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When you think about barbecue or barbecue chicken pizza, most probably realize that it’s not a traditional Italian pizza topping (in fact, some would argue that it’s a serious crime against Italian cuisine). But what’s much less known is that its history involves Elvis Presley — perhaps fittingly, given the King’s taste for greasy comfort foods.
Let’s set the scene: It’s the 1970s, and in a section of southeastern Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis drops by a humble Italian restaurant named Coletta’s, right off a cloverleaf interchange. It looks like a classic red sauce joint with checkered tablecloths and wood-paneled walls. But what Elvis orders is decidedly not a classic Italian-American dish like eggplant Parm or spaghetti and meatballs. It’s a pizza, sure, but instead of the classic tomato base, you have a Memphis-style tomato-based barbecue sauce, loaded up with mozzarella and a small amount of cheddar. It’s baked, and then once the cheese is melted, topped off with a mound of barbecue pork and a little more barbecue sauce.
If you’ve ever perused a list of Elvis’ favorite foods, it should be little surprise why he liked it: The man loved meat (see: bacon-topped meatloaf or barbecue-chicken bites), but also had a firm sweet tooth, as evidenced by his (in)famous ice cream sandwich with peanut butter, banana, and bacon. (In this case, the sugar content of the barbecue sauce checks this box.) And while Elvis loved it, this barbecue pizza’s existence was arguably a chance occurrence.
How Coletta’s made barbecue pizza a thing
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To be clear, Elvis was a lover of barbecue pizza, but all credit for its creation goes to the committed family owners of Memphis Italian restaurant Coletta’s, in the post-World War II era. At the time, pizza was not the ubiquitous fast food meal that it is nowadays; in fact, the grandson of the restaurant’s owner from the ’50s claims that there were no pizza joints whatsoever in Memphis. However, soldiers from a nearby naval base who had been sent to Italy during the war started requesting pizza, so, eager to please their customers, the then-owner’s son sought pizza-making training, and it was added to the menu.
Unfortunately, not counting the sailors, pizza wasn’t an immediate hit: Locals were mostly unfamiliar with it and avoided ordering it. But not wanting his training to go to waste, pizzaiolo Horest Coletta created something that would be a bit more comprehensible to Coletta’s Southern clientele. He drew on classic Southern ingredients in the form of the pork and barbecue sauce, and it finally landed with Memphis residents. But without Elvis, it may not have stuck around on the menu: His love of the pizza has helped draw Elvis fans to the restaurant to take photos (and presumably, sample the pork-topped pizza). To this day, Coletta’s is still in business, with the barbecue pizza still on the menu, alongside a host of Italian-American classics, from toasted ravioli to fettuccine Alfredo (a dish with its own Hollywood history).
The evolution of barbecue pizza
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Nowadays, it’s not too hard to find a barbecue sauce-based pizza, but there’s a good chance that the topping won’t be pork, but chicken. That type of pizza has its own distinct history that seems to be separate from the pork barbecue pizza you’d get in Memphis. A pizza chef called Ed LaDou landed a job at famed San Francisco restaurant Prego, where he was given the freedom to come up with unconventional pizza recipes (like one with pâté and mustard). His work caught the eye of chef Wolfgang Puck, who poached him to work at his LA restaurant, Spago. He was later hired by the founders of what would become California Pizza Kitchen to develop unique recipes — one of which featured chicken, barbecue sauce, cilantro, onions, and fontina cheese (alongside other unconventional pies, like a BLT option).
That pizza was certainly divisive, with purists declaring it to be not “real” pizza, yet the sweet-savory flavor combination was a big hit. It’s considered one of the original examples of California-style pizza, and isn’t hard to find on pizza menus across the country today (and, of course, still with top billing on the California Pizza Kitchen menu). So, it seems there’s no one person who invented barbecue sauce on pizza — the Elvis-endorsed Memphis version and California Pizza Kitchen versions evolved independently, but both stuck around as unconventionally delicious pizza toppings.
Dining and Cooking