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Anyone’s passion for pizza is nothing to sneeze at. The sauce has sparked debates about geographic superiority, thick dough over thin crust, and frozen over fresh. (The latter, of course, is beyond discussion.)
Yet nothing seems to divide pizza lovers more than Hawaiian pizza—a traditional pizza that has pineapple and other, considered offensive items on it. First of all, she’s not even Hawaiian. Second, putting fruit on pizza is like scribbling on the Mona Lisa. Let’s take a quick look at the origins of this controversial addition to the pizza menu.
Many people would be surprised, but Hawaiian pizza didn’t originate anywhere near the Hawaiian Islands. It actually originated in Ontario, Canada in the 1960s when restaurateur and Greek immigrant Sam Panopoulos returned from Detroit and tasted something that was new to Canadians at the time: pizza. At the time, the combination of dough and tomato sauce was considered an “ethnic” food and was not widely available in Canada. Panopoulos learned from his trip to Detroit, bought a small oven, and began making pizzas with toppings like mushrooms, bacon, and pepperoni.
In 1962, Panopoulos decided to add another option, offering pineapple as a choice for customers. There was no culinary science behind it. “We just put it in there, just for fun, to see how it tasted,” Panopoulos told the BBC in February 2017. Taste tests showed that the sweetness of the pineapple and the saltiness of the added ham contrasted nicely with the salty dough. The name Hawaii comes from the brand of canned pineapple that Panopoulos used.
Since pizza itself was somewhat of a novelty in Ontario, there was little resistance to the idea—the food had yet to inspire the loyal and widespread following it enjoys today. (In fact, Panopoulos didn’t even have a dedicated pizza box. He simply cut out circles from cardboard he bought at a local furniture store.) Canned pineapple found its way into Canadian pantries thanks to a growing interest in so-called canned pineapple. Tiki culture was booming after World War II, so Canadians were happy to try Hawaiian pizza.
They loved her. “Because at that time, nobody was mixing sweet and sour or anything like that,” Panopoulos said. “It was just very normal, ordinary food.”
As pizza franchises took off in the second half of the 20th century, so did Hawaiian pizza, becoming part of the menu for adventurous folks. But for every person who enjoyed trying something different, there were those who found the addition of pineapple gross.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in the country behind the pizza brand – Italy – you won’t find Hawaiian pizza on the menu. It’s not because Italians don’t like fruit in their pizza (which is a myth, as they have apples, pears and even flowers in their pizza), but for one simple reason: pineapple is not their fruit. So, it’s just a simple matter of stubbornness.
In 2017, Gudney T. Johannesson, president of Iceland, told schoolchildren that if he had the power, he would ban pineapple pizza. (Johannesson later retracted the comment, insisting it had no such effect, but that sounds more like a regret than a retreat.) That same year, a British survey found that while 53% of citizens wanted pineapple on pizza, 15% supported a ban.
Panopoulos died on June 8, 2017, at the age of 83. After selling his restaurant in 1980, he largely stayed out of the fray, switching to frozen pies. As for the Hawaiian Islands: They don’t seem to like their namesake cuisine any more or less than the rest of the world.
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