taste bad. With a charge sheet that contains polarizing the masses, introducing fruit on pizza, revealing Dwayne Johnson to be a supporter of pineapple pizza sending millions into a tizzy among other unmentionable crimes — it’s time to put the pineapple pizza away, for good.
