India, Nov. 14 -- Would you put pineapple on your pizza? I ask because in the Australian city of Brisbane, an Italian chef, Davide Tamburella, was sacked from La Costa, a local restaurant, because he refused to put pineapple on a pizza. According to the restaurant's managing director Elliot Ingram, Tamburella had refused to top his pizza with pineapple on two previous occasions. Tamburella told an employment tribunal that it was against his culture to do this. La Costa has since closed down. But the issue does raise several important issues. First, isn't the customer always right? In my view: No, they are not. If they want to order something that is not on the menu then it is up to the chef to decide to make it. Secondly, should chefs be so sensitive about pizzas (or their food in general)? In 2017, an Italian chef was sacked by a French bistro because he refused to overcook his pasta and insisted on serving it the way Italians eat it: Al dente. He also refused to make Spaghetti Bolognaise, arguing that it was unknown in his hometown of Bologna. He was right about that, at least. Spaghetti Bolognaise was invented outside of Italy. Italians are always on the side of chefs who oppose the garbage-isation of Italian cuisine. That leads us to the third question raised by this controversy: If chefs are so inflexible about dishes and recipes, how does a cuisine ever progress beyond its origins? The Italian food writer Luca Cesari offers the example of Gino Sorbillo, one of Italy's greatest pizza chefs. Sorbillo made a Pizza Bianca with no tomatoes, and experimented with pineapple toppings. And the avant-garde pizza chef Franco Pepe makes a pizza cone filled with San Daniele ham and cheese fondue, with pineapple at the bottom of the cone. So, why is it okay for great Italian pizza chefs to use pineapple in Italian food? What's the difference? Well, to use an Indian parallel, it's the difference between Himanshu Saini playing around with pani puri and a chef in a Bangladeshi curry house in the British Midlands making a Madras curry with curry powder and extra red chilli. Or let's use a Chinese parallel: It's the difference between asking a chef from Sichuan to make Chicken Manchurian. Chefs must experiment and try new flavour combinations. But you cannot expect a serious chef to make junk food or to cook dishes that exist only in foreign countries as a bastardisation of the cuisine. Unfortunately, this has now become a rich-poor thing. An Italian chef cooking in Australia or France can afford to refuse demands to make junk food. But the chef in a Bangladeshi curry house in the British Midlands needs the money. He cannot afford to be put back on the next plane to Dhaka or Delhi. He simply does not have the means to stand up for real South Asian food even when he is asked to make bogus dishes such as a vindaloo that no Goan will recognise. Within South Asia, we have found our own solutions. Rare is the Chinese restaurant in India where an actual Chinese person works in the kitchen. So it is with Italian restaurants and Italians. It is only at expensive hotel restaurants that you will find food cooked by people who understand the cuisine and know what dishes are supposed to taste like. The rest of the time, the chefs have rarely even eaten the genuine article, let alone cooked it. Which, I guess, is okay. Because India is different and our versions of foreign cuisines are our own. Now that the world is full of stories admiring the Italian chef who refused to put pineapple on a pizza what, I wonder, would the world make of Indian pizzas. I was looking at the menu of the Indian outposts of Pizza Hut, one of the world's largest pizza chains. Here are just some of the pizzas on the menu: Chatpata Chicken Pizza Chilli Paneer Sizzle Pizza Ultimate Tandoori Veggie Pizza Paneer Makhni Masala Pizza Mazedaar Makhni Paneer Pizza Masala Keema Garlic Bread Any Italian looking at this menu would pass out. The pizzas are roughly as authentic as Daler Mehndi is Italian. If Tamburella had been asked to make any of these pizzas, he would gladly have made that pineapple pizza instead. None of this is to say that these pizzas are not tasty. I will never eat them, so I will never find out. But presumably lots of people order them and enjoy them, so good luck to them. But when I see menus like these, I have two thoughts. I can see why Italians are worried. They fear that unless they take a stand, Italian food all over the world will end up like this. My second and final thought is: It's already too late for Italian food. They can't turn back the clock. Even if Italian chefs refuse to go along with all this (as they should) there are enough foreign chefs and restaurants to make sure that this process continues. Masala Mazedaar Spaghetti anyone?...