Gordon Ramsay's Favorite Pizza Topping Is Coastal Classic
The Scottish chef known for his bombastic behavior, especially when he's disappointed with a dining experience, is full of strong opinions, and many of them are quite controversial. In an episode of "Hell's Kitchen Underground" with fellow "Next Level Chef" judges, you can hear how much Chef Gordon Ramsay disapproves of pineapple on pizza after Richard Blais shared his go-to pizza night toppings (via Facebook). But that's old news. What has really caught some people by surprise is what Ramsay does like on his pizza: clams! It might sound like a unique thing to put on pizza, and truthfully, you may be hard-pressed to find mollusks as a topping option at your local pizzeria. That is, of course, unless you live in Connecticut, where it's been a staple on pizzas since the 1960s.
It first appeared at Frank Pepe's in New Haven, Connecticut, which had already been a thriving pizzeria since 1925 and is still operating today. Clams were already on the menu in other dishes, and one day, they just happened to make it on a pizza (as it was made in Italy back in the 1800s). The white clam pizza, as it's officially called in Connecticut, contains no sauce and no mozzarella cheese, which technically makes it a white pizza. Frank Pepe's version is topped with clams, garlic, oregano, Pecorino Romano, and olive oil. Nobody knows whose idea it was, nor when exactly it happened (likely the '60s), but almost everyone in Connecticut agrees that it all started there.
There's more to it than seafood on pizza.
New Haven-style pizza isn't all about clams, though. One of the original varieties of this pizza style that existed long before mollusks met dough is simply topped with tomato sauce and Romano cheese; you might know it as a tomato pie. What makes the New Haven pizza unique is its fermented dough that's blasted in a scorching-hot coal- or oil-fired oven for longer than most other styles of pie, creating a thin, chewy, and blistered crust. According to some, this crust most closely resembles the original pizza crust from Naples, Italy — though the true earliest pizza was actually a dessert pie. Even the way locals call this type of pizza is an Americanized pronunciation of the word in the Neapolitan dialect.
Chef Ramsay has been known to be a fan of the Connecticut style of pizza. Considering how he suggests that pineapple doesn't belong on a pizza because it strays too far from Italian tradition, perhaps New Haven pizza's close ties with its Italian ancestor are why the cantankerous chef likes it so much. However, considering how it only came about outside of Italy in the 1960s, breaks an age-old Italian food rule of not combining seafood and cheese (even if seafood and cheese belong together), and Gordon Ramsay's contentious advice for cooking pasta, does the British chef have much of a solid argument for his favorite pizza topping over any other? Sometimes, you don't need a reason to like a food beyond it just being tasty — even if you're a celebrity chef who likes clams (or pineapple!) on a pizza.