Pizza in Beijing: A Timeline

To get you in the mood for the ongoing voting in the 2014 Pizza Cup (The Sweet 16 was announced on Thursday – vote here to send your favorite on to the next round), we detailed the rise of pizza in Beijing to provide some background before you make the leap and choose your ultimate slice.

There was a time when Beijing had no pizza, except maybe at the Italian Embassy. Four- and five-star hotels served up some kind of melted cheese on Saltine concoctions with ketchup that may have been labeled pizza, but it just left the homesick in search of comfort food feeling genuinely sick.

It wasn’t until 1990 that the first true pizza purveyor, Pizza Hut, came in via investment from the Thailand-based Minor Group. A visit to that initial Pizza Hut location – which still operates in its original space on Dongzhimen – was a cultural experience. On one side, diplomats and foreign students scarfed down Super Supremes; on the other, curious Chinese patrons eschewed the eponymous product in favor of soup and the now famous salad bar.

What follows is a rough timeline of pizza’s proliferation in Beijing, from humble origins among major foreign chains, to the large assortment of individual players that comprise the current scene.

1990 – Pizza Hut opens its first restaurant in the country in Beijing’s Dongzhimen. A Qianmen location follows soon after. With dairy still not a major part of the Chinese diet, and early patrons not keen on eating with their hands, Yum! Brands finds its second effort in China, after KFC, much more foreign to the local palate. The company now operates 1,264 locations around the country as of the end of 2013, and remains Beijing’s largest pizza chain, with 131 stores.

1996 – Delivery champions Annie’s opens. Eighteen years later, the multiple the Beijinger Reader Restaurant Award-winner has ten locations.

1996 – Hidden Tree opens in June on South Sanlitun Bar Street, and offers the first wood-fired pizza oven in Beijing. Its handmade, thin crust pizza, paired with some of the city’s earliest Belgian beer imports, is an instant hit. The venue and the namesake tree are cut down in 2005 to make way for Sanlitun SOHO. The original oven continues to dish out pizza at The Tree.

2002 – Big Pizza, Beijing’s largest locally-founded chain, opens for business. The company now has almost 50 restaurants in the capital.  

2010 – Gung Ho! Pizza launches at China View, complete with a special guest: visiting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Key remains the biggest VIP to show up at a Beijing pizza restaurant opening.

2014 – Pizza Express opens its 500th global location, in Beijing in May. The UK-based company sells to a Chinese investment group for GBP 900 million in July.

Photos: Courtesy of the restaurants