Inside the Salomone Spiral: Breaking Down the Cut That's Changing the Sport

Most competitive pineapple eaters cut in quarters or panels: score the fruit into four sections, peel each one, then attack the core. It's intuitive and it's fast to learn. It is not, it turns out, the fastest way to actually do it.

The Salomone Spiral, debuted at the 2023 National Championship, replaces the quartering entirely. Using a single blade angle held constant against the fruit's curve, Michael Salomone removes the entire skin in one continuous ribbon while rotating the pineapple in his other hand — closer to peeling an apple than cutting a melon. The result is fewer total blade strokes, less surface area exposed to air (which judges say affects grip), and, crucially, almost no wasted flesh left on the discarded skin.

Council judges have been unusually candid about why so few competitors have successfully copied it: the technique requires a level of two-handed coordination that most competitors, who train the cutting hand far more than the rotating hand, simply haven't built. Grace Abubakar, one of the Southeast Regional Open's perennial contenders, told the Council she has spent 'more hours than I'd like to admit' trying to learn it. 'I can do about sixty percent of a spiral before I have to bail back to a panel cut. He can do all of it, every time, under a countdown clock. That's the gap.'

Whether the Spiral becomes the sport's new standard technique or remains a Salomone signature move may be the most interesting open question in competitive pineapple eating heading into the next several seasons.