Pineapple gaining popularity as a pizza topping

Pizza orders with pineapple surged by 76 percent in 2021, according to the National State of Pizza report from Slice, the food-ordering app that works with 18,000 pizzerias across the US.

Abe Nasrallah, an executive with Slice, which released the study to time with National Pizza Day on Feb. 9, attributed pineapple’s growing popularity as a pizza topping to people’s changing tastes and getting more experimental

However, pepperoni is the “king of the pizza world” and remains the most popular of toppings by far, says Nasrallah.

Pineapple ranks in the 15th spot, behind such toppings as no. 2 mushrooms, no. 4 sausages, no. 8 green peppers, and no. 13 spinach.

Still, pineapple’s rise might be considered surprising as it has often been maligned as a pizza topping.

Pizza professionals decry the use of pineapple as a topping.

Michael Ayoub, chef, and owner of Fornino, a New York City pizza restaurant with multiple locations, thinks pineapple is a little too sweet and doesn’t play nicely with everybody else.

While a 2019 US survey found that 12 percent of respondents consider the fruit among their three favorite toppings, it also found that 24 percent of respondents said pineapple was among their least favorite toppings.

It was the Hawaiian pizza’s invention decades ago that brought pineapple to the fore as a pizza topping, eventually gaining a following from a small segment of the pizza-loving segment.

But the trend has gone beyond the Hawaiian pie, according to Arthur Bovino, a pizza expert who works on editorial content for Ooni Pizza Ovens. Bovino notes that the fruit can be pickled or roasted and then used as a topping with a little more depth, adding that various fruits are finding their way on pizza, such as the bananas.

Bovino pointed out that the Swedes put bananas on pizza.