Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay took a turn hosting the British talk show The Nightly Show recently and reignited a debate among food connoisseurs and pizza lovers everywhere. In one segment of the show, Ramsay ordered a bunch of pizzas by phone and asked audience members to call out recommendations for toppings. One audience member shouted "pineapples," prompting Ramsay to cover the phone and jokingly scold the audience member over the recommendation. The brief interaction reignited the internet argument over pineapple on pizza, a debate that swept social media earlier this year. This time, some celebrities even chimed in with tweets like this one from Paul Rudd:
In typical Gordon Ramsay fashion, the Hell's Kitchen star did not mince words about his opinion on pizzas topped with the tropical fruit, saying,
You don't put fucking pineapple on pizza.
Ramsay's opinion echoed that of Iceland's president, Gudni Johannesson, who ignited the debate about pineapple on pizza earlier this year when he made an appearance at a high school and joked that pizza with pineapple as a topping should be illegal. After Johannesson's talk, people on the internet drew lines with some people for and other people against the staple ingredient of Hawaiian pizza. Eventually, Johannesson issued a statement to communicate his fondness for pineapples themselves, but not pineapples on pizza. At the end of the statement, Johannesson recommended seafood on pizza instead.
But Gudni Johannesson is a politician, not a famous chef with an empire built on his palette. With Gordon Ramsay adding his two cents, perhaps people ought to give pineapple on pizza a second thought. The key word there is "perhaps" because the truth is we do not see any problem with pineapple on pizza, and that probably will not change just because a famous chef suggests that it should. Still, we can understand how some people might dislike the mix of textures between the soft pineapple and gooey cheese or even the mix of sweet and savory tastes with pineapple and other pizza flavors.
However, can we back up for a minute? The guy who began the debate, the president of Iceland, expressed his loathing of pineapple on pizza, but it is not as though pineapple, cheese, and even ham are a strange combination. Many great recipes call for fruit and cheese together--even pineapple and ham together. At the same time, Gudni Johannesson recommended pizza with seafood on it. Seafood is something that turns off a lot of people whether it is on pizza or not. Again, we do not have any problem with seafood pizza, but we can see how some people might think it sounds unappealing. So, we find it interesting that Johannesson would recommend a kind of pizza topping that sounds unusual over one that seems pretty standard these days.
Maybe pineapple on pizza is not for everyone. It's okay to be picky sometimes, but it's also fun to try new things, so we would love to hear from you. Give us your opinion about pineapple on pizza in the poll below. Then write your favorite combination of toppings in the comments section. Is pineapple on pizza not a problem, or was Gordon Ramsay right?
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