Italy divided over new pineapple pizza

Anyone who’s set foot in Italy knows there are unwritten rules that one must abide by – and the most important of all revolve around food. Cappuccino after 11 a.m.? Only for tourists. Spaghetti bolognese? A horrifying thought. Pineapple on your pizza? Heresy – at least, it was until now.

But 2024 might just be the year that pineapple pizza cracks Italy, thanks to Gino Sorbillo, the renowned Naples pizzaiolo (pizza maestro) who has added the dreaded “ananas” to his menu in Via dei Tribunali, the best known pizza street in the world capital of pizza.

Sorbillo’s creation, called “Margherita con Ananas” costs 7 euros ($7.70). But this isn’t your regular Hawaiian: it is a pizza bianca, denuded of its tomato layer, sprinkled with no fewer than three types of cheese, with the pineapple cooked twice for a caramelized feel.

Sorbillo, a third-generation pizzaiolo, told CNN that he created it to “combat food prejudice.”

“Sadly people follow the crowd and condition themselves according to other people’s views, or what they hear,” he said.

“I’ve noticed in the last few years that lots of people were condemning ingredients or ways of preparing food purely because in the past most people didn’t know them, so I wanted to put these disputed ingredients – that are treated like they’re poison – onto a Neapolitan pizza, making them tasty.”

Doing it in his headquarters in the historic center of Naples with its 3,000 years of history – Sorbillo has 21 outlets around the world including in Miami, Tokyo and Ibiza – was also making an important point, he said.

The pineapple is prebaked in the oven and then cooled. Then he adds smoked provola (a local cow milk cheese from Campania), extra virgin olive oil, and fresh basil, before popping the pizza in his woodfired oven.

As it comes out of the oven, he scatters “micro shavings” of two types of smoked cacioricotta cheese around the crust: one from Sardinian goats, and another from buffalos in the nearby Cilento area.

“It makes it really tasty,” he said.