Chef Defends ‘Poison Pizza’

Chef Ismail Ertekin is the man now famous for creating poison pizzas. Though now banned, the pizzas, were made at Avanti Pizzeria in Zurich, Switzerland, and topped with venom from spiders, scorpions and snakes. Chef Ertekin used tiny amounts of poison from homeopathic remedies claiming that the poisons had ‘healing powers.’ According to Chef Ertekin customers have ‘used the poison pizzas to overcome their phobias of creepy crawlies’.

Health officials were quick to investigate this new curiosity and Chef Ertekin was soon ordered to take them off the menu. Defending his poison pizzas in a statement he said, “Preservatives in foods are much more damaging than my poison pizzas.”

Environmental Food Officer Ferdinand Uehli said, “Medicinal products are not food stuffs and are not allowed to be an ingredient in food. Therefore we had to ban the pizzas. The pizzas in reality had very little poison.”

This is not Chef Ertekin first attempt at unusual pizza toppings — earlier this year he incorporated 24 carat gold onto his pizzas. Over in the USA, pizzas are unique in Washington D.C — Bibiana’s prepares a black pizza made from squid ink and topped with octopus salami.

photo via yelp