Napa Launch Weekend Brunch, Including Delicious Wood-Fired Pizzas

With The Rug's Chaoyang Park location still under renovations (their Sanlitun branch is still going strong), brunch options in the Chaoyang Park area were looking pretty scant. Thankfully for those of us in need of weekend sustenance, fellow Chaoyang Park occupants, Napa, have just launched their first brunch menu.

This may be brunch, but the biggest attraction is undoubtedly the pizzas (also available on their dinner menu). The Napa team have painstakingly built a wood-fired pizza oven on the second floor of the restaurant, turning out tasty pies with bases that offer the perfect balance of crispy and tender spots. Fans of 2016 Pizza Cup winner's Bottega will appreciate the pizzas here – one could draw similarities between the bases and Napa chef Colin Smith uses a similar 00 Italian flour to Bottega. Where the pizzas at Napa differ is in their creative toppings: think home-cured mackerel with tomato, olives and chili (RMB 115), or homemade Sicilian-style lamb sausage (RMB 115). If you can't forgo eggs at brunch, then you have the option to add a sous-vide free range egg to any pizza for only RMB 5. We feel the potato pizza, pictured below, would be particularly marvelous with an egg on top.

In terms of main courses, the most "brunch-like" is their fusion take on eggs benedict (RMB 115 for the brunch plate with potato hash and salad, RMB 35 as a side order), which I first tried at one of their pop-up brunches back in 2014. I can say with confidence that if they haven't changed the recipe much you won't be disappointed. Perfectly poached free range eggs are sat on a bed of homemade pancetta, before being topped with a Laoganma chili sauce infused hollandaise.

This kind of judicious fusion cooking is one of the things I like best about Napa – instead of doing fusion for the sake of it, they really take the time to think about what local ingredients and flavors bring to a dish. Case in point, their donkey pizza (RMB 90), essentially all the flavors of a street-side donkey sandwich (lurou huoshao) on top of a pizza (and if you haven't ever thought about sticking melted cheese in one of those anyway, then I'm disappointed in you). 

The rest of the brunch menu includes soups (RMB 30-35), a couple of Napa's signature salads (RMB 35-45), and wood-fired chicken wings (RMB 25). Brunch is served on Saturday and Sunday from 11am-3pm. We recommend grabbing one of the bar seats upstairs around the pizza oven, so you can watch the pizzas being created. 

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Photos: Robynne Tindall