This is how the fourth Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich in the 18th century
Chin chin.Pérignon, the monk who invented champagne in the cellar of an abbey
After confinement, various market studies -among them, one by Just Eat- concluded that Spain's favorite dish is not paella or potato omelette, but
pizza
.
An addictive Italian delicacy, usually cooked with
mozzarella, tomato, ham ... or pineapple.
An option the latter
applauded
by many and
detested
by many others, due to the sweet flavor that it adds to the pizza.
According to culinary culture, pineapple
pizza
is called
"Hawaiian" pizza.
But the surprising reality is that this peculiar custom was
not born in Honolulu, but in Canada,
thanks to a restless Greek chef, who in 1962 decided to add canned pineapple to pizzas, in an effort to
expand the gastronomic options
of his Satellite restaurant.
His name was
Sam Panopoulos
and he was born on August 20,
1937
in Vourvoura, Greece.
After coming of age, Panopoulos decided to
emigrate to Canada, aboard a ship,
and the first port he reached was Halifax, in the south of the country.
But then
he moved
to Sudbury and Elliot Lake, where he worked in the mines, and finally, he transformed Chatham (Ontario) into
his permanent residence.
Despite his various jobs, Panopoulos always felt a
culinary concern.
That is why, as an adult, he chose to dedicate himself to the gastronomic business together with
his brothers Elias and Nikitas.
In fact, it was at one of his restaurants - specifically, one called Satellite - that he
first
experimented
with pizzas.
A dish he had discovered
in Naples several years ago.
"In Canada, pizza was not known
at all. Even in Toronto, nothing was known about pizzas in those days. The only place you could eat pizza was
in Detroit,"
Panopoulos mentioned in 2015 to
Atlas Obscura
.
According to the cook himself, the pizza options back then were extremely limited and people didn't dare add anything but pepperoni to the dough.
So the chef wanted to venture a bit and try other ingredients.
"We tried pineapple just for fun,
just to see what it tasted like. We were young in the business and doing a lot of experiments," the Greek admitted to the BBC in February 2017. However, Panopoulos and his brothers never they imagined that their creation would cause so much interest.
"First we tried the pizza ourselves and then
we decided to present it to some customers.
A few months later, several of them became obsessed with its taste, so we
decided to
put it on the menu,"
Sam revealed a couple of months before passing away.
And why did Panopoulos decide to name their pizza Hawaiian?
The answer might be disappointing for some:
"Hawaiian" was the brand of canned pineapple
that the brothers used to make the first pizza of its kind.
And even though the next pineapples they bought probably didn't come from the island, the inventor considered
"Hawaiian" to be a good name.
Or at least, that's what he always said in his interviews.
In his own words, the press did not always seek him out to ask about the origin of Hawaiian pizza.
But interest in Panopoulos increased substantially when
Iceland's president
suggested, on a visit to a school, that
he would ban pineapple pizza
if he could.
"That man is crazy. He says it because he does not grow many pineapples there," Sam replied then, after finding support in the Prime Minister of Canada.
"I have a pineapple, I have a pizza and I support this delicious creation,"
wrote Justin Trudeau,
in February 2017, on Twitter.
After the controversy, Panopoulos' life did not change much.
Pizza
makers became interested in his story,
but he was not about to cook any Hawaiian pizza again.
Moreover, according to various Canadian media, Panopoulos
had sold the famous
Satellite
restaurant
in 1980 and had not eaten other pizzas that were not frozen for decades.
And is that according to the Canadian chain CBC, the chef had a quite determined personality, as well as interesting and magnetic.
Even so, he
was quite humble, he
never got the fumes on his head and he never got into a bad habit.
Sam Panopoulos
died in June 2017,
in London (Canada), where he had settled in the last period of his life.
His funerals were held in the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and he was accompanied by his
two children, the result of his only marriage
to Christina Panopoulos.
"Our father was very proud of his relationship with his family," said Bill Panopoulos, one of his heirs, after his death.
However, there are no statements on whether his descendants are interested in continuing his legacy or in revolutionizing the world with other fruit pizzas.
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