Germans Are Eating This Wild “Toast Hawaii” Like It’s No Big Deal

updated Jul 12, 2019

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It’s no secret that pineapple pizza is controversial. Most people find it personally insulting that you would even suggest putting pineapple anywhere near their pizza. But brace yourself, however, because the internet may have discovered a combination of bread, pineapple, and cheese that it finds acceptable. Reddit recently stumbled across a classic German snack called Toast Hawaii, and honestly it actually looks pretty good.

Toast Hawaii is made with an odd but familiar combination of ingredients: A slice of bread, topped first with a slice of ham, then a pineapple ring (probably out of a can), and topped with a slice of melted cheese and a maraschino cherry. The recipe was developed by German celebrity chef Clemens Wilmenrod in the 1950s. If you believe the Reddit post, it’s still a typical dish in Germany.

Reddit users reassured those uninitiated to the European delicacy that Toast Hawaii is “sweet and savory,” and “oddly satisfying.” The picture in the original post seems to show a version of the snack topped with a processed, Kraft-like American cheese, but commenters on the post (presumably German folks who have sampled it before) say it’s actually much better accompanied by gouda cheese. As for the type of pineapple you should use? Stick to canned, which has more sugar to complement the salty ham.

There was disagreement, however, over whether or not the maraschino cherry actually belongs on Toast Hawaii. Most European people who commented on the post wrote that they’d only ever seen the maraschino cherry added in cookbooks and restaurant menus, but had never eaten it with one in their regular lives.

It wasn’t just German people who seemed to approve of the snack: One person from Hawaii even gave it a stamp of approval, writing “I would eat the f*ck out of this.” Clearly, the tastes of the internet arbiters of acceptable foods are fickle. The lesson here is clear: Cheese on bread with ham and pineapple is good. Make that bread triangular, and it’s very, very bad.