Move over pineapple, hot honey is the next polarizing pizza topping

In the realm of pizza, there are a myriad topping choices to satisfy every palate. And while many opt for the classic pepperoni, mushrooms or olives, some take a sweet yet spicy route.

Hot honey has made a splash in the pizza world and now its popularity is surging, extending beyond pizza to adorn coffee, chicken nuggets, chips and even ice cream, captivating taste buds around the globe.

Google searches, in fact, have increased tenfold in the past 10 years, peaking in February. It has gone from a cult classic to a mainstream condiment.

Mike Kurtz, founder of Mike's Hot Honey, shared the exotic secret as to how he actually found this trend overseas with KCBS Radio.

"I was a college student studying Portuguese in Brazil, and I was on a hiking trip in a national park and hiked for five days. And then the end of the hike descended into a little valley," Kurtz explains. "And there I found a pizzeria that had jars of honey with chili peppers for drizzling on the pizzas. I tasted the combination of the honey and the chili peppers on the pizza, and it just blew my mind. And it was something that I just couldn't forget."

Kurtz returned to the U.S. a year later and started experimenting with honey chili pepper infusions in his college apartment -- and Mike's Hot Honey was born.

"What I created ended up being significantly hotter than the inspiration for the product," he said. "[People] thought I was crazy until they tasted it. Two of nature's most unique and wonderful ingredients together. And it just so happened that no one had ever really combined them. And they hit on all these beautiful flavor notes and pair in such a versatile way with so many different food pairings, from pizza to fried chicken to cheese and charcuterie to avocado toast to cocktail ice cream -- you name it."

A self-described "pizza nerd," Kurtz sought the approval of his hot honey from a family friend who owned a pizzeria.

"One day I brought in a bottle of my honey for him to try, and he just loved it and asked if I could make it for the restaurant to drizzle on the pizzas," he said. "We started drizzling it on a pizza called the Hellboy, which was a hot Soppressata pie baked in the oven and then drizzled with a post-oven drizzle of my honey."

Just like pumpkin spice and chili crisp, hot honey has transformed from a cult classic to a mainstream condiment.

"I mean, there are not too many things like, for example, ketchup. You're not going to put ketchup in a cocktail or on ice cream," said Kurtz. "But Mike's Hot Honey, you can drizzle it on chicken, but you can also put it in a complex cocktail. You can also drizzle it on an ice cream sundae. It's truly one of the most versatile products out there."