There was a meetup at Buzza Pizza in Itaewon, a place I’d tried and failed to get into before. The meetup started at 7, so I spent a good while wandering around central Seoul trying to digest the two lunches I’d had. I also went to Yongsan and bought a 2.5-inch 1TB HDD, and got a bit of a shock when the Yongsan price turned out to be barely different from the cheapest online price. Well, that’s life for you.
A view of Itaewon
The perspective didn’t come out well, but the sunset was gorgeous anyway. I wandered all the way to the far end of Itaewon before heading back.
When I got to Buzza Pizza, all the members had arrived right on time. As the person running the meetup I was really grateful that it all went so smoothly. Buzza Pizza doesn’t have all that many seats, but the tables seemed to turn over faster than I expected. Maybe because they’d only just opened, the serving felt a little tangled at times, but in any case the meetup finished without any real mishaps. The inside was dark so the photos didn’t come out well – please bear with me on that.
Peroni and Menabrea
Both are Italian beers, and the prices are a bit steep. The Peroni tasted like a clean, crisp beer, while the Menabrea was sweet and very distinctive. I’d originally thought about ordering wine, but the list wasn’t great and the corkage charge was fairly high, so I just went with beer. Everyone other than me seemed to think beer with pizza was simply the obvious choice, though..
Margherita con Bufala
A margherita topped with buffalo mozzarella. It costs twice as much as the plain margherita, and I’m not sure it’s worth quite that much. Apart from feeling a little short on cheese, it was fine. Unusually, this place puts star ratings for each dish on the menu, so I just ordered straight off those – and overall it wasn’t a bad way to go.
Buzza Classic
Piled high with rocket, and I enjoyed it enormously.
Buzza Salad
I was going to order the lasagna, but they said they’d run out that day, so I switched to a salad instead. I thought about ordering a side dish too, but the mood was very much pizza-only, so I couldn’t. So I ordered the salad with the highest star rating – and what arrived was a build-it-yourself pizza.. They’d strongly recommended a different salad when I ordered, and now I know why. They could at least change the star rating, or mention that a whole pizza is going to turn up under the name of a salad, honestly..
Anchovies
I ordered these separately (with an extra charge, of course), and they were delicious piled onto the pizza.
The sauces
These came out to put on the pizza. Their house-made pesto had a flavour in it that wasn’t basil, and I found myself wondering what they’d made it with.
Mascarpone
Very oily and rich, but I told myself this must be the Italian way and enjoyed it. With four of us taking a slice each, it vanished the moment it hit the table.
Mr. Porcini
A mushroom pizza with a deep mushroom aroma. This one disappeared in no time as well.
Alla Romana
It came topped with smoked cheese, which made the flavour a little unusual. (Isn’t smoked cheese something you eat with wine, though..)
Quattro Funghi
A pizza loaded with fresh mushrooms, with that distinctive mushroom aroma – I think they’d drizzled truffle oil on it. It tasted good, but it overlapped a bit with the Mr. Porcini. To make a mistake like that picking the menu.. Since it’s the same pizza dough with only the toppings changing, once the ingredients overlap the flavours inevitably end up similar. I should have done some homework before going; as the organiser I was far too casual about it.
Torinese
This pizza was very good too, but with all that rocket on top it overlapped with the Buzza Classic. To have this happen right at the very end..
There are 21 kinds of pizza and I didn’t want to pick badly, so I just ordered in star-rating order – and if you count the Buzza Salad as a pizza too -_- that’s eight pizzas we tried, so overlaps were unavoidable. It would have been nice if they’d explained when we ordered.. If you’re going next time, take all this into account when you order.. Also, I’d heard it’s better to order all the pizzas at the start rather than one at a time, so I put the whole order in at the beginning, and the pizzas came out at reasonably decent intervals.
For dessert, macarons from Hugo & Victor
I’d bought some of the macarons that had made such an impression on me earlier that day. Everyone enjoyed them, which made me happy too. Though I did feel a little sorry for anyone whose very first macaron was a Hugo & Victor one (they’re not all like this..)