Okay, so you’re in the mood for some pizza, so you enter a local pizza parlor. Maybe you can munch up on cheese sticks as you decide what toppings to get. At places like Pizza Hut, the cheese sticks are almost 7 dollars, so you should really take the toppings seriously.
Sure, there are the obvious meat choices. You have the ever-popular pepperoni, which came out as the most favorite topping in a survey of more than 6,000 American adults. Sausage is also great, which is why 56% of the survey respondents also like it as well.
These days, you can even have chicken. If that’s still not too controversial for you, then you can go all-out and get it with ranch dressing.
But what about seafood? This type is perhaps among the most controversial toppings of them all. There’s even a Today survey with 86% of the respondents saying that they don’t want fish on their pizza.
But you might want to try it first before you say “no”. Some people actually like certain types of seafood on their pizza, and it might turn out that you’re one of them as well.
Here are some of the seafood toppings that you may be able to get for your pizza:
Anchovies
This is actually one of the most disliked toppings in the aforementioned survey, as 61% of the respondents said they didn’t like it. No other topping mentioned in the survey received as many dislikes as this one.
Yet some people like it, to such a degree that it’s often available. In fact, it’s not even a new idea to add anchovies on pizza. When the Italians first made pizza, anchovies on pizza were already appearing as an option. After all, Italians sure like eating fish on bread.
The anchovies on pizza weren’t quite as popular in the US, but then again, not everyone there grew up eating anchovies. They might say that they don’t like the taste, but that may not be totally accurate if these same people also order Caesar salad. After all, anchovies are part of the Caesar dressing, although it’s not obvious.
Clams
You can find pizzas with clams as toppings if you look hard enough. In some cases, the pizza may even have the clam shells. That makes it a bit harder to eat, but some people like the taste of clams enough not to mind.
Of course, it’s not for everyone. There are those who say that the flavors don’t really mix well. Others aren’t all that enamored with the smell.
They actually first came out back in the 1960s, out of New Haven. The Pepe’s pizza joint back then offered raw littleneck white clams on the half shell as an appetizer. It soon made its appearance as a topping on the pizza itself. It became popular enough that it resulted in more pizzerias serving the pizza. One writer for the New York Times even called these pizzas with clams as the best of them all.
Shrimp
Many purists hate the very idea of shrimp on pizza. That’s probably because you won’t find Italians mixing cheese with any sort of seafood. The very idea is like drinking cappuccino in the late afternoon or evening—it’s just not done.
But shrimp on pizza is popular enough that you’d find versions of it all over the world. In South Korea, you’ll find shrimp and potato added to cookie crust pizza. Costa Rica is a country where you’ll find coconut and shrimp pizza, which sounds bizarre but may appeal to adventurous taste buds. Then there’s Australia, where it also has barbecue sauce.
In fact, it’s easy enough to go online and find lots of recipes for shrimp scampi pizza. It basically has the classic pasta dish transferred on pizza dough, so you can enjoy the buttery and garlicky flavors in new ways.
Do you like pizza? Do you like shrimp? If you answer “yes” to both questions, then it’s entirely possible that you’ll also like shrimp pizza.
Canned Tuna Fish
Many pizza fans also turn away from this option. They imagine that it’s like ordering a divine pizza, and then dumping the contents of a tuna can on the pizza. It amounts to a desecration.
Yet there are plenty of fans of this particular pizza in Germany, where they call it thunfisch pizza. Germany is where you find plenty of the sausages that you might also like on your pizza. So, if the Germans like it, then you might like it as well.
Try any of these pizzas, and tell us how you liked them—or not!