Are bizarre and disgusting pizza toppings ‘wrong’?

I wouldn’t call these bizarre pizza toppings wrong; just a waste of appetite.

One man’s meat is another man’s poison, it’s said, and so we are reminded, yet again, of the subjectivity surrounding food. What I reckon sounds dreadful will undoubtedly appeal to some. And vice versa. So, there I was mooching around the internet only to find a most entertaining piece entitled “The 13 Most Bizarre and Disgusting Pizza Toppings”. How bizarre could it get, I wondered? Answer: rather.

It was a list of disturbing international “creations” in the name of pizza diversification, and there were only 12. Number One was a really fine-looking pizza with a layer of mozzarella, a puffed and blistered crust and a jet black, glossy squid ink sauce, scattered with diced tomato. “The ink is the base for the sauce, which is just wrong,” said the author, one Kean Doherty, at the US-based, youth-oriented website Goliath.

Clearly, Mr Doherty hasn’t eaten a lot of squid ink, poor bugger. Apart from the very real prospect of ruining whatever shirt you happen to be wearing, I reckon this has potential to be an excellent pizza, in need of no editing whatsoever. Those flavours would work. I might even have a go at it or, better, search out a pizzeria to do it for me. Pizza neri, perhaps.

There is no right and wrong when it comes to food, unless we’re talking about minke whales, or endangered species. If you want to eat pizza with hotdog in the crust, cheese, salami, red onion and mustard on top, it’s your call. I wouldn’t call it wrong; just a waste of appetite.

You’d have to apply the same thinking to some other things on that list. The corned beef and cabbage pizza, for example, at The Colony Grill in Stamford, Connecticut. Or Colony’s “signature Colony Crust baked with a touch of olive oil and sea salt, topped with hearty mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. Tossed with balsamic vinaigrette.” A Neapolitan just read that and died. Banana and curry sauce pizza, anyone? That’s number 11, in Stockholm. A New Zealandish pizza topped with all sorts of food service “solutions” such as sliced olives, shredded “mozzarella” and gherkins sliced lengthways: number nine.

A Pizza Hut idea from Japan includes cream cheese and tobiko — flying fish roe — in the crust, with a topping of shrimp and cheese (number eight). Pizza Hut Hong Kong has a bizarre creation called The Double Crunch: a frisbee-shaped, concave small pizza on top of a larger, more regular pizza; the same multinational also produces one for the Malaysian market with sambal oelek and the crunchy, minute anchovies they call ikan bilis. Weird, but not wrong.

Cashews, cream cheese and tomato is noted as a Colorado invention; it comes in at number six. As Mr Doherty notes, it is the state that legalised marijuana.

In Ecuador, it’s not uncommon for pizza to be served to travellers with a topping of mozzarella, corn kernels and cuy, or guinea pig. They do a version at The Secret Garden (ranked three), a hiking lodge in the Andes. As a pizza it may be odd, but probably a gentle way into sampling the local rodent.

So no, there is no wrong. But I like to tease my mate Travis, who runs a thriving local cafe, about his “Peking Duck Pizza”. He laughs, points to his new Benz, and says it’s his bestseller. Check, mate.