Taiwanonymous

March 23, 2006

Luxurious pizza, anyone?

Today is the last day of the local pizza chain Napoli's large pizza for NT$150 deal. I don't see English listings of pizza toppings on their catchily-named web page, http://www.0800076666.com.tw/, so I'll type them out here for posterity:

Supreme – sausage, ham, green onions, green pepper, mushroom, peas, and pepperoni
Seafood – krab strips, shrimp, squid, and dried seaweed
Hawaiian – ham and pineapple
Smoke House Chicken – smoked chicken and mushrooms
Mediterranean Fisherman – teriyaki sauce, tuna, dried pork, octopus, onions, dried seaweed, and mayonnaise
Japanese BBQ Pork – teriyaki sauce, pork, green peppers, and onions
Vegetarian – green peppers, mushrooms, corn, mushrooms, and peas
Scallop Squid – seafood sauce, scallops, squid, dried seaweed, and red peppers
Roasted Seafood – seafood sauce, krab strips, shrimp, and squid
Luxurious Pizza – shrimp, squid, smoked chicken, bacon, mushrooms, peas, and onions
Smoked Salmon – smoked salmon, olives, pineapple, onions, and pickle sauce
Abalone and Scallops – seafood sauce, scallops, xingbao mushrooms, abalone, olives, baby corn, shrimp, krab strips, and peas

Hawaiian is considered by some to be an unusual pizza, but it is the most normal one here. The supreme pizza should actually be called a supreme plus, where the plus stands for peas and ham. You might be thinking, that's Canadian bacon, not ham! If a pizza restaurant has pizza with tuna and mayonnaise drizzled on top, or if over half of their pizzas include seafood, then I'll just assume that the ham is a piece of lunchmeat and not Canadian bacon until proven otherwise.

It seems that "western" dishes allow chefs to release all the creative energies that are suppressed when cooking Chinese cuisine. For a bowl of beef noodle soup, there just are not many options for spicing it up—the most unusual thing you can do is to add tomatoes. However, when it comes to pizzas, bread, and pastries, anything goes. A cheese pizza is a bare canvas just asking Chinese chefs to let their imaginations soar. Dried seaweed strips? That's a good starter! Baby corn and peas? Now we're talking.

Yesterday, when faced with all this creativity, I tried the teriyaki pork pizza. After eating it, I just don't think "pizza" is the right word for that creation. Today I'll try to order something more traditional, unless curiosity gets the better of me.

7 Comments:

  • Teriyaki sauce in the Mediterranean Fisherman pizza!? What part of the Mediterranean is that?

    By Blogger Jonathan Benda, at March 24, 2006 2:01 AM  

  • Good question! It might be a misprint on their flyer. I have the flyer here in front of me, and it lists teriyaki sauce, but that item is missing from the description of the pizza on their website.

    Another unsolved mystery is, what is the 香鬆? I asked a coworker, and he said that it was 肉鬆, so I translated it as dried pork. But I asked someone else to double check, and she said she did not know what 香鬆 is, and putting 肉鬆 on a pizza sounded too ridiculous to be correct.

    By Blogger Taiwanonymous, at March 24, 2006 12:49 PM  

  • Hmmm... I don't know about that, either. I just know I avoid anything with 肉鬆 in it (feels like hair in my mouth)...

    By Blogger Jonathan Benda, at March 26, 2006 1:29 AM  

  • I don't like 肉鬆 in cookies, but I like it in 飯糰. Eating it inside a 飯糰 has the advantage that you don't have to look at it. A couple times, people have asked me how you would say 肉鬆 in English. The only problem is that if you describe it precisely, then it sounds as unappetizing as it looks.

    By Blogger Taiwanonymous, at April 01, 2006 1:15 PM  

  • In the past, I've called it "hairy meat", but besides sounding disgusting, more and more it's beginning to sound obscene to me, too...

    By Blogger Jonathan Benda, at April 02, 2006 12:40 AM  

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Blogger Es, at November 19, 2006 2:13 PM  

  • napoli's having a big sale again this month.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at November 19, 2006 2:15 PM  

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