R PIZZA: Flavorful and creative custom-made pizzas

Crisp Inc, the company which operates Crisp Salad Works, has opened a casual pizza restaurant in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills. R stands for rectangle — the shape of its pizzas. All basic ingredients are home-made, from the crust, to the bacon, Italian sausages, and even the pineapples are cut freshly, not served from a can.

The pizzas are made from scratch with fresh ingredients. Most of the vegetables are from trusted contract farms used at Crisp Salad Works.

Hiroshi Roy Miyano, CEO of Crisp, says: “I lived in the U.S. for about eight years, and I noticed there are so many casual but great pizza joints. In Tokyo, you have to either choose between an Italian restaurant or fast food but you can’t really go into an Italian restaurant and order one pizza and come out in 15 minutes. And you don’t necessarily want fast food. So I wanted to make a delicious, but fast-casual restaurant serving pizzas.”

I tried the “Farmers’ Market” (1,180 yen), which consisted of spicy tomato sauce, spinach, shredded white cheddar, Italian sausage, white mushroom, egg and buttermilk ranch sauce. The tomato sauce and sausage are a little spicy, but the ranch blends in well, creating a great balance. The egg yolk placed in the middle is semi-raw so you can ooze it out and dip the tip of every slice into it to add a creamy flavor. I also tried a couple of pieces of “Backyard Chicken” (1,070 yen) — classic tomato sauce, shredded white cheddar, grilled chicken, pickled red onion, Kawamata olive and feta cheese. The pickle juice from the onion partners well the lean chicken and the olives accelerate your thirst for some wine.

A basic “Custom” pizza (includes sauce, cheese and two ingredients) is 930 yen, with extra additions starting from 120 yen. I highly recommend their original bacon and pepperoni, again made from scratch. An unconventional half-and-half can be made upon request. After choosing your menu, the high temperature jet oven cooks the pizza in just two minutes.

The system is very much like that of Crisp Salad Works, where you can remove or add any preferred toppings in order to customize your own creation. I think children will get a kick out of testing their creativity and culinary sense.

Fountain drinks including Coca Cola are 430 yen and Craft Bottled Beer go for 680 yen. The store is ideal for office workers to take a pizza back to their office, or for families to picnic at a nearby park, with any other beverages you prefer.

And I can’t help but to mention that the originally designed boxes are artsy enough to make you want to flaunt them. It’s a drawing of a girl wearing sunglasses, with pizza ingredients and planets illustrated in her hair. Apparently, it means, “inside one’s head is a big universe.”

During lunch breaks at Roppongi Hills, there used to be a long cue at Crisp Salad Works because the store was small, with only about six high chair seats inside. On April 16, it moved down and reopened on the ground floor of Hillside just next to the Oyako Hiroba (kids square). It’s now a big, stroller-friendly, comfortable restaurant with a vast terrace looking out over Mori garden. They are equipped with cashless self-register and pre-order systems. When Crisp was first asked to come down to this spacious area, they negotiated to partition the location into two stores. Hence, the idea of this casual pizza — about 1/4 of the new location — is eclectic.

B2F Hillside Roppongi Hills

6-10-1 Roppongi Minato-ku, Tokyo

Tel: 03-6459-2618

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