I had no idea banana curry pizza even existed in Sweden until I saw a piece of pizza art from Cities by the Slice on Instagram. On the account, illustrator Dan Bransfield highlights the foods of different cities, and when I saw his pizza print featuring slices around the world, with a Swedish slice topped with bananas, I was intrigued. Weeks later, I arrived in Stockholm and almost immediately set out in search of the specialty pie.
The first pizzeria I came across had it on the menu, so I took a seat on the patio and ordered a pizza. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the pie topped with bananas, cheese, curry and salty ham, but when I took my first bite, I was pleasantly surprised. It was delicious.
The slight sweetness of the bananas, the saltiness from the cheese and the ham, and a kick from the intense flavor and smell of the curry all came together quite nicely. The combination just worked. But I wondered: Why is this a thing in Sweden? There’s technically no official date on record as to when the banana curry pizza was introduced in Sweden.
Richard Tellström , a food historian at Stockholm University, has his theories, though. “There’s an interest in the Pacific [in the] years after World War II, and this creates the sort of postwar Polynesian food culture that I would link this banana pizza to,” he says. Since the 1960s and ’70s, Sweden has had a deep interest in Polynesian flavors, like bananas and pineapple, which were introduced in Swedish cookbooks to i.