The hate for ham and pineapple pizza is pure snobbery

What’s the time, Mr Woolf? Time to calm down. The Hawaiian is not the aberration many claim it to be. 

Is it “authentic”, whatever that word means? Not as far as classic Neapolitan recipes are concerned, but then we are nowhere near Naples. Or Italy, for that matter. 

We are in the UK – its far east in this instance. I should think far more people in East Anglia have put together cheese and pineapple buffet hedgehogs than have thrust fermented dough into wood-fired pizza ovens.

Geography aside, the simple fact is ham and pineapple are natural bedfellows. Mr Woolf claims sugar and salt don’t work well together, but they do, resolutely. It’s one of the reasons why fast food chains have got so many people addicted to budget cheeseburgers. 

As for the cheese? Nobody is trying to combine pineapple rings with the finest Campanian bufala di mozzarella. On the contrary: ham and pineapple pizzas work best with blander, stringier varieties, possibly even the addition of cheddar. 

It’s British countryside style, a thicker dough; a soft, indulgent junk food vibe. I had a Hawaiian pizza in a pub garden in Aldeburgh not so long ago and it worked well with my Suffolk lager.

Mostly I believe animosity towards the topping is posturing. People who want to appear as if they understand food. They have seen Gordon Ramsay’s cooking videos and read Jamie Oliver’s books. 

These are the types who are all too eager to tell you to parboil your potatoes and bash them about in a colander before roasting; they scoff at the notion of matching Yorkshire puddings with anything other than beef; they think Argentinian Malbec is the wine of the moment, perusing the aisles of Majestic before getting back in their Ford Mondeos and putting on Enya.

Or they are Stanley Tucci, who once said of ham and pineapple: “It’s so repellent, were I to think of it, I might not survive”. Performance at its finest.

I love the Hawaiian pizza origin story. Apparently, it was invented by Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant in Toronto, in 1962. So it predates ciabatta by almost 30 years.

Panopoulos was supposedly trying to attract more customers to his restaurant and so turned to salt and sugar – in part inspired by the sweet-savoury, Western-Chinese restaurants that had cropped up in the city – as so many restaurateurs do. 

It would appear I’m not alone. Even if Sir Keir Starmer isn’t a Hawaiian pizza fan, 53 per cent of Britons are, according to a poll in 2017. Only 29 per cent considered it an abomination. 

And while I am the first to lobby for the preservation of culinary traditions – I believe Italy’s food rules are important, considered and expert and must be maintained on record – I also think it is subjective above all. It is a personal preference. 

Basically, do what you like, especially in the UK where food is nothing but amalgamating flavours from just about everywhere else. Just maybe don’t ask for a Hawaiian at a historic pizzeria in Naples. Have a hot dog and fries pie instead. 

Back to Lupa. The editor of TNE, who lives in Norwich, tells me it’s delicious.

And so I repeat: I respect the hustle. These independent businesses need PR just as London powerhouses do. And probably my favourite moment in the whole thing was when Lupa’s head chef, Quin Jianoran, called pineapple a “tropical menace”. 

But to these serious people who gasp in faux horror as if some sort of Lyonnaise chef in a Pixar movie at the very thought of ham and pineapple: do settle down. Chances are you overcooked your steak on Friday, think putting vinegar in the water when poached eggs helps and still (still!) don’t know that milk is crucial when cooking bolognese.