Chinese Pizza

Chinese Pizza:

"Slice" has a review of a fusion pizza attempt out of Queens, NY. They weren't terribly impressed, but the idea of Chinese meats on a pizza is one that I encountered to much better effect in Hangzhou, China.

We used to go to a place called the Reggae Cafe, which was a little bar and restaurant near Hangzhou Daxue decorated in what the locals took to be a Caribbean style. They had both Jamaican and Haitian music, actually, from pirated CDs of the type that were a major feature of the Hangzhou economy in those days.

Given the theme, they tended to stretch for anything Western. There was one grocery store in the city that managed to get a case of Guinness beer while we were there, which it proceeded to sell by the individual bottle at an extraordinary price (for China). I bought one for nostalgia, but the Reggae Cafe bought the rest; and then, when they had been drunk, decorated the bar by lining it with the expended bottles.

(Pity it wasn't Dragon Stout, which would have been more to the point! Pretty good beer, too, by comparison to the local swill. But I digress.)

They served what they called a Sichuan Pizza made with the spicy ingredients for which the province is so well known in America. I found it to be delicious; in fact, it was probably the reason I spent so much time at that little hole in the wall.

A little Google searching suggests to me that the "Reggae Cafe" still exists, and is now called "the Reggae Bar" -- having passed its "Reggae Cafe" name to much a much fancier offspring, to judge from the decor in those pictures. Good on them! No word on whether they still serve the pizza.