The Greek immigrant who created one of the world’s most popular and controversial pizzas – Hawaiian pizza – in his restaurant in Canada more than 50 years ago, has died.
Sam Panopoulos -who earned a place in history by putting canned pineapple and ham on a pizza at his Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario in 1962- was 83 and had just celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife Christina.
He died suddenly in the hospital on Thursday, according to his obituary.
Born Sotirios Panopoulos in Vourvoura, Greece, in 1934, he was 20 when he immigrated to Canada aboard a boat, later operating several restaurants with brothers Elias and Nikitas Panopoulos.
After arriving in Halifax in 1954, he moved to Montreal, then Elliot Lake, Ont., where he worked in the mines. He later moved to Chatham, Ont., and then finally made London his permanent home.
Panopoulos had operated a string of successful restaurants with his brothers Elias and Nikitas when he came up with his famous invention, The Guardian said.
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.
Puzzled about pizza’s lack of popularity, Panopoulos ended up in Windsor, Ont., and after watching how chefs in the southern Ontario city made their pies, he started experimenting at the brothers’ Satellite restaurant in Chatham.
No choices on your pizza
It was Panopoulos’s culinary inquisitiveness that put him on the gastronomic map.
In a 2015 interview with the Atlas Obscura, Panopoulos recalled how he became fascinated with pizza during a boat stop in Naples, but that the Italian staple had a sort of mysticism in Canada.
“Pizza wasn’t known at all, actually,” Panopoulos told the Atlas Obscura. “Even Toronto didn’t know anything about pizza in those days. The only place you could have pizza was in Detroit.”
“The pizza in those days was three things: dough, sauce, cheese, and mushroom, bacon, or pepperoni. That was it. You had no choices; you could get one of the three [toppings] or more of them together,” the online article says.
In 1962, he threw pieces of pineapple on top along with bits of ham and bacon, thinking that the sweet and savory mix would tantalize tastebuds.
His culinary instincts eventually bore fruit — his creation became a staple of pizza menus the world over, though it did have a healthy portion of critics.
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. At the time pizza toppings were usually limited to mushrooms, bacon and pepperoni, Panopoulos said.
Last February, the dish became the target of ridicule by Iceland’s president, Guoni Johannesson. Saying he was fundamentally opposed to pineapple on pizza, Johannesson declared that it should be banned.
After a public uproar, he clarified that he gladly does not have “the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapple on their pizza.”
Defending his creation, Panopoulos told the public broadcaster CBC: “Nobody liked it at first,” he said. “But after that, they went crazy about it, because (in) those days nobody was mixing sweet and sour and all that. It was plain, plain food.”
Others soon began experimenting, Panopoulos said, going beyond the traditional pepperoni, bacon and mushroom toppings to include salmon, green peppers, onions or “whatever you wanted.
Among those coming to the defense of the Hawaiian pizza was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who recognized this slice of Canadiana in a tweet: “I have a pineapple. I have a pizza. And I stand behind this delicious Southwestern Ontario creation.”
A funeral for Panopoulos is set for Monday in London Ont. at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.