Sam Panopoulos
Restaurateur who introduced the world to the Hawaiian pizza
SAM PANOPOULOS, who has died aged 82, was widely credited with inventing the Hawaiian pizza; his addition of pineapple to the dish’s prospective toppings in 1962 has sharply divided aficionados since, the numbers of those revelling in the combination of sweet and savoury flavours at least matched by those who consider it a culinary abomination.
Panopoulos migrated from his native Greece to Canada in the mid-fifties. On the journey, he stopped at Naples and there first tasted pizza. By the early Sixties, he had opened a restaurant at Chatham, Ontario, called The Satellite.
This served conventional fare as well as Chinese food. To satisfy his craving for pizza, Panopoulos had to drive 50 miles across the US border to Detroit. So widespread is it now, that it is often forgotten that even in Italy pizza remained a regional speciality until well after the Second World War.
Southern immigrants had brought it to America before then but it was veterans returning from spending time in Naples who spread a taste for it across the continent. Even so, the first chains would not open in Canada until the midsixties, and Panopoulos had to teach himself to make pizza by imitating what he saw in Detroit.
Toppings were then limited, he recalled, to bacon, mushrooms and pepperoni. He liked to experiment with flavours in his cooking and one day tipped a tin of pineapple on to a pizza. Customers liked the contrast with the salty ham and he added it to the menu, dubbing it “Hawaiian”.
He was surprised, however, by its rapidly spreading popularity. He attributed it to a new generation of US soldiers returning from service in Asia, where they had tasted similar pairings of meat and fruit, as well as to the craze for Polynesian Tiki food.
Panopoulos’s act of serendipity was of a part with the history and lore of pizza. The dish was long despised by other Italians because it was regarded as the food of the poor in Naples, and so by extension insanitary. Legend has it that its reputation only began to improve in the late 19th century when, on a visit to the city, Italy’s Queen Margherita shrugged off the risk of cholera by taking a bite of the pizza subsequently named for her.
Hawaiian pizza has yet to have a similar unifying effect. Surprisingly perhaps, surveys show that it is the most popular flavour ordered in the gourmet’s paradise that is Australia. But, earlier this year, Gudni Johannesson, President of Iceland, a country whose national dish, kaestur hákarl, consists of rotting shark, narrowly averted an international incident after joking that he wished he had the power to ban the Hawaiian pizza.
A storm erupted on social media and after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had tweeted his backing for the dish, Johannesson backed down, whilst advocating seafood as a topping. Asked at the time for his views, Panopoulos pointed out that for Iceland that was the very definition of self-interest.
He was born Sotirios Panopoulos on August 20 1934 at Vourvoura, a village north of Sparta in the rural Peloponnese. When he was 20, he left for a better life in Canada, working first in Montreal, then as a miner at Elliot Lakes, before settling in Ontario.
He was later joined by his brothers Elias and Nikitas, with whom he ran a thriving series of restaurants for many years, aided by his reputation for honesty and frank humour. Panopoulos sold The Satellite in 1980. Although he continued occasionally to eat pizza in retirement, he admitted that he bought them deep-frozen from the supermarket.
He is survived by his wife Christina, to whom he was married for 50 years, and by their son and daughter.
Sam Panopoulos, born August 20 1934, died June 8 2017