The Deep Dish: Desserty Fruit Pizza at Luga's Villa
In the lead up to our September 16-17 Pizza Fest in Wangjing Soho, The Deep Dish will
be previewing a few of the restaurants that you can expect to see
slinging their thick, gooey, and tomatoey slabs of doughy goodness. Now
that you're hot and dribbling, let's go!
After we tragically lost the “Small Luga’s” on the corner of the Sanlitun "Dirty Bar Street" during the “Great Brickening,” Luga’s Villa, also known as “Big Luga’s,” still occupies the same spacious venue, with separate Mexican and Italian menus deeper into Sanlitun.
We visited it on a week day, when local veterans were having Mexican food and beers. Offering Tex-Mex food for ten years, they also serve more than two dozen different 12-inch round pizzas (RMB 65-95), including the Margherita, Hawaiian, Tonno e Cipolla, vegetarian, salmon, and more. For the upcoming Pizza Fest, they will do something not-so-traditional this time around: fruit pizza.
But don’t furrow your eyebrows just yet. In fact, it’s not half bad. As a traditional-pizza-supporter, I’m normally not a big fan of sweet pizza, but this one is worth a try, especially as a post-savory-pizza dessert. In a previous interview, Luga's described their pizzas as Neapolitan style. “It’s an extremely famous type of cuisine. Neapolitan pizzas are handmade, thin in the center and thicker around the outer parts. Also, the ingredients need to be fresh and spread as quickly as possible on each pizza as they are being cooked. After that, it's important that we rotate the pizzas a few times to makes sure that it is perfectly cooked on every side.”
Delicious char-roasted corn
Sharing the spotlight is their char-roasted corn (RMB 35 for members, and RMB 45 for non-members) that was sweet, tender, and steaming hot, topped generously with shredded parmesan cheese and chipotle salsa, and served on a bed of shredded purple cabbage to add some freshness to this otherwise guilty pleasure.
This, paired with the sweet pizza's cheese, cranberries, banana and pineapple on the thin crust, was delicious and full of sweet-and-savory contrasts. To make it all even more irresistible, they will have Supra Cranberry beer to pair with this dessert pizza, brewed with American cranberry juice and Chinese honey. This ruby-colored, 4-percent-ABV beer has honey and fruity aromas, smooth foam, and a subtle tangy taste. Stop by at Pizza Fest to try the combo and learn more details of their pizza deals.
Photos: Tracy Wang
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