Brisbane Italian chef sacked after refusing pineapple on pizza
An Italian chef sacked from a Brisbane restaurant had refused to put pineapple on pizza because it was an "insult to his culture" – in Queensland, Australia's pineapple heartland. His unfair dismissal claim failed because it was filed too late.
Some people draw a line in the sand. Davide Tamburella drew his in tomato sauce.
The Italian chef was sacked in May from La Costa, a Brisbane restaurant that has since closed, a fortnight after a meeting at which management raised a string of complaints about his behaviour. Among them: he had refused to provide ham and pineapple pizza for guests at a function, saying any direction from management “need not be followed when it is offensive to his culture”.
The offending article: a Hawaiian (ham and pineapple) pizza, Toronto (2024) – stock photo, not from La Costa. Photo: Avelludo / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
The details emerged when he took an unfair dismissal claim to Australia’s Fair Work Commission. Its ruling, released on Tuesday, noted that he “considers, as an Italian, that putting pineapple on a pizza is an insult to his culture” – and that this was the third time in four years he had refused to use the fruit. He had once asked his boss to “check how important it is for Italians not to put pineapple on a pizza”.
AI illustration – an imagined scene, not the real chef or commission. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
Pineapple wasn’t the only gripe. Management also raised his foul language, his communication style and an “escalation of frustration in the workplace”. The ruling detailed an incident in April in which he fractured bones in his right hand when he struck a metal hand rail. He had hoped the restaurant would sponsor a skilled-worker visa; after his sacking, it ended that process.
The commission did not rule on whether the sacking was fair: he lost because his application was filed too late. Managing director Elliot Ingram told the Daily Mail there was “more to this story than a pizza topping”.
AI illustration – not the real chef.
The setting makes it all the more delicious. Queensland is Australia’s pineapple heartland, producing all of the country’s commercially grown pineapples, and on the Sunshine Coast tourists queue for selfies with the Big Pineapple, a heritage-listed 16m fibreglass fruit.
The Big Pineapple (on the horizon) during the Big Pineapple Music Festival, Sunshine Coast, 2019. Photo: Snail87 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons).
According to his LinkedIn profile, he now works at another Brisbane restaurant. A BBC check found pineapple is not on its menu.
Reported by BBC News (Simon Atkinson, Queensland), from the Fair Work Commission ruling.
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