4 curiosities of Hawaiian pizza that you did not know

Discover the history of Hawaiian pizza and its most interesting curiosities dedicated to its controversial gastronomic reputation.
Hawaiian italian Pizza

Hawaiian Pizza is one of the Italian pizzas that has generated the most controversies and controversies in the entire history of mankind. Loved and hated by many, this is one of the most exotic tropical pizzas in the world, which today has given much to talk about in all social circles.

This culinary specialty, whose main ingredient is pineapple, can be found in most of the cards and menus of restaurants and pizzerias in Barcelona, as one of the alternative options to conventional classic pizzas, with a different flavor and a unique personality in its kind.

hawaiian pizza trivia
Foto de bckfwd en Unsplash.

Like many other dishes of Italian cuisine such as diavóla pizza, the risottos, tiramisu… the origins of Hawaiian pizza are mysterious and hide surprising curiosities that greatly deny popular knowledge and the myths that have circulated everywhere against it.

Are you ready?

Table of Contents

The origins of Hawaiian pizza

Incredible as it may seem to believe, the true origin of this renowned fruit pizza is not precisely the Caribbean or any remote paradisiacal island in the Atlantic Ocean, but its true origin is rather America.

It is known that the exact location of the birth of this strange dish was in Canada, at the hands of a Greek chef named Sam Panopoulos, who in the 1960s patented the recipe when his previous experiment of combining a hamburger with a pineapple failed miserably.

The main objective was to find a more refreshing taste for Italian pizzas and to increase the reputation of the restaurant. In the words of the chef himself, in an interview he himself declared that this type of pizza was baptized as “Hawaiian” because of the brand of the container of pineapples used, partly also to provide it with a commercial hook to sell it.

Despite the exoticism of its flavors, Hawaiian pizza became popular and, like diavóla pizza, was added as a star dish in North American cuisine.

hawaiian pizza restaurant
Janine from Mililani, Hawaii, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another culinary inspiration

A similar dish to Hawaiian pizza is Hawaiian toast. It is a toast made with ham, melted cheese, ketchup and pineapple that was popularized in Germany in the early 1960s in one of the first TV cooking shows in the world, known as Clemens Wilmenrod show.

The chef himself, or rather the German actor, was inspired by the Panopoulos pizza recipe to create this dish that, like its original inspiration, shares pineapple as the main ingredient in its preparation.

hawaiian toast german dish
Rainer Z, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
hawaii italian pizza
Picture by Simplicius, 2006, GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons.

This recipe was very popular in western Germany during the reconstruction of the country.

Tributes from the art world

Certain celebrities such as “The Rock” (Dwayne Johnson), Jeff Goldblum and Justin Bieber have declared themselves unconditional fans of Hawaiian pizza, but other artists such as singer Nick Jonas, the group The Schlotys and the Ohsobrkn band went a step further …

All of them composed songs dedicated to making a humorous tribute to this different dish and its controversial, but funny social reputation.

unprecedented political weapon

Can Hawaiian pizza become a political tool to win votes? On one occasion, the Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson .; dropped in one of his 2017 conferences, that he did not like this type of pizza and that if he could he would ban it throughout the country.

The consequences of this statement were immediate and the next day the Hawaiian pizza was the subject of debate for his election campaign as propaganda on social networks. Many of the sympathetic voters began to brand it as a gastronomic aberration and others to defend it tooth and nail.

This food discord echoed throughout the world and even its own creator replied to the politician for his lack of consideration and respect.

And so far our 4 curiosities of Hawaiian pizza. We hope that this article has helped you discover interesting things about italian-cuisine and the pizzas from the menu from our Italian restaurant.

See you in the next post!

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