Italian chef fired for refusing to put pineapple on pizza, loses appeal: ‘An insult to my culture’

Italians are notoriously serious about food, but particularly about pizza. In Naples, the home of pizza, only two varieties of pizza are considered truly authentic: Marinara (tomato, garlic, oregano, no cheese) and Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil).

So, perhaps it’s no surprise that one Italian chef was so adamant that he wasn’t going to put pineapple on a pizza that he lost his job. Per The Guardian, Italian chef Davide Tamburella had a job working at La Costa, a restaurant in Brisbane, Australia.

According to the article, the restaurant got a huge order from a large function who were spending “in excess of $15,000”, and the man paying reportedly said (according to the restaurant owner Elliot Ingram) “Look, I need to get some ham and pineapple pizza.”

Is a Hawaiian pizza really that serious?

Tamburella reportedly refused point blank to put pineapple on a pizza, telling Ingram to “check how important it is for Italians not to put pineapple on a pizza” and later adding that the request was “an insult to his culture”.

This is broadly echoed by other Italian chefs. Nicola De Camillis of top Neapolitan pizzeria Gino Sorbillo said “Pineapple pizza is a sacrilege.” The Huffington Post Italy quoted other Neapolitan pizza chefs who said, “It’s disgusting, “a dessert that has nothing to do with pizza” and, most forcefully, “If anyone asks me for it, I’ll kick their ass.” Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni weighed in, saying in 2022, “In Italy we don’t eat pineapple on pizza.”

Tamburella was soon shown the door after a meeting “to address performance concerns” didn’t go well. But the saga doesn’t end there. As a measure of how seriously Tamburella takes his pizza toppings, he was apparently going through an employer-sponsored visa process to give him permanent residency in Australia, so he needed to have a job or face potential deportation. He was three years into the process, and losing his job potentially meant restarting the whole process from scratch.

So he appealed to the Fair Work Commission, arguing that he’d been unfairly dismissed. The panel did not agree, ruling on Tuesday that his plea did not meet the requirements for “exceptional circumstances.” But there’s a happy ending to this unusual saga. Tamburella has successfully found employment at another Italian restaurant in Brisbane, and it appears he will be able to remain in Australia. And, thankfully for him, his current employer does not serve pineapple on pizza.