South Florida pizzeria sparks outrage after adding iguana pizza to the menu following the state’s historic cold front

Nicole Perez’s report for WPLG Local 10 has the kind of Florida storyline that sounds like a joke right up until you realize it’s real: a pizzeria in North Palm Beach leaned into the “iguana freeze” moment after the historic cold front, added iguana meat as a pizza topping, went wildly viral, and then found out the internet doesn’t just bring customers – it brings phone calls, complaints, and government questions.

The place at the center of it, Perez explains, is Bucks Coal Fired Pizza, and the owner says the topping that “put them on the map” is now getting pulled back, at least for the moment, because the attention came with a messy side of controversy.

It’s an oddly modern problem, honestly: the same viral clip that drives thousands of people to your business can also summon a flood of outrage from people who have never stepped inside your dining room.

And in this case, Perez makes it clear the outrage wasn’t only about taste, because it drifted quickly into allegations about animal cruelty and questions about whether serving iguana meat even fits neatly into Florida’s rules.

A Viral Cold Snap Moment Turns Into A Menu Stunt

Perez frames the timing around the “historic cold snap,” the one that had people posting clips of iguanas falling from trees like nature suddenly hit a reset button.

In the middle of that, Bucks didn’t just keep selling regular pies – they expanded the menu in a way that practically begged to be shared.

The video that went viral, Perez notes, connected with millions of viewers, and it delivered the pitch in plain language: bring iguanas to this place, and they’ll make you a pizza.

That line alone explains why the internet grabbed it, because it’s outrageous in the simple, meme-ready way that spreads faster than any paid ad.

Perez says the owner, Frankie Cecere, described it as something that started with a friend reaching out with an idea that sounded half like a dare and half like a business opportunity.

“My buddy hit me up,” Cecere told Perez, explaining the friend asked how he would feel about bringing in iguana meat and making iguana pizza, and Cecere’s response was basically an immediate “absolutely.”

That’s the interesting part here: the decision wasn’t pitched as a political statement or an attempt to offend anyone, but more like a classic South Florida hustle – take what the moment gives you and see if customers bite.

“1,500 Calls” And The Kind Of Attention You Can’t Control

According to Perez, the experiment didn’t just get a few curious locals to try it.

Cecere said the restaurant received around 1,500 calls for iguana pizza, and he sounded almost stunned by the demand, describing it as “highly sought after.”

That number is the kind of thing small business owners dream about – phones ringing, strangers asking for your product, your name floating everywhere online – until you realize that some of those calls aren’t orders.

Perez reports that the attention also triggered complaints to the Health Department, and those complaints weren’t subtle.

Cecere told Local 10 that people called in claiming Bucks had live iguanas “in house,” framing it like an animal cruelty issue, which is the sort of accusation that escalates fast because it taps into emotion, not just health codes.

And in the same breath, Perez notes the owner pushed back hard on that characterization, saying plainly that they do not have live iguanas inside the restaurant.

There’s something about that dynamic that feels almost unavoidable now: a viral clip gets interpreted as literal by some viewers, exaggerated by others, and suddenly you’re defending yourself against a version of the story you didn’t even tell.

The Regulatory Gray Area That Turns A Topping Into A Headache

Perez explains that even while Bucks insisted they weren’t selling or killing live iguanas on site, the restaurant still decided to scale back the topping.

The reason wasn’t simply fear of backlash, either, but the growing uncertainty about where iguana meat fits in the rulebook.

Cecere told Perez he thought it would fall under something like “catch and cook,” which is a phrase that makes sense in the casual way Floridians talk about fishing and invasive species, but it’s not the same as having a clean legal statute that spells out what restaurants can do.

Perez says Bucks is now working through regulatory questions about serving iguana meat, and Cecere described the issue in a way that sounds like a classic bureaucratic gap.

He said you don’t need a recreational license to harvest iguanas because they’re an invasive species, but “apparently there’s no statute for it,” which leaves a business in a weird limbo – technically allowed to remove the animal, but not clearly guided on how it should enter the food system.

That kind of gap is where headaches multiply, because if there’s no clear rule, there’s no clear “safe” way to comply, and a business can end up punished simply for becoming visible.

Perez’s report doesn’t say the restaurant was cited or shut down, but it does show how quickly a novelty menu item can turn into a compliance puzzle that a small shop has neither time nor patience to fight.

The Taste Debate Is Almost The Smallest Part Of This

A lot of the public conversation, as Perez captured it, sounds like the typical food dare response: some people are curious, others are disgusted, and a few treat it like a line you just don’t cross.

When Perez asked people if they would ever try iguana pizza, the reactions landed all over the map.

Some said “never in a million years,” others said “absolutely not,” and at least one person shrugged and said they would try it because they aren’t picky.

That split is familiar with any controversial food, and Perez even joked that iguana on pizza is turning out to be as controversial as pineapple.

But what makes this story bigger than a taste test is that it isn’t just about whether iguana tastes good.

It’s about the way viral attention turns a local business decision into a statewide morality play, and then drags in regulators who are now forced to answer questions they probably never expected to face about reptile meat and restaurant menus.

Perez also notes that Bucks already serves other nontraditional meats like gator and venison, so from the owner’s perspective this wasn’t a wild leap into the unknown so much as a new variation on an existing theme.

Still, Cecere admitted to Perez that this was the first time he ever made iguana pizza, which suggests even he understood he was stepping into a new lane.

Why Bucks Is Pulling Back, For Now

Perez reports that Bucks says it will stop offering the viral topping, at least temporarily, and that decision reads like a business owner choosing to stop the bleeding rather than argue with the whole internet.

When the phone rings 1,500 times, it sounds like success, but if half the calls are outrage, accusations, or complaints to government agencies, that “success” can become exhausting.

And if there’s truly no clear statute guiding the sale of iguana meat in this context – as Cecere told Perez – then the safer move is to pause, sort it out, and avoid becoming the test case that ends up in a headline again, but not the fun viral kind.

Perez’s piece also makes it clear that the restaurant isn’t backing away because it suddenly became squeamish, but because the costs of confusion are real, especially for small businesses that don’t have lawyers on standby.

Florida’s Invasive Species Reality Collides With Social Media Morality

This whole thing is peak Florida, but not in the lazy “Florida Man” way – more in the sense that the state constantly forces people to live at the intersection of nature, nuisance, and culture.

Iguanas aren’t a quirky backyard pet problem down there; they’re widely treated as invasive, and that reality shapes how residents talk about them, including the blunt, practical conversations about removal and control that would sound shocking in other places.

At the same time, Perez’s report shows what happens when a local attitude runs into a national audience, because the internet doesn’t share a single set of assumptions.

Some viewers saw iguana pizza as a funny, gritty, uniquely Floridian form of “make lemonade out of lemons,” while others heard “animal cruelty” and immediately imagined a restaurant full of live reptiles being mistreated, even though Cecere said that was not happening.

The other big issue is the regulatory one, because a gray area invites chaos; if the rules are clear, businesses comply and the public knows what’s permitted, but if there’s “apparently no statute,” you end up with enforcement driven by attention and outrage instead of consistency.

And that’s the part that should make people a little uneasy, even if they’d never eat a bite of iguana pizza, because today it’s a novelty topping, but tomorrow it’s some other small business doing something unusual that suddenly becomes a national debate without a clear set of local rules to anchor it.

Perez’s reporting lands on an uncomfortable truth: Bucks didn’t just sell a weird pizza – Bucks collided with the modern attention machine, and the machine doesn’t care whether you meant it as a joke, a stunt, or a serious menu item, because once it’s viral, you’re no longer the one steering.