Mark Your Calendars and Loosen Your Belts: The 2016 Pizza Cup Gets Under Way in September
Pizza: one of the greatest comfort foods known to mankind. It honestly doesn’t matter where it comes from, the only thing that does matter is that indulgent, borderline hedonistic, mouthwatering taste of gooey cheese delighting the palate.
Yes, we all secretly crave it – existing even in the salad-espousing health fanatics amongst us.
You may choose to push those cheese-laden urges deep within the recesses of your mind, but for Beijing’s finest, pizza is never that far from the mind, and it will soon be on yours as pizza pandemonium is about to envelope the capital once again.
That’s right, the Beijinger’s annual Pizza Cup is coming down the pipeline, where we get you to sample as many of the capital's pies as you can, and then ask you to vote for the champion. And this year we’re pushing the yummy factor to full throttle, so there's no excuses for you not to sample freely before casting a ballot.
Here’s what you can expect:
Pies for the People (Sep 15 through Nov 7)
RMB 40 for a pizza? What about RMB 30 or even RMB 20? Well, prove to your friends, co-workers, or even fangdong, that you too, can find cheap and cheesy bargains, and it won’t be any sub-standard grub neither. Expect some of the best, yes ... the very best deals (drop-dead, pilfering pepperoni steals!) for an entire month. Proletariat masses rejoice!
Pizza Fest (Oct 15-16)
Eating pizzas by yourself is all good and all … but what about a pizza-themed party, put on by us, the Beijinger, that cranks the cheesy adulation to a whole ‘nother crust. Last year, 7,000 people enjoyed our two-day orgy of pizza where two dozen of Beijing's best threw down their best pies for slice-by-slice sampling. This year’s festival, held in an even bigger and better venue on the grounds of Wangjing Soho, is going to be even more stupendous: a weekend that will prove Beijing isn’t just the capital of China’s pies, but a city that deserves pizza respect on the world stage (look out Naples, New York, and Chicago).
Pizza Cup Voting Bracket (Oct 17-Nov 7)
Just like our Burger Cup, we scoured literally every pizza-serving establishment in Beijing (there’s well-over 200 pizzerias in the capital) to come up with an all-encompassing list which reflects the diversity of pies our fair city serves. The salami spectrum of styles includes: Napoli, Roman, Sicilian, New York, Detroit, Chicago, Korean, and even those odd-job concoctions (chocolate pizza, anyone?) that I consider pizza with Chinese characteristics.
The upper-crust will then face off in our NCAA Basketball-style 64-contestant voting bracket. In each round we'll pit two of Beijing's best pies against one another until we once again have the ultimate list of the best pizzas of Beijing, which gluttons can keep for future reference when the urge to consume mass quantities exist.
More details of the event will be released regularly on our blog; in the mean time, we suggest you make the following preparations:
- Go on a crash diet to lose a few pounds to prepare for the pizza deluge September 15-November 7 (and while you're at it, tell your cardiologist to back off as US scientists declared last year that dietary cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern);
- Mark your calendars for the October 15-16 Pizza Fest;
- Check out last year's final rankings and make your hit list of new places to sample;
- Contribute your two cents on who is the best by filling out our Pizza My Mind profile here (and have your cute visage appear right here on this blog).
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your metabolisms!
Tickets are now on sale for our Oct 15-16 Pizza Fest at the Zaha Hadid-designed Wangjing Soho ... Tickets are limited so buy ahead to make sure you don't miss out! Click here to purchase!
Images: Zeus, the Beijinger
