An Italian chef sacked from a Brisbane restaurant had refused to put pineapple on a pizza because it was an “insult to his culture”.
Davide Tamburella was fired from the now-closed La Costa restaurant in May, a fortnight after a meeting with management who had a string of complaints about the chef’s behaviour.
Among them were Tamburella’s refusal to provide ham and pineapple pizza for guests at a function. At the time, the chef had stated that any direction from management “need not be followed when it is offensive to his culture”.
The details came to light after the chef went to Australia’s Fair Work Commission claiming he had been unfairly dismissed.
In its ruling released on Tuesday, the commission noted that Tamburella’s refusal to put pineapple on the pizzas was because “he considers, as an Italian, that putting pineapple on a pizza is an insult to his culture”.
Yes! Pineapple and ham pizza is both unusual and recent enough that we have very solid understanding of the history.
Greek-born restauranteur Sam Panopoulos first invented, named, and sold it in 1968 at Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, ON. He claims that he was inspired by Chinese flavor combinations(?) and the name actually came from the brand name (Hawaiian Pineapple Company) of the canned pineapple he happened to purchase.
Dude heard about the concept of Sweet and Sour pork once and thought he could do better.