First Glance: FA Café in Shinkong Place

To get you in the mood for the ongoing voting in the 2014 Pizza Cup, (see our roundup of pizza meal deals here) we've sent our minions out to patrol the streets for pizza. Here's a selection of what they've found:

FA Café, or Fissler Academy Café, is German cookware brand Fissler's latest venture in China. After successfully establishing themsleves as a desirable high-end brand, they are now looking to market education to expand their influence and have created the Fissler Academy cooking school specially for the Chinese market. Hence, FA Café (with a branch in Shanghai and now in Beijing at Shinkong Place) is both a restaurant and a culinary teaching space.

For the moment, the focus is on the restaurant. The menu is mostly Italian, with hints of the broader Mediterranean here and there. Fissler brought in award-winning Neapolitan pizza master Enzo Coccia to teach staff how to prepare pizzas in the traditional Neapolitan style, which are cooked up in big brick ovens near the restaurant's open plan frontage.

I will say right now, this is very good pizza. Thin base, excellent quality mozzarella and well-balanced tomato sauce. The base could have been crispier, but the overall effect was of a much higher quality than many pizzas we have sampled around town, and we've tried a lot. We tried the Napoli salami (RMB 118) and there are around eight different options to choose from. 

Pizza aside, there is a short selection of pastas, salads, paella and main courses. A dish of penne with mushroom ragout and seared beef tenderloin (RMB 88) lacked a little bit in the flavor department, although the Milanese salad (RMB 58) made up for it with one of the best balsamic dressings we've had in Beijing.

Read more about FA Café in an upcoming issue of the Beijinger.

FA Café
D5093, 5/F, Shinkong Place, Chaoyang District (5738 2680)
朝阳区新光天地5层D5093号

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Photos: Robynne Tindall