The 50 Weirdest Pizza Toppings in the World and Where to Find Them

By Brian Hernandez

Scroll the interwebs for five minutes and you’ll land in a twilight zone of pizzas that look like they were built at 2 a.m., blindfolded in a power outage. Banana and tuna. Peanut butter and pickles. Marshmallows melting into red sauce like a bad Hollywood special effect. A pie boasting all of the cheese and no regrets, daring your lactose intolerance to get Ally McBeal on the line.

None of these are accidents. They’ve been served, ordered, photographed and normalized somewhere. Some are regional staples that just look strange to outsiders. Some are pure PR stunts. Either way, if we’re talking about them, they worked. Curiosity sells when it’s packaged right.

And let’s retire the “common weird” already. Pineapple and anchovies are the training wheels of chaos. Respect to the pioneers, but we’re in the deep end now, where rules blur and somebody is absolutely testing legumes on dessert pizza just to see what happens.

The Weird Vault

Below is a throng of about 50 toppings that exist in the wild. Some I’ve seen. Some I’ve tasted. Some sound like campfire legends. For the truly eyebrow-raising ones, I’ve noted where they actually show up, because if it’s food somewhere, someone has tried putting it on pizza.

Exotic Meats and Game
In a lot of places, these aren’t “exotic,” they’re just local protein. And most on this list are readily available from internet vendors.

Kangaroo (Australia, specialty game-meat pies)
Crocodile (Australia, often paired with curry-style builds)
Reindeer (Look no further in the U.S. than Wagner’s Pizza Bus in Fairbanks, Alaska. Additionally, reindeer meat has popped up in Finland, specifically on Kotipizza’s Pizza Berlusconi, named for the late ex-prime minister of Italy)
Venison chorizo (U.S., game-meat suppliers and specialty builds)
Wild boar (Italy and broader Europe—rustic menus love it)
Buffalo (Again, you’ll find this on the menu at Wagner’s Pizza Bus.)
Elk (You name the wild-game topping, Wagner’s Pizza Bus probably has it)
Haggis (Scotland—yes, really—specifically Cosmo’s Pizza, as previously reported by PMQ. Haggis is a type of pudding made with sheep organs, in case you were wondering.)
Escargot, aka snails (France-inspired gourmet pies)
Cuttlefish (offered in the past at Pizza Hut in Sri Lanka)
Iguana (served at Bucks Coal Fired Pizza in North Palm Beach, Florida, in February 2026—because, of course, Florida. Possibly Central America and Mexico)

Related: Florida Man Says He’s Made the World’s First Iguana Pizza

Insects and “Apocalypse Protein”
Western audiences treat crickets like a prank, but globally they’re just protein. On pizza, insects usually show up as sustainability-forward novelty or a seasonal “we’re doing this, don’t ask questions” moment.

Crickets (novelty and sustainability builds; seen in the U.K. and beyond)
Cricket Flour (makes it taste like anchovies, said Chef Carlo Del Buono, owner of La Rambla in Maccarese, Italy)
Cicadas (U.S., especially during major brood emergences. Specifically, we’re talking about the 18” Spicy Thai Cicada Pie from Pizza Bandit in Dayton, Ohio. USA be crazy)
Meal Worms (often paired with crickets)

Veggies That Start Arguments
These ingredients aren’t inherently strange, but often started childhood arguments about eating them at the dinner table.

Pickles (in the U.S., this topping went from wacky-pizza meme to mainstream trend. I’ve gotten them added to menus. I love them.)
Green peas (Brazil; more normal there than Americans want to admit)
Fermented black beans (as a sauce or topping it will divide the room)
Black-eyed peas and collard greens (they’re a long-running hit on the Soul Pie at Slice Pizza & Brew in Birmingham, Alabama)

Fruits That Don’t Give a Hoot
Fruit on pizza is the world’s most reliable comment-section starter. Pineapple opened the door. Banana walked through it confidently. Durian kicked the hinges off and made direct eye contact.

Banana (banana-curry pizza is a popular favorite in Sweden)
Pineapple + pickles (internet-documented chaos combo, sometimes as a split pie)
Durian (Southeast Asia, the “king of stinky fruits” showing up where it absolutely knows it doesn’t belong.)
Jackfruit (less stinky version of durian, greatly mimics shredded meat texture)
Lingonberries (Scandinavia, commonly paired with reindeer-style pies. Just yes!)

Sweets and Dessert Chaos
This category is divisive in itself: Dessert Pizza. Dough is a platform, and the sugar industrial complex figured that out years ago. Wake up, sheeple!

Marshmallows (S’more style, dessert pizzas and viral builds)
Chocolate sauce (dessert pie base)
Brownie pieces (baked on or scattered post-bake)
Caramel drizzle (finisher move, not subtle)
Ice cream (post-bake topping because chaos has rules)
Popcorn (novelty topping: texture first, logic later)
Dubai Chocolate (the trend made it to pizza and is a national champion. Ask U.S. Pizza Team Captain Tore Trupiano of Mangia e Bevi.)

Dairy Stunt
Sometimes the topping isn’t about balance, it’s about audacity. This is pizza as spectacle, pizza as headline, pizza as “we did it because we could.” I wonder if all those cows got medals.

1,001 cheeses on a single pizza (Guinness World Record set in France)

Sauces, Goops & Curveballs
A lot of “weird” is just format. Curry is spice, not sorcery. Peanuts provide crunch and fat. Pearls are liquid turned into texture you can infuse with a multitude of different flavors, from sweet to sour.

Curry (Sweden’s banana-curry lane and other global mashups)
Peanuts (often used in Thai-inspired recipes or paired with banana-curry builds)
Agar “pizza caviar” pearls (poppable sauce spheres; modernist gimmick with real visual power)
Mayonnaise (hear me out….BLT Pizza, only served fresh. It also pairs with the Japanese corn pizzas mentioned later.)

Crust Experiments
When toppings aren’t enough, people start messing with the foundation. Changing the dough changes the whole conversation before the first ounce of cheese lands.

Mango seltzer-infused crust (popularized via beverage/chain-collab)

Briny Chaos
Personally, I’m not a fan of seafood, so definitely keep it away from my side of the pizza, but seafood as a topping isn’t rare globally. The part that melts American brains is the pairings, especially when sweet gets involved. Different markets have different comfort zones, and this category lives outside most U.S. ones.

Tuna + banana (Nordic and internet roundups have documented versions, even a pizzeria in Scotland!)
Tuna + sweetcorn (common in parts of Germany and the U.K.)

Reality Check Category
Some pizzas exist because someone wanted to see what would happen. Cultural context matters here. What reads outrageous in one place reads normal, touristy or “just a thing” in another.

Avocado on summer-style garden pizzas (viral builds)
Cannabis-infused “happy pizza” (The mysterious Pink Panties Pizza, a ghost kitchen in Detroit, has built its name on pies featuring between 500mg and 1200mg of THC.)

Related: Pink Panties Pizza: ‘My Weed and My Pizza Just Got Married!’

Spotted in the Wild
These are the internet’s fingerprints on food. No other reason they should exist.

Hot dogs as the primary topping IN ANY FORM (chain stunts and viral pies)
Whole olives dumped by the handful (the internet has receipts and should be ashamed)
Corn-heavy pizzas (corn rocks, but c’mon! Common in Japan and Brazil; controversial elsewhere but popping up more and more in the U.S. Also pairs with mayo!)
No-cheese/no-sauce “sadness pizza” (the “None Pizza with Left Beef” meme made physical)
The Scotch Egg (a whole soft-boiled or hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage, coated in breadcrumbs and baked or deep-fried. A British pizzeria called Oakfired introduced this oddity in 2020.)

That’s the vault: nearly 50 real-world toppings and topping concepts scoured from the interwebs proving the same thing in different accents and time zones: Pizza doesn’t break. It absorbs. The only question is whether you treat “weird” as a punchline… or as leverage.

In part 2 of this series, we’ll stop gawking and start cooking, building serious, balanced pies around a few of these ingredient types to show how they actually function on dough.

Then in part 3, we get strategic and talk about how to market the scary stuff like an event instead of an apology—turning curiosity into traffic and risk into revenue.

Brian Hernandez is PMQ’s associate editor and coordinator of PMQ’s U.S. Pizza Team.

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