What do you think of this fact?
Pineapple on pizza: few toppings split a friend group faster. But whichever side you’re on, the name is misleading. Hawaiian pizza has basically nothing to do with Hawaii. It was invented in Canada.
A Greek guy in Ontario
Sam Panopoulos was born in Greece in 1934 and moved to Canada in 1954, at age 20. Together with his brothers, he ran the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario. And the brothers loved trying new things in the kitchen.
In 1962, Panopoulos put canned pineapple on a pizza for the first time. His explanation, as quoted by ABC News: “We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste. We were young in the business and we were doing a lot of experiments.”
Part of the inspiration came from Canadian Chinese food, which mixes sweet and sour flavors all the time. So why not on pizza?
The name came from the can
And Hawaii? That was just on the label. Panopoulos got his pineapple from the Hawaiian Pineapple Company and named the pizza after the brand. Hawaiian cooking had nothing to do with it.
At first, customers weren’t sold, and the combo didn’t catch on right away. It slowly won over the locals and eventually went global.
A pizza that made history
In 2014, Time magazine even ranked it number 1 on its list of “The 13 Most Influential Pizzas of All Time.” That doesn’t mean everyone loves it.
In a 2019 YouGov survey, 12 percent of Americans put pineapple among their top three pizza toppings, while 24 percent ranked it among their least favorites.
Panopoulos sold the restaurant in 1980 and died in 2017. His invention lives on in freezers and pizzerias all over the world, and so does the argument. One question will never be settled: pineapple, yes or no?