The art of pizza making comes to Pattaya
I have always said that food should be fun and not just sustenance. Well, I just found the ultimate “fun” eating house right here in Welcome Town, off Pattaya Klang.
I have deliberately not called Pizza Plaza a pizzeria because it is so much more than that. It is a place where you can make your own pizzas, a hot soup station, steaming pastas, chicken wings and nuggets, French fries, BBQ items, salad bar, lasagna, and let’s not forget the six ice cream flavors.
On each table, there is a mini “igloo” which works as a pizza oven as well as pizza spatulas (magnetized) to get your pizza inside and pizza cutters to be used when your masterpiece is done. There is also a wooden platter which looks like an artist’s palette on which you collect the items you want.
The tables are arranged cafeteria style, and in one corner there is a children’s play area complete with mini-chef’s jacket and a play kitchen. At the far end are the food items to make your meal, the way you want.
Now comes all the food surprises, starting with soups – mushroom and Tom yum. Move around and you will find spaghetti and pasta with Bolognaise sauce or tuna. Then it is into the toppings for your pizza masterpiece, and there are lots. Meat, fish, vegetarian, chili and it goes on.
Turn the corner and the hot bain marie has the chicken nuggets, French fries and spring rolls.
From there, you go into a long salad bar which ends in a soft drinks dispenser. But it isn’t finished yet as there is a deep freeze with different flavors of ice creams.
It is all a bit overwhelming at first, but you soon get a handle on how it all works. Taking the pizza first, you take a mini-pizza base and then pick your toppings. Back to your table you spread the tomato sauce on the pizza and then your cheese and toppings. Slide the spatula underneath and gently insert it into your own personal pizza oven, leaving the spatula under the base. It takes about five minutes and you will notice the cheese beginning to melt and the edge of the pizza become crispy.
While waiting I tried the salad bar (very fresh) and two of the team tried the mushroom soup and gave it top marks too.
By now it was back to our personal mini-oven and remove our pizza. The correct cutting wheel had the pizza in quarters and after deliberation, it was back to the toppings and another pizza base.
After the third pizza, I was becoming quite adept at it all, but began to get just too full for further trips to the toppings bar. (But there was just room for Madame to have another ice cream.)
All this only cost B. 399 per head for all you can eat in one hour, fifteen minutes, though the staff were not hovering around with stop watches! (Very small children are only B. 99.) It was worth it, even if just for the fun of producing your own pizza masterpieces. All the additional food items were of high standard, with the mushroom soup container visited more than once and I will admit to a double trip to the ice cream freezer and hundreds and thousands for the top!
Definitely worth a visit.
Some interesting history. The word pizza was first documented in AD 997 and successively in different parts of Central and Southern Italy. On the 11 June 1889, to honor Margherita of Savoy the Queen consort of Italy, the Neapolitan pizza maker Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita”, a pizza garnished with tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, to represent the national colors of Italy as on the Italian flag. So from that beginning, we go all the way to Pizza Plaza today.
Pizza Plaza, Welcome Town, Pattaya Klang, Hours – open every day Monday to Saturday 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Sundays 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.,
B. 399, all you can eat in 1 hour 15 minutes (B. 35 for drink refills), small children B. 99, www.pizzaplaza.co.th. Telephone Steyn +668 4437 3467 or Clemens 093 016 5317.
