The Great Pizza DebateDoes pineapple belong on pizza?
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The actual answer.
Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 in Chatham, Ontario, by a Greek immigrant named Sam Panopoulos, who put canned pineapple on a pie because he was bored. It is, by any honest reading, not Italian and not Hawaiian, which is part of why people enjoy being angry about it.
The actual culinary argument is less dramatic than the internet version. Sweet and salty is a combination nobody objects to anywhere else — prosciutto and melon, hot honey on a spicy pie, maple on our Bianco. The genuine problem with pineapple is water. Canned pineapple on a pizza that goes into a 700-degree oven releases liquid onto the crust, and a soggy centre is a real defect rather than a matter of taste.
So our position is narrow: the flavour is defensible, the execution usually isn’t. If you want it, we’ll make it, and we’ll tell the kitchen to go easy so you get a crust instead of a swamp.