Domino’s does that too! Or at least they used to.
So many better pizza places. Check out Il mercato dazhi. It’s in the Marriott. Great pizza.
There were more people that had invested and got burned.
Il Mercato is outstanding. Never tried a pizza with them, though.
Only the one in the dazhi Marriott has it.
2 Likes
When Alleycat’s started out, as has been mentioned, there were few choices for quality pizza. Your (you everyone not you you) tastes may vary, but that thin crust style is real thing in lots of places (Naples?). As well, AC’s was using fresh quality ingredients in their toppings at a time when every single thing you could get on a local pie came out of a can or a frozen bag. They were also the first ones to use a stone oven for the pies (800°C with the crust sitting right on the stone, no pan).
It’s worth noting that there was an earlier hue and cry about the drop in quality when the new owners took over from Alan, but that was largely because Alan, bless his heart, would randomly load toppings on by the double fistful with no regard for cost control, a situation brought under control after the buyout. Not that they started skimping, it was just more normalized.
Competing with Dombalo’s and Penis Hut was always a bit of an uphill battle for AC’s with local folks anyways, since paying the same money for a large at one of them would get you like 3 more pounds of food (even though it was mostly that dense chemically enhanced crust covered with highly processed ingredients), and there were still plenty of punters who saw that as a bargain (it’s worth noting as well that, the last time I had a DominNope slice, at an office thing, they have gone to a radically thinner crust than before, to save $).
3 Likes
That would like melt your crust, not bake! (melting point: Iron, Wrought 1482°C - 1593°C)
Typo, should be 800
Oh, absolutely. I liked Alleycat’s and went there A LOT. But at some point it became less appealing - I don’t think they went down in quality, but it was a combination of other good pizza choices, and perhaps most importantly, getting my own oven and a cast iron “stone” for making that pizza.
That’s ze Germans.
IL Mercato in Neihu I just happened to try yesterday, decent pizza. I like the crust, and the sauce is very nice and fruity. The other ingredients (pizza diavola) were ok, just the sausage was a bit too salty. I like the self serve wine thingy there, great to try all wines they have (~20NT for 20ml).
I’m still looking for a very simple pizza like I know from my small home town in Germany. I recently asked the baker, he said it’s Calabrian style. So far, in Taiwan I mostly saw Neapolitan style - and if course localized or Americanized.
Alright let me put on another German group I really enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAvd5x0KpU8
and ok you talked me into it. Another nice German lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWCMKrl2p9I
oh anyway i think they are German.
Now back to pizza. I actually much prefer thin crust. And back before I left the rock they had a tiny hotel called WHITE HOUSE near Chong shan North Road. And I think its haunted. But that aside they had a nice restaurant on the 2nd floor with EXCELLENT pizza. But I am no expert as i normally avoid pizza (gives me gas) but hey…thought it was purrrty good. Haunting so to speak?
Oo, I asked in another thread about ways to learn more about wine - that sounds fantastic! (I.e. finally sit down with "this is wine X, this is wine Y, and now you can taste the difference.)
1 Like
It’s all Italian wines, which isn’t a bad thing of course.
Exactly, that’s what I liked about it most. In Neihu they have 5 pretty different reds and 5 whites, served from such a contraption: Wine Dispensers - Vinotemp.com
You get a 1000nt chip card that you can use in that machine, and then when you pay they check the card and you pay what you used. Dispensing is if I remember correctly 20ml, 60ml or 120ml. Not cheap, but definitely possible to try different wines this way without breaking the bank.
1 Like
Burned investors?
Sheraton Grande Taipei Hotel, near Shandao Temple MRT, was doing wood-fired oven pizza in the 90s. I had it once. Excellent. And from the looks of it (marriot.com), they are still doing it, albeit reservations required.
I like alleycats pizza. Pizza rock have tried one of their pizzas; which seemed good only too much garlic.
No the pizza is not that bad , The Huashan location is a big beautiful location with a great vibe… Expats constantly bitch about stuff that “ain’t like back home”… no shit we ain’t back home… Sooooo Businesses have to adjust for local market tastes: corn squid etc. Yea they franchised and independent operators had wildly different ideas on quality , but the locations owned by the OG’s have always been good in my opinion The Huashan and the pop up they had in the 101 A1 food market were always lively, fun places to eat, drink, and make the merry
1 Like
I don’t think they ever franchised. There were different investor groups for different locations but Mongping was the lead shareholder for all of them. And from what I understood, supplies and staff were centralized.
I was surprised to learn how the pizza locations have closed. But they have other non-pizza restaurants (pasta, but not like The Italian Job, which was an early attempt to try different things). They even had a Taiwanese restaurant in Manila.
Yeah, I still want to know how they went from like 12 to 2 so quickly. Must be more to it than shit pizza, someone mentioned something about the shareholders getting scammed, and truth to that?