A Question of Toppings

Purity, Pineapple and Pizza

Photo credit: Shoeib Abolhassani

Tendencies towards celebrating the false purity of recipes tilt towards the fascistic. A dictator looms behind the governing taste, in the controlling atmosphere of the kitchen, enforcing a rigid, falsified memory: ingredients pure, memories halcyon, taste sublime. Those outside that kitchen and their larder of ingredients are to be excoriated and execrated, abominated and damned. They do not have the same uniform and march differently.

Pizza, yet another mongrel pastry food concoction, is one of those falsely claimed contributions of purity to the world of eating. As with all culinary origins, it is patchy, with various cognates. Beyond the originalist dogmas spouted by the chef priests of Naples, we find the flatbreads of ancient Rome with herbal toppings, cheese and olive oil (no tomatoes, given the absence of New World ingredients). The Armenians also have a stout claim. It also had much to do with those resourceful wives of Southern Italian immigrant construction workers in New York prior to the First World War. Wishing to feed their menfolk a warm meal for lunch, they made improvised ovens from bricks at construction sites, spreading dough on metal, dressed with tomato sauce, sausage and cheese. But was the more formal American birthplace of the pizza Lombardi’s in New York City, or Sally’s Apizza, or Frank Pepe’s in New Haven? (This point arises in a letter published in the October 1994 issue of American Demographics, though the author confuses “Frank” for “Joe.”)

In truth, it remains the most flexible medium for experimentation and exploitation, with a focus on the relevant toppings. The purists, as they always do, hold the fort in such matters, imposing a regime of the sacred and the profane. One such figure is Davide Tamburella, an Italian pizza chef in Brisbane, Australia, who proved militant against any request by customer or employer to place pineapple on his pizzas, despite the dish being on the menu. That fruit abomination, we must assume, can only be attributed to the Hawaiian pizza, a creation of ham and pineapple topping that was never an Italian invention to begin with.

Not that the Hawaiian even hailed from a territory the American imperium would eventually swallow. It took the efforts of Sam Panopoulos in Chatham, located in the Canadian province of Ontario, to push matters along in 1962, possibly capitalising on the Tiki culture craze after Hawaii became an American state in 1959. He certainly made good use of the canned pineapple of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Panopoulos was a gastronomic innovator and impetuous vandal of the dish: he added his own take on sweet and sour Chinese dishes, with the use of tart sweet pineapple to savoury counterparts such as pork. He also refused to spare the pizza. Canned pineapple was added as a topping alongside ham, and this union of ingredients paid rewards. It was part of a lineage of playful experimentation after the Second World War that saw such monstrosities as the “Grilled Spamwich,” a product of spam and pineapple, a marriage of sweetness and salty, heavily processed pork.

On 20 May 2026, Tamburella’s employment was terminated at the now closed Fortitude Valley establishment La Costa Restaurant and Bar. He subsequently challenged the decision in the Australian Fair Work Commission, citing unfair dismissal. Unfortunately, Tamburella damned his own case, making his application outside the 28-day time frame. The case failed. The Commission, in finding against Tamburella, did note a few things behind his dismissal. There had been “a recent incident where you acknowledged refusing to follow a management direction relating to a customer request.” Further on, we see that Tamburella “refused” the direction given to him to put pineapple on a pizza, as it was “offensive to his culture.” This piously militant stance was taken during a function costing over A$15,000 where the patrons had expressly asked for pineapple on their pizzas.

The chef had form: it was the third time in four years he had refused to abide by the direction, and he requested his employer “check how important it is for Italians not to put pineapple on a pizza.” Tamburella’s former boss, Elliot Ingram, was determined to spread the word that his dismissal was not just a matter of rejecting the pineapple. There was, he told the Daily Mail, “more to his story than a pizza topping.” Beyond kitchen jihadism against tropical fruit on pizza bases were issues of colourful language and communication with colleagues during service. (Normal, surely?) He had also suffered an injury in the workplace, occasioned by striking a metal handrail, resulting in fractures to his right hand. Temper becomes thee, Tamburella.

This entire, inflated drama would have vanished into the back sheets of a local press rag were it not for the ravening demands of the social media sphere. It even got the attention of the BBC, which decided to issue a global request on 5 November to readers, listeners and viewers to submit their inconsequential views to the broadcaster: “Do you think pineapple makes a tasty pizza topping, or is it simply a step too far?” Celebrity chefs were badgered about the subject. Rick Stein conceded on BBC Breakfast to be against the pineapple (“not my cup of tea”) but admitted his Australian wife was most partial to the fruit, especially in burgers.

We have seen this buffoonery before. In February 2017, Iceland’s then President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson dared to express an opinion on the subject before pupils at a high school in the northern town of Akureyri. Not only did he claim to be “fundamentally opposed” to pineapple on pizzas; he would also ban the practice if he could. A mighty fuss ensued. The Icelandic embassy in Britain received pineapple-topped pizzas. Even Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau found time to post a banal riposte on social media: “I have a pineapple. I have a pizza. And I stand behind this delicious Southwestern Ontario creation.”

In a statement of clarification, the Icelandic president explained that he liked pineapples, just not on pizza. He was also not going to tell others to stop using the fruit as a topping. “I do not have the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapples on their pizza,” he confessed. “I am glad I do not hold such power.” That said, Iceland has experimented with previous bans on what its citizenry can consume, the most notable being the beer prohibition lasting from 1915 to 1989.

Tamburella has, mercifully for us all, moved on. He is now in the employ of another Brisbane restaurant, Don Gino, in Brisbane’s West End. That establishment does not have pineapple on the menu. Order, at least in his clearly charted universe of taste and preference, has been restored.