I'm currently enjoying a vacation in rural Sweden and stumbled upon an unexpected pizza variation here, the pizza "flying Jacob".
Apparently inspired by a 1970s casserole it's a plain tomato base topped with shredded chicken, banana slices, peanuts and curry powder.
It worked unexpectedly well, even though I was sober at the time.
So it got me wondering, what unusual pizza's are on the menu in your country?
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You know, Sweden is the antithesis to Naples when it comes to pizza
Reindeer is fairly common and blue cheese is everywhere.
Well, I’m Swedish so basically all of our pizzas 😅. That’s the best part of Swedish pizza. We’re not bound by any rules on how a pizza should be made. We put whatever we want on it and often it’s delicious as fuck!
In Warsaw most pizzerias are very Italian in style and thin Neapolitan pizza is almost the standard these days, so there’s not much out of the ordinary. They’re awesome but there is a part of me which misses those old neighbourhood ultra-Polish pizzerias from the early 00s, super thick with litres of sauce etc. lol.
I really like Slovaks and wouldn’t want to speak ill of them, that was a ski resort too, but I was served Hawaii pizza in Slovakia with **bananas** about ten years ago there and I still can’t recover from that shock xD
Not strange, but Spanish jamón, smoked paprika, a little bit of garlic powder and a dash of olive oil is probably a crime in Italy
I remember a place in northern Sweden who served a closed pizza with a whole cheeseburger meal, french fries and all, baked into it.
So, in Hungary I can answer your question two ways. One is what foreigners usually call the Hungarian pizza is called lángos, which is a fried dough served with garlic, sour cream and cheese traditionally, and you need to drink a long step with it (1/3 wine + 2/3 soda water). The dough is heavy. You can put basically any topping on it, I’ve even seen sweet versions, but I always just have the sour cream and cheese, or just the garlic sauce.
The other way to answer it is with an actual pizza. So the pizza dough here is usually a medium thickness. We like a lot of toppings, basically anything and everything but the kitchen sink. There is one combination that is usually called Hungarian, which is tomato base, sometimes hot, onions, Hungarian paprika sausage, lots of cheese and strips of hot green pepper we cultivate here. Some places also have pork neck (it’s not the exact thing, because they don’t really have a name for it in English). And lots of cheese. Usually a Hungarian one. We’re a very meat-centric people.
We have normal pizza’s like capriccossas and margaritas but we have toppings that we usually put over them like chicken and beef salad.
Telepizza in Portugal came up with a cod lasagna pizza. Never tried, don’t know if it’s still sold. But it existed at some point
Sweden was also the famous inventors of the skrovmålet Calzone, kebabpizza, mexicana/acapulco/Azteka, tropicana (banana, curry, shrimp) and the ol’ oxfilé pizza with bearnaise (filet mignon (but with donkey meat) and bearnaise sauce). Just got the ones by looking at my local pizzeria menu. Also to be served with pizza salad or else…
In all my years of going to Sweden and getting pizza there.. I’ve never seen nor heard of that one..
Varies from place to place, a pizza is really just whatever your imagination lets you place on some dough. There’s like 5ish staples among pizzerias, probably, and the rest is whatever the creation is. We don’t shy away from 15 or 3 ingredient pizzas 😀
Here is Switzerland pizza kebab is quite popular, ie a margherita with kebab meat on top.
When I was living in Trieste, one of my housemates used to always order pizza with dried horse meat on top.
More a combination with focaccia (pizza bianca), but in Rome focaccia filled with Parma ham and fresh figs is traditional.
In Italy something that usually surprises tourists is pizza with fries and wurst (white, no tomato).
>plain tomato base topped with shredded chicken, banana slices, peanuts and curry powder. It worked unexpectedly well, even though I was sober at the time
As Italian, I wouldn’t be able to eat it even under alcoholic coma.
I’m in Scotland and we are known to dip them in batter and deep fry them and call it a pizza crunch! So bad for the arteries but tastes surprisingly good lol
In a few restaurants I’ve seen Pizza Bolognese – Pizza with Spagetti Bolognese on it.
Italy.
French fries.
Hard boiled eggs and mayonnaise (in Pesaro).
If it’s not an Italian ran or inspired establishment around one of the major cities, Czech quattro formaggi pizzas tend to be whatever local cheese is going in the supermarker around here. Can be eidam, balkansky, niva or hermelin. Havent seen tvaruzky yet that may be a bridge too far. Mozzarella and parmesan usually makes it in as it’s easily available but gorgonzola, scamorza, taleggio, pecorino etc I havent seen on a pizza outside Prague.
Some pizza delivery chains offer ham, hollandaise and broccoli pizza.
I’ve seen Pizza with Currywurst in the Delivery Service a town over. The owners are not Italian.
Then there is a Restaurant that has the Pizza Karlheinz, insane amounts of garlic and a fried egg in the middle. These owners are Italian.
Then i’ve eaten Pizza with Barbecue Sauce and Chicken on it. The Restaurant Chain is supposed to be Italian.
Then almost every Döner place has a Döner Pizza. Nor al Pizza but has no tomatoes and Döner meat instead of sausage. You eat it with either garlic or joghurt sauce on it.
Norway.
We serve a special pizza with salmon and fermented reindeer. It’s a local delicatessy on the west coast of Norway. It’s funny story how it started, but I won’t bore you with details.
Try it next time you’re in Norway. Most places have it here.
I once got one called „Thomas“. I guess it was named after a friend who used to eat his pizza with these toppings. It was: pepperoni salami, chillis, a fried egg, Pommes frites, cheese, pizza sauce. To my surprise it actually tasted good.
In Finland (in addition to smoked reindeer pizza) pizza with döner kebab, mayonnaise and salad is pretty common. We are definitely not bound by Italian ideas of pizza, most people who own a pizzeria are from the Middle East so they don’t care as long as it sells and the Finns don’t care as long as it is delicious. When I found out about the whole “no pineapple” thing years ago, I was most astonished by people being offended by such a lame thing considering everything we put on pizza 😂
Italian prime minister and career criminal Silvio Berlusconi ridiculed Finnish cuisine years ago, so our biggest pizza chain decided to make a Berlusconi pizza with smoked reindeer, tomato sauce, cheese, chanterelle mushrooms and red onion on it. It actually won international awards and became a hit with customers. It’s still sold but they changed the name of it after he died.
Is fried egg on pizza weird? I’ve seen some pizzas with that over here.
Not a pizza style, but we often eat pizza with ketchup or even mayo
In Poland, Hawaiian Pizza is quite popular – tomato sauce, mozarella, ham and a pineapple.
“Even though I was sober at the time. ”
That made my day
My absolute favorite Swedish pizza are the varieties with iceberg lettuce, cucumber, fresh tomatoes, maize, sweet chili peppers and red onions, or some slight variety of that. Topped with ”mild sauce” made from a mix of mayonnaise, yoghurt, garlic and various spices. This kind of pizza commonly goes under names such as Verde or Foresta – or simply Färsk Special (”Fresh Special”).
Sometimes I also like to mix it up instead with the vegetarian version of the pizza OP mentioned, which is usually called Africana (or sometimes Tropicana) and which has pineapples, banana, peanuts, curry and sauce bearnaise.
Germany has Pizza Hamburg with minced meat and onion (also pepperoni peppers and pepperoniwurst). Not 100% sure if not just a local thing for this joint, but that’s not in Hamburg, it’s in Wiesbaden.
Pizza with frikandel, bitterballen. Yes. That’s pretty Dutch, there are no English terms for those toppings.
I had battered fish and chips on pizza once. Complete with lemon slices. Was interesting.
I used to regularly get a chicken, chips and curry sauce pizza from ASDA. I think that is a limited edition one though. Why you would make limited edition pizza I don’t know
Singapore has a sausage stuffed crust macaroni and cheese pizza from a big chain. I don’t condone this, I’m simply reporting the facts.
Sorry, I know this is about Europe but I once had a pizza with a kind of small fish (no anchovis) and bananas in Brazil
My Brazilian friend told me she once had a pizza with piranhas on top. Initially I didn’t believe her, but in some parts of Brazil, you can really buy piranhas to eat at food markets.
Sauce Hollandaise as a base, broccoli, ham, cheese, can be varied. I like it lol
In Georgia, what people make at home and call “pizza” might shock a lot of people – it’s usually homemade tomato sauce, Georgian cheese (that usually doesn’t melt that great), peppers, onion, kalbasi (salami, but more Soviet), sometimes mushroom, and the star of the show: mayonnaise. It doesn’t sound great, it doesn’t look great, but I swear it slams once you get the hang of it and don’t expect an actual Italian pizza.
Here in Spain we have mushroom and truffle pizza. Also pretty good.
They’ve been known to put pineapple on a so called ‘Hawaii’ pizza. PINEAPPLE! Blasphemy
There used to be a pizza service in my home town who offered a pizza with chips, Lyoner sausage slices, and Maggi seasoning.
I think you can guess the state.
Górals Pizza, with oscypek cheese, bacon and cranberry sauuce
Wagner Brezelpizza Weißwurst. It’s a Pizza Bianca with a brezel crust, Weißwurst and sweet mustard. It’s an absolute pizza crime but I love it.
Every takeout place has pizza’s with shoarma or döner.
In Spain, it’s common to find “Pizza Barbacoa” with BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce as a base. It’s usually topped with marinated chicken, bacon, beef and cheese.
Finland has it’s favourite pizza which includes:
Ham, blue cheese, pineapple
I am sorry for my nation!
And yet, people give us shit for putting a few pineapple chunks on a pizza.
Traditional homemade Norwegian pizza: a 2cm thick bottom made with all purpose and whole grain wheat flour, spread out to fill a square oven pan, with tomatoes, ketchup, tomato sauce, minced meat, onion, plain white cheese, corn, bell peppers, mushrooms, olives and oregano.
It’s like someone spilled ratatouille and ragu all over a wholegrain foccacia, then threw some cheese on top, and it’s pretty decent. Messy though.
Ran into tuna pizza when we were in Venice.
It was ok, but I wouldn’t order it again.
Here in the Netherlands we have a “straatpizza”. The ingredients vary, but contain mostly 20 beer, 4 shots, 1 whisky and a half döner kebab. Best served at 04 AM.
Ham and pineapple obviously, Döner Pizza (including chips and kebab sauce and even salad on the pizza), white asparagus and sauce hollandaise, broccoli and hollandaise. I have also seen spaghetti Bolognese on pizza on a menu once but have not tried it.
I’m still traumatized from pizzas I ate in Sweden in the 1970s before I was even a teenager