Halakahiki is Foreign to the Fire

The arguments that start from the beginning to the end, there is no shortage of who thinks they are right, so it's important to know what makes flat bread what it is. If it's about talking about what happens to the dough it's about taking it into the building that transforms it into the delight of what people are talking about. Becoming a full fledged pizza, because someone had to build it before any of the rest could happen, so in Hawaii that was the first fire ovens. These were called the portuguese-oven with the portuguese immigrants the "Forno" (1870), the first ovens that arrived in Hawaii. 

Madeira brought Bolo do caco, but because it was poor people's food, the sweet potato was used, breadfruit in Hawaii, banana, and taro as a way to stay away from more expensive ingredients. It's much more well recognized that more famous bread dishes were Fried Malasadas and Pão doce Sweet Bread. They were working with what was available like octopus, grouper, chicken, shrimp, cured meats, but it wasn't yet pizza. This would be a precursor of things people would enjoy on Pizza, when making their own, but it would take a much bigger twist towards a mixture of cultures from the plantations. It seems almost wild to see that these are not mentioned when people talk about a Pineapple Ham Pizza, just take out the pineapple and its much more local style.

"I can't say I know much about the old recipe cards grandma had, but grilled tender octopus, portuguese sausage, and canned shellfish were common. They all tasted smoky. We also had marinated Chicken (Frango) that was flame grilled, Shrimp, sometimes ham. When I moved to Oahu, samoan crab and mascarpone was a personal favorite that I would make for my kids." - Kona Resident

Focusing strictly on cured meats usually leads straight to local-portuguese vinha d'alhos... But back then, cooks were equally intrigued by whatever was on hand—lap cheong, bologna, or local catches like octopus. It's a little too convenient that in the pursuit of authentic Italian cuisine... modern pizza purists turn their noses up at seafood combinations, calling them unappealing or unauthentic. Yet in Italy, pizza ai frutti di mare—loaded with squid, octopus, shrimp, and clams—is considered a timeless classic. Putting octopus or local meats on a fire-baked dough wasn't a weird departure from tradition; it was pizza doing what it has always done.

Okay, some stonemasonry started in Hawaii in this way, plantations were around, now ask the connection between use of ingredients being almost as Italian as it is Portuguese in many menus and things become much less surprising. There are still ovens that are around that people visit that is known by the Kona Historical Society to teach people about them. People in Hawaii already knew how to bake, make their own dough, fire their own foods, and understand the process. Hawaii may have been known for pineapples, sugarcane, and coconuts, but arguing about what is from Hawaii in its developments of the fire are from Hawaiian Imus and then the Portuguese Forno through ovens.

Everybody arguing about Hawaiian pizza 

Somebody will decide I'm gatekeeping, or ask what gives the other person standing. The smart people are not having that fight, just enjoying their slice and laughing. Nobody has to prove anything to anybody to have an opinion about "Fruit Topping", and the second this becomes about who counts, everybody loses and nothing gets eaten. And if the question is why any of this matters when people can eat what they want, they can, they should, pizza has become a global canvas and it has begun to go regional. There's a whole pizza from Hawaii that most people have never heard of, good, so then the people in the region can enjoy the real deal, while the rest of the world fights about one canned ingredient that took all their time against someone they will never share a table with.

The popularization of this started in 2017 when celebrity chefs started discussing at a global level if it worked or not with  millions of comments. When you ask the people on there they haven't eaten fruit on their pizza, let alone a pineapple ham pizza, and surely they don't make their own version of pizza. The argument is great at bringing in traffic, does nothing but make people angry, and it's easy to have a say about fruit on a pie, a trip to Hawaii and say I never saw that, and type like a warrior. If you want to know what a Hawaiian pizza is though, you would actually need to talk to people, see people outside of one's comfort zone.

There are several places that people get their fixing for a Hawaiian Pizza or as it is said in the islands a Local Kine Pizza, because its Local, its complicated and is slightly Hawaiian. Things are mixed on the island and people don't like to bring it up, but what they do like to bring up is their favorite pie. If it isn't the classic Italian selections and they had to pick one from the local palette it would be the Kalua pork, smoky and shredded, sweet teriyaki sauce, but still loaded with cheese. Some like to add thin sliced Portuguese sausage, maybe diced, there are many ways to enjoy a slice. You might see spam instead of ham, different cheeses other than the green can saw dust, and a brushing of butter.

Tomato sauce often is made with imports, since to get that pizza taste it needs something not from Hawaii (George Castagnola). The pesto sauce that you might see is interesting, since it takes away the pine nuts and replaces them with macadamia nuts, which also are not from Hawaii originally. Some places will try their best with what they have, like there's a shop on Maui making salami out of kālua pork, so cured meat innovations, no problem. There's a pizza that has spam and its common to have on it, yes, pineapple, but it's Maui Gold and it's roasted, sitting against pork that was smoked, not the usual respected slice of deli ham. The Spam Musubi (minnesota), the Plate Lunch (mixed cultures), the Butterfish Laulau (north pacific), none of those exist anywhere else and nobody argues about whether they're associated with Hawaii. Pizza showed up late and got a different sort of treatment, but it turned out the same. Something arrives, it goes in the pot with everything else, what comes out is ours.

Which is why being told a person is a hypocrite for eating Spam while complaining about pineapple pizza has it backwards. Its implying that someone is rejecting something, something in particular. It comes from the argument of limiting ingredients to what is "native", even when global cultures are not time capsuling themselves in the "what ifs". Somebody in a diner four thousand miles away opened a can, put it on a pie with deli ham, and an uninformed world that didn't do the research decided that was Hawaii. The sort of pie in Hawaii that would be perceived as "Hawaiian" is a different object and anybody who's had both knows it in one bite. Not a moral position. A tasty one.

It has gotten to a point people secretly order their ham and pineapple like a spy trying to steal a diamond ring. At the pizza joint they don't care, because its often times ordered by people who don't live in Hawaii, the locals, or people who just want pineapple. Plenty of people order the ham-and-pineapple and like it, there are those who like control and try to confiscate the idea by adding shame, but it doesn't work. What makes it more accurate to Hawaii is the type of Pineapple, not a canned one, but also understanding the juice working with the cheese. It is about the water and enzymes, but tell that to the people eating it... they won't flinch. The most famous complaint against Hawaiian Pizza isn't even philosophical, its when Gordon Ramsay said his opinion of disliking it, the next was when the president of Iceland finally explained what he had against mushy pineapple pizza, after nearly starting an international incident over it.

Somebody always points out that a tomato is technically a fruit, according to the Supreme Court (Nix v. Hedden, 1893). A botanical argument for tariff purposes and not the scientific one. The official position of the United States is that what a food gets called follows how people actually talk.  Pizza con Fichi e Prosciutto (Figs & Prosciutto): A classic Roman late-summer seasonal favorite (pizza bianca baked with fresh sliced figs, topped with salty Prosciutto di Parma and mozzarella). Top Italian pizzaioli like Franco Pepe have even embraced fruits by method of caramelizing or dehydrating fresh fruit to control moisture, pairing it with salty things and grana padano at international competitions. Its about the sweetness with the sharp-salty savories like cheese for that agro-dolce, the sweet-and-savory balance.

Deconstructing the authenticity of what people ate in Hawaii is the most popular argument, meanwhile many of those people have photos of themselves with a slice of pizza in hand.  The argument doesn't hold up, because it acts as if there is a rule, but people will eat what they like, so if its shamed in public they will take it private. If the rule worked the most popular pie in Hawaii would be the one with taro sauce, but even that is a major doughy stretch. There was a fire and whatever you had. Italian pizzaioli are making pineapple pizza at chef congresses, Pineapple Pizza is from Canada, Gordon Ramsay said it doesn't belong and never took it back while his own restaurants served it anyway, and America's pizza has been an abomination at each arrival. Nobody who knows the Italian tradition gets to police the topping.

Arguments tend to really enjoy the part with the villain of Hawaii's story, the pineapple man, dole, the person who surely wasn't a chef, because his history is being a political figure. The story everybody knows, the one who stole everything from the islands, took it from the people and gave it to the rich. Push through the smoke, the villainy, look at just the food as the focus, and the argument falls apart quickly. He was never in a kitchen. Dragging him in is one more way to have a very loud conversation that never gets near a conversation, because it was meant to have one person complaining about a history they can't change. Pointing to a fruit, the symbol of death, but also the rich who took the land away, but now let's get back to Pizza and Markets. No one, and i mean no one, is getting rid of all the pineapples being imported, grown, or sold in Hawaii. 

A single ingredient doesn't explain the Hawaii in the dish and it doesn't explain the Italian either. The nuances of ham and pineapple don't differ drastically from common Italian combinations: figs with salami, prosciutto with melon, speck with apples, pear and gorgonzola, mortadella with grapes. This spreads the argument out against fruit itself and much less so a pineapple. 

The Locals eat in privacy, what is less mentioned is the pairings that ended up here in our own kitchens: mountain apple and gorgonzola, lilikoʻi and ricotta, papaya and mozzarella. The fruit objection isn't Italian, it's American, and then Hawaii made the argument its own. It's a very American argument, because it wen't global in places like Sydney, Stockholm, Manila, and it's identical. That sameness is the fingerprint of a product that got distributed, but not localized, because when it does it loses its familiarity. A Maui Gold Pineapple Pizza that uses Portuguese Sausage, Spam, and Honey Ham only exists in Hawaii and essentially nowhere else because it was made in Hawaii by people who lived there. One is a menu item, the other is a cuisine.