Pizza Day in Sweden Date in the current year: January 1, 2025

Pizza has been served in Swedish restaurants since at least 1947, but there is some debate about which restaurant was the first to serve pizza in Sweden. Some say it was a restaurant in Västerås. According to this version, 300 Italian employees of a local electronics factory demanded pizza on the menu when the restaurant opened, and the owner obliged. Another version claims that it was an Italian restaurant in Stockholm opened by Luciano Frati.

The first dedicated pizzerias in Sweden began to open in the late 1960s. One of these pizzerias, Pizzeria Piazza Opera in Stockholm, started the Swedish tradition of serving pizza with a complimentary cabbage salad. The owner, Giuseppe “Peppino” Sperandio, grew up in northeastern Italy, where Croatian cabbage salad was very common. He brought it to Sweden and served it with pizza in his restaurant.

The “first wave” of Swedish pizzerias were opened by Italian immigrants. When immigrants from other countries (Greece, Syria, Yugoslavia) arrived in Sweden, they began to bake and sell pizza too, experimenting with recipes and creating new types of pizza that are not known in Italy. Two uniquely Swedish pizzas are the béarnaise sauce pizza and the kebab pizza.

Béarnaise sauce is a French sauce made from clarified butter, egg yolk, white wine vinegar, herbs (shallot and tarragon) and black pepper. It became popular in the Nordic countries in the late 20th century, where it is usually served to accompany steak and French fries or as a pizza topping. béarnaise sauce can be added to pizza before baking or after (as a cold dressing).

Kebab, a Middle Eastern dish of roasted meat, was brought to Sweden by Middle Eastern immigrants in the 1980s. They also invented kebab pizza, which consists of a pizza crust topped with kebab meat, kebab sauce (plain yogurt or sour cream mixed with herbs and spices), and sometimes fries. Pizza topped with French fries became common in Sweden in the 2010s.

Another unusual Swedish pizza is vulkan pizza (volcano pizza). It consists of a stuffed crust with several pockets, one pocket for each topping, such as ham, beef tenderloin, bacon, salami, mushrooms, etc. It is usually served with fresh vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce), French fries and sauces, such as béarnaise and garlic sauce, which are placed in the center.

Of all the unconventional Swedish pizzas, the skrovmål pizza probably takes the cake. The word skrovmål means a hearty meal and usually refers to a hamburger meal in fast-food restaurants; skrovmål pizza is a calzone-like pizza stuffed with a hamburger and fries.

Pizza is a popular comfort food and hangover cure in Sweden, so it is not surprising that Swedes celebrate Pizza Day on New Year’s Day: January 1 is the day when many people stay home and order pizza because they are in no mood to cook and need a greasy hangover cure.