All You Know About Pizza is Wrong: This Year's Pizza Spinoffs

Now that the gentle waft of cheese has finally settled and rests as a medium-fine layer of fat on our collective memory of this year's Pizza Cup, it's time to dabble in our follow-up exercise: Beijing's best spinoff pizza.

In this quick round of voting, we hope to highlight those Beijing vendors who have gone out of their God-given way to evolve the beloved pizza into an altogether worthier – or weirder (we're easy) – form.

Whether it be a pizza baozi, pizza bread, pizza torch, pizza bagel, pizza dumpling, or a fengshui pizza ... uhhh ... there's no end to the ingenuity of Beijing's pizzaiolos and each is a testament to the infinite adaptability and originality of the pizza-making craft. So, without further a-doughy-do, here is 2017's selection for Beijing's best pizza alternative (skip to the bottom to get straight to voting).

Baozza's Pizza Baozi
Since their launch last year, Baozza's various stuffed buns have continued to prove a hit across Beijing thanks to a simple yet satisfying melding of worlds: half-baozi, half-western-food-staple. Their pizza baozi, in particular, comes stuffed with gooey mozzarella cheese and a thick and tangy tomato sauce, all encased in a chewy and soft Italian-herb-flaked casing. If all foods came this way we'd be one step closer to world peace.

Dongli Brewery's Baobing Pizza
Although it certainly takes the shape of a pizza, Dongli Brewery's Baobing Pizza has one simple trick up its sleeve: it's actually a crepe with a bunch of pizza ingredients (sausage, seafood, avocado, vegetables, etc.). thrown on top. "After repeated experiments, we determined the proportion of suitable high-gluten flour and low-gluten flour," explains Dongli's management. Baking then provides the base a crisp but tough texture and a bite that'll not leave you bloated and full like chewier alternatives.

Jay Food Dream Factory's Pizza Torch
Don't be misled, Jay Food Dream Factory's Pizza Torch is not actually made out of plastic. Instead, the conical base acts as a cup to be filled with piping-hot cheese, crispy bacon, tomato sauce, and potato (?!), meaning you get more bang for your cholesterol buck – pizza was never about being healthy, after all. To maintain structural integrity, the outer dough turns out chewier than your average pizza base, as long as you're able to fight the urge to lick it.

Frost's Pizza Bagel
Frost's Pizza Bagel has been around a while now and although the form itself does little to spruce up the "trashed at home at 2am with nothing but a bag of cheese and a slice of bread" goodness that such a creation invariably arose from, the selection at this Xingfucun haunt works well with the humble configurations that it's got. A simple pricing system (one for all) and a decent variety (veggie, Hawaiian, pepperoni, avocado and bacon, chicken and chili) add just enough to this effective pizza spinoff to keep you out for one last drink.

The Great Outdoors' Pizza Dumplings
Having been ousted from its original digs in the now-defunct North Capital, the Pizza Dumpling now makes its way to The Great Outdoors on Fangjia Hutong. These savory dumplings are stuffed with cheese, pepperoni, and tomato sauce before being thrown in the frier, giving them a crisp and bobbly shell. They may not be the most difficult item on this list to make but there's something devilishly assured about these crescents of fatty pizza goodness to make them a worthy opponent.

La Pizza's Fengshui Pizza
Finally, we have La Pizza's Fengshui Pizza. What makes this dish need to call upon the powers of ancient Taoist geomancy? Well, apparently it's the elements – metal, wood, water, fire, earth – each embodied in one of the five doughy pockets that when served together, balance and complement in flavor and sustenance. If all that's too hard to swallow then you'll be relieved to hear that it's basically just five calzones arranged in a star shape on the plate, including mushroom (earth), shrimp and zucchini (metal), artichoke (wood), tuna (water), and fire (pepperoni). Well, there's certainly no harm in trying to stick out in Beijing's fierce and competitive pizza market.

And there you have it, five original and enticing candidates vying for the title of Beijing’s best pizza spinoff. In order to vote, simply scan the QR code below via WeChat and push your favorite spinoff into the pizza record books.

Photos courtesy of the venues

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