We might have just settled the pineapple-on-pizza debate once and for all. (Picture: Getty Images)
Naples might be known as the birthplace of pizza, but the great pizza chefs of the past may well be turning in their graves right now.
That’s because one pizzaiolo (pizza maestro) has made the most divisive decision of all: putting pineapple on pizza.
It’s only January, but the year has already started off on an (ironically) sour tone for many Italians as Gino Sorbillo, the renowned pizza chef, added “ananas” to his menu in Via dei Tribunali.
Every foodie worth their salt knows that Via dei Tribunali is the best known pizza street in Naples — which, as we mentioned, is the world pizza capital.
So, if a third-generation pizzaiolo thinks its okay to put pineapple on pizza — they settles the debate once and for all, much to the chagrin of many Italians and Brits alike.
But Gino’s pizza isn’t your run-of-the-mill Hawaiian.
It’s what’s known as a pizza bianca, where tomato sauce is swapped with three types of cheese, while the pineapple topping is cooked twice over to give a caramelized effect.
Gino told CNN that he created it to ‘combat food prejudice.’
‘Sadly people follow the crowd and condition themselves according to other people’s views, or what they hear,’ he told the outlet.
‘I’ve noticed in the last few years that lots of people were condemning ingredients or ways of preparing food purely because in the past most people didn’t know them, so I wanted to put these disputed ingredients – that are treated like they’re poison – onto a Neapolitan pizza, making them tasty.’
If you want to try the ‘Margherita con Ananas’ for yourself, it will set you back by just 7 euros (£6.03). That is, if you exclude the flight and travel costs to Naples, too.
Gino shared a look at the pineapple pizza on his Instagram, and it’s fair to say his Italian followers aren’t impressed, with many branding it a ‘marketing’ ploy.
A user named Danielle Mazzocchi replied: ‘Dear Gino, make pineapple pizza and a sacrilege for the Neapolitan, the tourists can eat it, but for us, [it’s] pure marketing, I’m sorry but that’s how it is, Neapolitan pizza is what the world envy, not this one.’
While Carmela Liquori fumed: ‘Again with this pizza and that’s it! Controversy, this is the purpose of getting comments and that’s all! Then you call us Puritans almost as if we were not normal people we are Neapolitan and we like Neapolitan pizza not American, at least we let our origins remain unchanged we are losing the meaning of real pizza!!!’
And Renzo Scolozzi simply added: ‘Yuck’.
However a few others weren’t opposed to the idea of pineapple on pizza, with some suggesting it could be a ‘dessert’ pizza, and others curious what other fruits, such as apple or pear, would taste like.
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‘We are losing the real meaning of pizza!’