As It Happens6:51U.K. restaurant selling $177 pineapple pizza says that’s the price for ‘terrible judgment’
People who prefer their pizza prepared with pineapples will have to pay a pretty penny for the pleasure at a pizzeria in Norwich, England.
Lupa Pizza has added the controversial dish to its menu, with a price tag of £100, or roughly $177 Cdn, along with the cheeky description: “Order the champagne too! Go on, you Monster!”
Asked whether the listing is a protest, a dare or a money making-scheme, co-owner Francis Woolf insisted: “To be honest with you, it’s just a joke.”
“We were going over the menu and we thought, wouldn’t it be funny to put on a pineapple pizza £100 just to make our stance clear on the matter?” Woolf told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
“We thought if people wanted to have a Hawaiian pizza, then they ought to pay through the nose for their terrible judgment.”
Most other pizzas on the menu are listed at £14, or about $25 Cdn.
As Canadian as Hawaiian pizza
Pizza with pineapple, usually paired with slices of ham or bacon, is generally known as Hawaiian pizza. But don’t let the name fool you. The culinary concoction is, in fact, believed to have originated in Canada.
The late Sam Panopoulos, a London, Ont., restaurateur of Greek heritage told As It Happens in 2017 that he invented Hawaiian pizza back in the ’50s or ’60s, thinking people would like the juxtaposition of sweet and salty.
“Nobody liked it at first,” he said at the time. “But after that, they went crazy about it.”
Since Panopoulos first started serving it at his Ontario restaurants, Hawaiian pizza has exploded in popularity and is now available at restaurants around the world — including Naples, Italy, the birthplace of pizza.
The pineapple-laden pizza pie is quite popular in its supposed home country. A 2021 poll by Vancouver-based Research Co. found 73 per cent of Canadians are into it.
Nevertheless, it remains highly divisive — a fact that sometimes plays out along regional divides. Albertans polled liked it the most (90 per cent), while Quebecers liked it the least (55 per cent).
In fact, in 2020, Montreal’s Bàcaro Pizzeria took pineapple pizza off the menu after its patrons voted it down in an online referendum.
Even world leaders have weighed in on the debate. In 2017, Iceland’s then-president Guðni Jóhannesson told a group of high school students that he was fundamentally opposed to pineapple on pizza and he would like to ban it, drawing a rebuke from Panopoulos himself.
Jóhannesson later expressed his regret for the comment during a tongue-in-cheek interview with As It Happens, admitting he “went a step too far.”
‘We’re not complete a-holes’
Woolf, however, has no interest in apologizing to Canadians.
“Canadian friends of the Hawaiian, this goes out to you. Look deep down inside yourselves and think about who you truly are and if that is how you want to represent yourself in a culinary way,” he said.
“If it is, I think perhaps you need to look at your life choices.”
Pineapple on pizza — yes or no? For Gino Sorbillo, a third-generation pizza maker who is debuting his version of the tropical pie in Naples, Italy, where pizza was born, the fruit ‘has been a revelation for me.’ But not everyone agrees.
So far, he says, nobody has ordered the restaurant’s $177 dish. Though he suspects it’s just a matter of time, because “people are pretty bonkers.”
When it happens, Woolf says Lupa Pizza is prepared to offer big spender in question “a little goodie pack” to soften the financial blow.
“We’re not complete a-holes,” he said.
Since adding the menu item, Woof says the restaurant has received some “really vehement reactions.”
“We’ve had people threaten to burn down the restaurant, death threats,” he said. “No, seriously.”
But he’s not sweating it.
“We weren’t expecting to go viral. So I think that is just what happens when something becomes such a big news story,” he said. “We’ve had some really lovely comments and a load of support as well, which has been really fun.”