No. 273, Yucheng Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區裕誠路273號
(07)557-2889
Monday-Sunday
11:30am-10:00pm
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toaroach
English friendly: overly
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 200-300NTD
The first Taiwanese food blog I opened up in order to copy+paste the pertinent information above (ahem) advertised this place as "高雄老外公認最好吃的家鄉味披薩喔": "widely accepted among Kaohsiung foreigners as the most delicious hometown flavor pizza!" That's what I concluded too, when on a whim this afternoon I googled "Kaohsiung best pizza" in English on The Internet. Well, *I* am a Kaohsiung 老外 too and I'm here to tell you that it is NOT the most delicious hometown flavor pizza in Kaohsiung. It can't be, it just can't.
It is definitely a foreigner's pizza place though: most of the reviews online are in English, as were a majority of the Tuesday night customers.
Their pizza is made by hand and cooked in a brick oven right in front of the shop. Just look at the American neon sign! The quaint pile of chopped wood! How could it possibly go wrong?
Our first sign should have been the complete dearth of customers when we entered at 6:30pm on a Tuesday...
The do get props for having reasonable prices, and an actually English English menu. I say this place is "overly" English friendly because the waitress, assumedly the hot Taiwanese wife of the charateristic Californian expat owner (for the record all I'm going on here is his purple tye-dye T-shirt), was the type to respond to me in English when I talked to her in Chinese. This kind of behavior really pisses me off, but your mileage may vary.
Though it is Andy's Pizza Garden, we both ordered calzones. WHATEVER. I can no longer make dining choices based on what would be good for the blog. That way lies madness. A calzone is pretty much a pizza anyway, and a very rare creature in Kaohsiung besides. Apparently in Chinese it translates to 披薩餃 or "pizza dumpling", which is adorable.
The name was the best part about it though. I chose the "Niaosong Veggie" calzone, medium, with extra olives. Their menu has a wide selection of additional toppings for minimal extra charge, though they don't have artichoke hearts anymore because "no one orders them" (what did you think I was trying to do?!?) and I don't actually remember any olives ending up in my calizone. SO.
I was promised mushrooms, broccoli, spinach and other vegetables stuffed along with feta cheese (and olives, dammit!) into a lovingly homemade pizza shell; what I got was soggy broccoli, onions, other bland vegetables (maybe just more onions) punctuating giant gobs of tasteless mozzarella cheese inside a tasteless powdery pizza shell. If I hadn't seen feta cheese inside, I wouldn't have known it was there.
My Taiwanese friend ordered a meat calzone, purported to come with ham, beef, pepperoni and Italian sausage. On the Chinese side of the menu only it was marked as "relatively salty." How cute is that! I'm not making this stuff up you guys. It was in fact salty, or should I say sharp, due to the sausage. Overall I liked it more than mine, but it had the same issues I'm about to discuss below.
Ahem! I think the problem with this place is twofold. Number one: the dough. The dough has no flavor of its own, assuming you don't consider "overly floured" a flavor. Yeasty, greasy, flaky, crispy... Really, anything would be better than this powdery mass of disappointment.
I snapped this picture of a calzone baking in the brick oven on the way out. Look how cute and plump it is! (A medium was more than enough for one person, by the way. You won't feel like finishing it anyway.) But also notice its color. That, my friend, is the color of flourpaste.
Number two: the cheese. I am forced to consider that it may just be more difficult to purchase good quality cheese in Taiwan. This place doesn't use pre-sliced orange American cheese from Carrefour, but I almost wish they had... At least that stuff has a cheesy kick to it, chemical induced though it may be. I'm very unused to having consumed such large quantities of melted cheese and feeling so "ehhh" about it. It's almost frustrating, like I've been cheated somehow.
I realize this review is a little harsh, but I can't help it. My expectations were too high going in, and I came out utterly disappointed. I have no desire to go back here again. A shame, because I hear that they sell handmade liquid nitrogen ice cream on weekends.
OVERALL REVIEW: 2/5
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