Whynapple Pizza?

Among the many things in America that draw the most hatred, we have Hawaiian pizza.

“Hey bro, pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza… I don’t know why you’re eating that.”

Hawaiian pizza. Although so many things are tossed onto pizza in the United States, it seems as if pineapple is the one ingredient that crosses the line for a significant group of people. Onions, peppers, scallops, bacon, mushrooms, onions, PINEAPPLE. WHAT? WHO MADE THAT OKAY?

When I’m bringing that triangle of cheese, pineapple, and Canadian bacon up to my face to take a bite, I can already taste it. As soon as my teeth hit the cheese to break off a piece, it’s just a normal pizza. It’s not until I continue to chew that I actually notice that the slice is something so much different than a Margherita or pepperoni pizza. Once my tooth catches a piece of the pineapple, the eating experience changes completely as tanginess and sugariness spread around my mouth. I love it.

However, some people do not love it. Hatred burns in the hearts of many for Hawaiian pizza. This is due to a variety of factors, including the way it looks, the way it tastes, its name, or a combination of the three.

“For me, it’s the clash on pineapple and gooey mozzarella that’s the real sticking point,” says Peter Kane, food writer for SF Weekly. “But as long as the pizzeria goes light on the oregano in the sauce, I don’t have particularly strong feeling one way or the other.”

From hate groups on Facebook and Twitter to Reddit threads people are pretty out there about their opinions on the pizza. Some people think that pineapple and pizza just don’t belong together, like other weird, niche food combos: ketchup on mac and cheese, French toast and meat sauce, popcorn and milk, or rice and mustard. Some people put pineapple on pizza in the same category of these other monstrosities.

“It’s just… no,” says Thomas Galatas, a student at San Francisco State, when asked to consider the marriage of pineapple and pizza. “ I just don’t understand why people think this is okay. It’s like putting apples or oranges on pizza. What makes you think that’s okay? “

Regardless of these clusters of disgust and disdain, there are many people that like the taste of pineapple on pizza, which is why it is a common specialty combo at pizza joints and pizza chains around the country. Hawaiian pizza is even popular enough to make it onto the menu of some fancy Neapolitan style restaurants. Of course, the majority of pizza traditionalists see this as a bastardization of the classic Neapolitan pie. But since the inception of Hawaiian pizza in 1962, it has maintained a steady following.

Although it is called Hawaiian pizza, it was actually an idea that Canadian chef Sam Panopoulos came up with.

In a 2016 interview with Devon Scoble, Panopoulos said, “People only put mushroom, bacon, and pepperoni, that’s all. I had pineapple in the restaurant and I put some on, and I shared with some customers and they liked it. For a long time, we were the only one’s serving it.”

Back in the 60s, pizza was still considered more of an ethnic food than an American staple. These days, you’ll see a pizza parlor on almost every block in a large city, and at least one or two in almost every city in the country. America has created its own versions of pizza over the years, not just with the adventurous toppings, but also by modifying the style of pizza.

Since pizza wasn’t at all that common back in the 60s in the United States, people weren’t against experimenting with the new style of food.

“In the 30 years after the end of WWII, when the food was terrible, the industrialized food system made previously rare or prohibitively expensive items into readily available commodities,” said Kane. “For people who still remembered the deprivations of the Depression and the war, something Hawaiian/tropical felt luxurious even if it was canned and in heavy syrup. While pizza is extremely common now, it wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous then.”

Pineapple on pizza is the definition of America if you really think about it. We like to play with our food. We put anything on anything when it comes to food. You got some pickles? Lets fry those bad boys. Brussels sprouts? Let’s put some bacon bits on those bad boys. The dish doesn’t have any cheese? Well it does now. Pineapple on pizza really shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Nizzarios Pizza, a couple of blocks from the University of San Francisco, is a well-known late-night stop for students. It offers a slew of toppings, including chicken, peppers, jalapeños, onions, and their specialty, pesto. The place usually looks like a tornado came through the front door, wrecked the seating area, then left. But it’s open until 2 a.m., so it’s the perfect place to grab a slice if you’re hopping from bar to bar or drunkenly stumbling back home after closing time. And the pizza is damn good for what it is.

“Our Greko Special (pesto) and our Hawaiian Special are the ones that seem to get the most attention,” said owner Sharif Awadalla. “ It’s funny because when people are ordering by the slice, those seem to be the go-tos, but when it comes to getting a whole pizza people just like to keep it simple with the pepperoni.”

My local Dominos owner was able to show me the statistics on the toppings that have been the most popular from 2018 to the present. Of course, pepperoni took the top spot, followed by mushrooms, then sausage- but right behind the big three was pineapple.

Just like many other random things here in the U.S., there just happens to be an irrational hatred for the combination of pineapple and pizza.

“The dislike of pineapple may not be so much a taste preference as a herd-behavioral phenomenon that took on a life of its own, kind of like how everyone hates the word "moist" and also believes they're very original for thinking that,” said Kane. “We perceive it as a relic of a dumber era, so we want to put as much distance between it and ourselves as we can, to signal how cultivated our own tastes have become. Other unpopular yet "classic" toppings, like anchovies, don't suffer from that same problem.”

But despite the hype, pineapple on pizza really isn’t “unpopular” after all.