Italians don’t seem to mind that we’ve collectively treated their culture as a joke. We do the Italian fingers and speak in ridiculous Mario voices, and they just smile, politely take it, and sometimes join in on the fun. One thing Italians seemingly will not stand for, though, is anyone messing with their food. Requesting that a real Italian chef put pineapple on a pizza is a grave insult, one that might be worth losing your job over.
Just ask Davide Tamburella, an Italian head chef living in Australia who lost his job over a few chunks of tropical fruit. According to reporting from The Guardian, Tamburella was fired from La Costa Restaurant and Bar in Brisbane after allegedly refusing to serve ham and pineapple pizza for a client who had dropped over $15,000 on a private function.
Italian Chef Says Pineapple on Pizza Offends His Culture, Gets Fired for Refusing to Serve It
Tamburella argued that management directives “need not be followed when it is offensive to his culture.” He even asked his boss to look into the historical record to “check how important it is for Italians not to put pineapple on a pizza.” This was allegedly the third time he had refused to put pineapple on pizzas in the past four years, so management cited his refusal to put pineapple and ham atop crust as part of his firing, along with general use of foul language in the workplace.
What makes this especially funny is that Queensland happens to be Australia’s pineapple capital, producing, according to the BBC, “all of the country’s commercially grown pineapples.”
An Italian chef living in Australia’s pineapple capital lost his job for refusing to put pineapple on a pizza. Kudos to him for standing his ground on something he truly believed in, even if it is a little silly, but man, you’ve got to understand the place you’re moving to before you reserve that U-Haul.
And because he didn’t, Tamburella lost his job, blew his employer-sponsored permanent residency visa process, and later had his unfair dismissal lawsuit thrown out by Australia’s Fair Work Commission for filing too late. Sheesh.
The restaurant eventually closed because the rent was too dang high, and Tamburella landed a gig as head chef at a different restaurant in Brisbane, so I guess he got the last laugh, since the BBC checked out the new restaurant’s menu and found not a speck of pineapple.
The post Italian Chef Gets Fired for Refusing to Put Pineapple on Pizza, Claims It’s ‘Offensive to His Culture’ appeared first on VICE.
