It has a very unique bite because of this *proteolytic* enzyme it contains (when fresh),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain
It's literally trying, and mostly failing, to digest your tongue.
One other very unique one is the Sichuan pepper, which is not a "spicy pepper" in the conventional, capsaicin sense, rather an idiosyncratic chemical that's... Wikipedia calls it "tingling, numbing":
My go-to pizza is pineapple and jalapeno
We regret to inform you that you are henceforth and forever denied entry into the Italian Republic
Cordially,
Ministro della Giustizia
We improved burritos, and sushi too. We even put sushi in a burrito and Indian food on a pizza.
You can’t stop us. We will continue to disrespect your narrow ideas of what it means to make your national dish by making it far more delicious.
You want to deny anyone entry into your food republic? Give us back the tomato. You don’t deserve it.
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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"
Sure, there are arguments against that. But when you see the manner in which American cuisine takes the opposite of that principle - especially when it comes to the creation of Italian-American cuisine - it's hardly like the laying of multiple beautiful, well-chosen instruments in an orchestra. Instead, it's a one-trick pony of: add cheese, cream and garlic. And lots of everything
Fettuccine Alfredo: Loads of butter, cream and cheese
Deep dish pizza: Tons of cheese. It's a meat/cheese pie
Carbonora: "Fixed" it by adding cream and garlic.
It's like believing you're improving an orchestra by always adding huge, loud crashing cymbals.
Trying to eat at Italian restaurants in the US as a lactose intolerant person was an exercise in frustration.
> the one thing that unequivocally makes me proud to be American is that we have improved pizza
Gosh...
Caramelized onions (sweet), sun-dried tomatoes (sour), roquette salad or kale (bitter), olives (salty), and mushrooms or tempeh (umami)
I’m hungry now
I also take issue with the idea that there are just five cardinal flavors. There are many, many more, which cannot be expressed in terms of these five, especially in the savory category.
Think of the flavor of meat, spices, and pepper. They are all fundamentally different, and yet would be bundled under savory in the 5-flavor scheme. The word "spicy" itself has two distinct meanings.
The five flavors model is an outdated model of what taste buds detect, a sixth has been established (oleogustus, associated with fatty acids and particularly with rancidity.) Furthermore, while not technically “tastes” in the detected-by-tastebuds sende, unctuousness (the mouthfeel of fats) and spiciness (detected by pain receptors instead of tastebuds) are part of what most people mean when they talk about “taste”.
Some such substances occur across a broad range of foods, or in varieties that differ from each other in ways that don't really matter to your digestive system, and you can pick them up and consider them to be a flavor common to those foods.
Some are unique. You can pick those up too.
In either case, your perception of the same taste will vary according to the current state of your nutrition. Steven Callahan noted that, when he was lost at sea and food was scarce, fish eyes tasted significantly better than the rest of the fish. That is because they contain important nutrients, which your tongue can detect, but which you don't ordinarily care about. You start to care as you develop deficiencies.
A model of "basic flavors" doesn't even allow for this phenomenon to exist. It is fundamentally misguided.
If I just want a savory pizza, I'll probably lean more towards a pepperoni slice. But a Hawaiian option from a place that serves actually good pizza will tempt me on a regular basis. The ham is where they get you, it's typically a bigger issue than the pineapple at most places.
I eat it with hot peppers and blue cheese. The sweet/spicy combo is fantastic and the blue cheese brings a fantastic complexity to the mix.
This is nonsense. Your tongue is far more sensitive than that.
How would you characterize the flavor of butter?
What other topping can you say that about? Not pepperoni, nor olives, certainly not mushrooms or sausage. No other pizza topping as perfectly rounds out the flavor profile of pizza as pineapple, especially fresh pineapple, and that is why it's the superior topping.