Pizza Mania!: Soar Out of Your Comfort Zone with Fly Pizza's Inventive Korean Pizzas

If  the thousands of five-star reviews on Dianping of both of Fly Pizza's locations in Wangjing and Sanlitun are anything to go by, those who haven't tried this trendy Korean eatery yet might be missing a trick. 

Fly Pizza specializes in Korean-style pizza, a world apart from more familiar styles such as Neapolitan or Chicago deep dish. Available with a choice of thick or thin base, unlike many Italian pizzas Fly Pizza's pies cut back on the tomato sauce and are often finished with slightly sweeter sauces such as ranch dressing. Cheese is stringy and plentiful (last year Fly Pizza owner Taek Chong stated that they use semi-hard mozzarella cheese on their pizzas). 

Although Fly Pizza does offer a standard margherita, their most popular pizzas are more creative, topped with sweet potato (pictured in the lead blog image) or bulgogi beef (a traditional Korean marinated beef barbecue dish). We tried the bulgogi version when Fly Pizza opened their Sanlitun location over a year ago and the flavor really works – imagine a slightly sweeter steak pizza. Over in South Korean, pizza joints have long been renowned for their, let's say, flexible attitude to pizza toppings. In a 2015 article on Roads and Kingdoms entitled "The Weird and Wonderful World of Korean Pizza," author and journalist David Tudor tells Annette Ekin that the "compressed modernity" and rapid late twentieth-century development Korea experienced has left people hungry for new ideas and experiences. Something similar could very much be said of China, which might explain the popularity of Korean pizza joints in Beijing. 

Bargain hunters (or those who'll take any excuse to scoff a pizza) will want to check out Fly Pizza's current offers on Dianping. At their Sanlitun Soho branch, pay through the Dianping app and get 10 percent off your total bill, available 11am-10.30pm, seven days a week. Alternatively, purchase a value set meal, such as the meal for four with a 14-inch pizza, a portion of fried chicken, a salad, and a bottle of Coke or Sprite for RMB 195 (a saving of RMB 57). 

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Photos courtesy of Fly Pizza