Twenty-year-old Sam Panopoulos came to Canada from Greece and in 1962 opened a restaurant with his brothers. Canada is described as a mosaic of nations (as opposed to the US which is described as a melting pot - make of that what you will). And the menu at their restaurant included all sorts of things, such as Chinese food, burgers and fries ... and pizza. Inspired by the sweet and sour flavours of some of their Chinese dishes, Sam opened a tin of pineapple chunks* and flung them on a ham pizza, just to see what happened.
Culinary history was made, and today, the 20th of July, we celebrate International Hawaiian Pizza Day.
Since Sam's experiment, plenty of people have publicly and vociferously objected. You may be one of them. (Disclaimer: I like ham and pineapple on a pizza. And I'm from Canada.) But what does pizza of any sort and Hawaiian pizza in particular have to do with writing?
This may feel like a stretch, but maybe it's a metaphor for not being afraid - for being open to all sorts of things - to go for the joy of crazy rather than the safe of sane. Fusion? Why not? Sweet AND savoury? Why not? There are many things we stop ourselves doing, as writers, for fear of how others will react. 'You can't do that,' says the persistent little voice in our heads, 'somebody will object.' But maybe we should all try to be, now and then, a bit more pineapple.
* The pizza is named after the label on the tin - Hawaii Pineapple.
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1 comment:
That's quite the rallying cry - "Be more pineapple!"
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