When we first heard that artisan pizzeria Fatto A Mano was offering free pizzas to anyone who comes bearing a pineapple, it seemed like one of those deals that must be too good to be true. Surely there would be a catch? A minimum spend? Would it be a “buy one get one free” type of “free”? But no, on their website the pizzeria are keen to emphasise there is no catch, apart from it’s only for eat-in orders made anytime before the end of March. The only other catch – depending on which side you sit in the debate – is that your free pizza will have said pineapple as one of its toppings.
But we’re not talking about any normal “Hawaiian” ham and pineapple pizza here. The pizza in question consists of the restaurant’s perfectly fluffy Neopolitan-style base topped expansively with spicy roast pineapple, nduja honey, Ventricina spicy salami, black pepper pancetta, mozzarella, parmesan and chives. It’s rather teasingly named the Bella Disgrazia, which is Italian for “beautiful disgrace”. Though for many Italians pineapple on pizza is culinary sacrilege, Fatto A Mano claim their head pizza master, Antonio (we’re assuming he’s Italian), has spent ten years dreaming up the perfect pineapple pizza. So is it worth the wait? We went along to the Hove branch to find out.
A sign of the potential popularity of the free pizza deal came when a pre-emptive visit to the Western Road Waitrose proved unfruitful. Yes, they had no pineapples. Luckily, Aldi still had some left. As we made our way to the Hove branch, we half expected there to be a queue out the door. Whilst this wasn’t the case, the restaurant was close to full on a Wednesday evening – the only space left being the front row seats at the bar in front of the spectacle of the ovens.
We sheepishly took out our pineapples and were greeted with a knowing smile from the girl who seated us. The corner of the front counter was crowded with an unruly forest of the fruit. Clearly, word had got out. And we soon had it confirmed that there was no hidden small print: this would indeed be a straight pineapple for pizza exchange.
Surely, we thought, the company will end up losing money in this deal – even if people buy a drink with their meal and a service charge is added. Speaking to our waiter, he made the point that you could count any loss as money spent on marketing. Maybe in terms of ingredients and profit margins, a net loss might be the result, but it’s more than worth it for the kind of word-of-mouth groundswell of pizza enthusiasm it is evidently garnering. People need a little push to make the decision to eat out and this offer is the perfect excuse. The thrill of the pineapple scavenger hunt only adds to the fun.
La Bella Disgrazia (normal base on the left, gluten-free base on the right)
The pizza itself is a bold invention. The sweetness of the pineapple is amplified by the hot honey sauce and then pitted against the salty fattiness of the spicy meats in a combination reminiscent of bacon and maple syrup. There’s a lot of heat from the chilli with which the pineapple is roasted and the black pepper of the pancetta. In fact, all the taste profiles are turned up to 11, with the salt factor further magnified by the parmesan.
It’s an indulgent elevation of the pineapple pizza that may well convert a non-believer, as long as they have a sweet tooth. And even if it doesn’t, they’re only down the price of a single fruit (and maybe the £3 charge for non-gluten-containing base). Our advice is: get down to your nearest grocer to snag yourself a pineapple before the Brighton and Hove supply chain runs dry.
