Someone Asks Hawaiians How They Feel About Hawaiian Pizza, Gets 35 Replies

The original author of the thread told Bored Panda that they were talking to a friend who lives in Hawaii via Zoom and eating pizza at the same time. That's when the idea for the thread popped into their head. "I asked her and she was very adamant that pineapple should not go on pizza. Also, turns out pineapple isn't even native to Hawaii, even though it grows there. I had no idea!" 

"I personally love all kinds of pizza. I've ordered Hawaiian pizza before and I'll definitely eat it if it's available, but it's not my first choice, typically. I think that's why I find the question so interesting because so many people are passionate about the topic. I'm one of, what seems like, a very small minority of people who are moderate on the topic," the original poster said. "I think pizza in general is popular around the world. People love pizza, people love pineapple, why not mix those two things to make a delicious pizza!?"

Meanwhile, redditor Coberst told us a bit about the link between pizza and Hawaii as well. "We know the pizza did not originate in Hawaii but rather from the cold northeastern province of Ontario, Canada. During the '60s, the Number 1 producer and exporter of pineapples across the world was the state of Hawaii."

Coberst continued: "While the pineapple is not endemic to Hawaii, the fact that it was grown and exported from the then Republic of Hawaii since 1901 cemented the association of pineapples and Hawaii forever and always... Thanks, Dole. In the '60s, you even had Ray Croc of McDonald's trying to introduce the Hula burger which was simply a grilled slice of pineapple."

Coberst pointed out that air travel in the '60s was very different from what we're used to today. It wasn't as accessible to people as it is now. So far fewer people flew to Hawaii for a vacation. "So to name a dish to be able to evoke the mysterious tropical islands only seen in pictures or films (Elvis' 'Blue Hawaii') would be a smart marketing ploy," Coberst explained why the name 'Hawaiian pizza' caught on.

According to Coberst, 'real' Hawaiian food is difficult to define. "There is more traditional pre-contact (1777) foods and then the style of food from Hawaii that is a blend of all the different immigrant influences and cultures. This blend of influences would be similar to Cajun cooking," they explained.

"Some of the more traditional Hawaiian meals and cooking was done in an imu (cooking pit). There, cooking is done with heated rocks covered with leaves then covered to produce an environment that is high in moisture but low in heat, requiring long cooking times," the redditor went into detail. Coberst said that this style of cooking had been used by different cultures and in countries around the world, from "cochinita pibil (recently learned from the Netflix show Chef's Table: BBQ) to Morocco where lamb is cooked in an earthen pit low and slow."

Kalua pig (aka Kalua pork) is the most popular traditional and keto-friendly Hawaiian dish that's still cooked this way. "I grew up helping make it many times for luau celebrations where whole pigs are cooked. Other traditional foods still popular in Hawaii is laulau and poi. Both of these dishes' main ingredient is from different parts of the Kalo (or taro plant)—laulau uses the leaves while poi uses the roots. Then you have the simple dish of poke that has now evolved from humble beginnings of cubed salted fish to all the different variations across the globe today."

Coberst stressed that modern Hawaiian cuisine borrows from lots of different cultures and still uses the "old words" to describe the dishes that have already been replaced in their country of origin. "For example, the spam musubi is quintessentially Hawaiian but is simply adding fried spam to a Japanese (now called) onigiri or rice ball wrapped in nori (seaweed). There are many other such dishes that have become celebrated in Hawaii but are by no means traditional such as chicken long rice, Lomi salmon, malasadas, and loco moco," they said.

"Hawaii has had wave after wave of immigration from American, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Puerto Rican, to Filipino all adding their own elements to what has become Hawaiian cooking today. In all of this, pineapple was not one of them. It has become introduced into some dishes but should not be synonymous to Hawaii anymore," Coberst said.

And if you haven't guessed already, Coberst made it clear that they absolutely hate Hawaiian pizza.

Wind the clock back to 1962. Sam Panopoulous claims that he invented the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant, in Chatham, Ontario. It was a cuisine experiment. While initially it didn’t wow too many people, eventually it became popular among the locals.

It spread from there and now we’re (un)lucky (depending on your personal taste) that pizza places around the world serve this staple. "Along the way we threw some pineapples on it and nobody liked it at first. But after that, they went crazy about it. Because those days nobody was mixing sweets and sours and all that. It was plain, plain food," Panopoulos said.

As for the name, Hawaiian, Panopoulous named the type of pizza after the brand of canned pineapple that he used.

The original poster's thread got over 16.1k upvotes. That’s quite a bit, considering how focused and niche the question was. So well done on getting an interesting discussion started and for helping us learn more about real Hawaiian gastronomy.

Hawaiian pizza also made Time’s list of the top 13 most influential pizza of all time. Unfortunately, it’s at the very bottom (don’t cry, fellow canned pineapple-lovers). While the top spot went to Margherita pizza. And you know what? Margheritas are great. But they lack some pineapples and ham!