Professionals in the field are mostly all of the same opinion: pineapple has nothing to do with a pizza. Nevertheless, in most pizzerias in Belgium, Hawaiian pizza is indeed present on the menu.
However, we found the Italian restaurant which is an exception to the rule. Bernardo D’Annolfo received us in his pizzeria “Educazione Napoletana” located in Ixelles. The chef comes straight from Italy and he explains that on the menu of his establishment you will find pizzas like in Naples and nothing else!
“Many Italian restaurants brag about making pizzas like in Italy to attract customers while they sell what customers want, that is to say pizzas with pineapple, chicken or even eggs. In Naples, nobody will serve you a pizza like that, and here it’s the same. I’m the chef and I’m the one who decides”, explains the manager of this pizzeria.
In order to get the message across to his customers, the chef indicated on his restaurant’s menu that he was selling the famous Hawaiian pizza at the modest price of… €100. A way of his own to make customers understand that in his establishment this is something forbidden. “ En reality, no one could buy this €100 pizza from us simply because we don’t make it.”
The owner even went further, telling us, in a humorous tone, that it is written in the employment contracts of his employees. “It is written that if one of my chefs produces a pizza with pineapples in it for a customer, he loses his job. That way everyone knows that it is forbidden at my place.”
Neapolitan education makes a point of making authentic pizzas and that won’t change anytime soon.