The Pizza Locust

The Pizza Locust is on vacation, but that doesn’t stop the quest for the perfect pizza. Taipei, Taiwan may be known for its world-famous Chinese food, but how does it stack up for pizza?

First up, Sabatini’s, a classy-looking place located on the 11th floor restaurants at the Sogo Fuxing Department store. I discovered Sabatini’s when I was enjoying the beautiful Japanese Garden on the 9th floor. Sabatini’s has a magnificent view of it. Inside the restaurant was what appeared to be a wood-fired pizza oven and the picture of pizza on the menu was as gorgeous as a very thin crust pizza can get. It was such an unexpected find in Taipei that I couldn’t wait to try it. (I was decidedly under-dressed for the occasion at the time.)

We arrived for the afternoon tea which features, for NT$ 299, all the pizza, dessert and drink you can eat. During dinner hour they have a typical (typical in Taiwan, that is) set menu which includes pizzas, pastas, desserts and the like.

Normally, I won’t review an all-you-can eat, but in this case, the all-you-can eat pizzas are made specifically at your request and are exclusively for your table. Basically, they’ll keep making you fresh pizzas for as long as you ask.

There is a catch, they only make 3 types of pizza. A Margherita, black olive & capers and salami & onions. The black olive & caper pizza is a white pizza, with no sauce. The salami and onion pizza has no cheese. Substitutions do no appear to be an option. Our official review pizzas were two margherita pizzas, and we also had one salami & onion.

My hopes were high… too high. While the pizza used for illustration was light and crispy, the actual pizza was obviously rolled rather than stretched. (Rolling pizza dough makes the finished product more dense and less airy.) It was quite thin and fully cooked, but it had a solid, cracker feel to it that wasn’t right and wasn’t fully satisfying.

The sauce was pretty good, heavily weighted towards tomato flavored, but the cheese… Ah, the cheese. I’m not sure what the cheese was, it was too yellow for mozzarella, but didn’t have the bite of a cheddar. It was a very bland cheese.

Taiwan is not know for it’s appreciation of cheese, although that’s slowly changing. (My wife tells me that when she was young they had “cheese.” Exactly one type of cheese, yellow. She doesn’t even know what type it was. That may have been what was on these pizzas.) While the crust was cooked, the cheese was flat and lifeless – melted, but just barely.

While not an official review pizza, we weren’t so impressed with the salami & onion pizza. It was a unique, and not in my opinion, pleasant-flavored salami. My wife suggested it reminded her of “foot.” I’ll leave it to your own taste to decide if that really is what it tastes like.

Despite the cheese being wrong, and based strictly on the margherita pizza, I’m going to give this a marginal thumbs up for the effort made in a non-pizza country. It wasn’t horrible and the restaurant is gorgeous, the service good and the value – at least for afternoon tea – exceptional. NT$299 equates to just over US$ 9.00. If you want to enjoy a tranquil afternoon with all the fresh pizza, tiramisu, cheese cake, chocolate ice cream, tea, coke, juice, etc. This is a pretty good value.

We inquired if, during dinner hours you could just order a pizza and how much it would be. It’s not on the menu, but you can, but the most inexpensive is NT$320 (or roughly US$ 9.70.)

The pizzas are small, approximately 19cm across, that’s quite expensive in comparison to the afternoon tea price.

Sabatini’s
11th Floor, Sogo Department Store, Fuxing store.
Zhongxiao and Fuxing Rds
Taipei

Conclusion: Recommended, afternoon tea only for the view and the price. Pizza (margherita) is harmless but uninspiring, salami subjectively might taste like foot.

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