Would you put pineapple on your pizza? Because this has become a burning question in the food world (and on non-foodie mainstream media too) after an incident in the Australian city of Brisbane, i ask.
Here’s what happened. Secondly, should chefs be so sensitive about the sanctity of their pizzas (or their food in general)? It’s a question that comes up again and again. More significantly, he also refused to make Spaghetti Bolognaise, arguing that he was from Bologna and the dish was unknown in his hometown. He was right about that, at least. Spaghetti Bolognaise was invented outside of Italy. There is a pasta dish that has traditionally been served with ragu in Bologna. But the pasta is always tagliatelle, not spaghetti. And the ragu is completely different from the rubbish tomato-keema Bolognese sauce that goes into Spaghetti Bolognaise. The Italian food writer Luca Cesari offers the example of Gino Sorbillo, one of Italy’s greatest pizza chefs. Sorbillo made a Pizza Bianca with no tomatoes, and experimented with pineapple toppings. And the avant-garde pizza chef Franco Pepe uses pineapple. Though, to be fair, Pepe makes a pizza cone filled with San Daniele ham and cheese fondue. The pineapple is at the bottom of the cone. So, why is it okay for great Italian pizza chefs to use pineapple? And why does a restaurant manager in Australia become a philistine when he sacks a chef for refusing to put pineapple on a pizza? What’s the difference?
Because he refused to put pineapple on a pizza, an Italian chef called Davide Tamburella was sacked from La Costa, a local restaurant,. Because he refused to overcook his pasta and insisted on serving it the way Italians eat it: Al dente, in 2017, an Italian chef was sacked by a French bistro.
According to the restaurant’s managing director Elliot Ingram (whose name does not sound Italian), Tamburella was a repeat offender who had refused to top his pizza with pineapple on two previous occasions.
Within South Asia, we have found our own solutions. Rare is the Chinese restaurant in India where an actual Chinese person works in the kitchen. So it is with Italian restaurants and Italians. It is only at expensive hotel restaurants that you will find food cooked by people who understand the cuisine and know what dishes are supposed to taste like. The rest of the time, the chefs have rarely even eaten the genuine article, let alone cooked it.
