Greek-Canadian inventor of Hawaiian Pizza Sam Panopoulos dies

The man credited with inventing the Hawaiian pizza, triggering endless debate around the world about the legitimacy of pineapple on the Italian staple, has died aged 83, according to The Guardian.

Sam Panopoulos emigrated from Greece to Canada in 1954 at the age of 20 and ran several restaurants in Ontario with his two brothers.

With his brothers Elias and Nikitas, Panopoulos owned the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, where in 1962 he had the idea to add canned pineapple to pizza.

His most famous creation would result from an experiment: one day Panopoulos decided to put tinned pineapple on a pizza to find out how it would taste. “We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste,” he told the BBC earlier this year. “We were young in the business and we were doing a lot of experiments.”

Greek – Canadian Sam Panopoulos claims that he created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in 1962. Inspired in part by his experience preparing Chinese dishes which commonly mix sweet and sour flavours, Panopoulos experimented with adding pineapple, ham, bacon and other toppings which were not initially very popular. The addition of pineapple to the traditional mix of tomato sauce and cheese, sometimes with ham or sometimes with bacon, soon became popular locally and eventually became a staple offering of pizzerias around the world.

He and his brothers liked the contrast between the sweetness of the pineapple and the savoury flavour of the ham. “We tried it first, [then] passed it to some customers. And a couple of months later, they’re going crazy about it, so we put it on the menu.”

It was called the Hawaiian after the brand of tinned pineapple used.

Panopoulos and his wife Christina were married for 50 years. He died unexpectedly at University Hospital in London, Ontario on 8 June 2017.