Working on our goal of providing an excellent list of the best pizza in Nagoya, Japan, we offer this very favorable review of Pizza and Burrata Vespa in Naka-ku, Nagoya.
I will start this review off with a tease: I was not excited about Nagoya’s Pizza & Burrata Vespa when I sat down. I actively wanted to leave for a while. But then… I loved their “Taiwanese minced pork” pizza (what they irrationally call a Diavola). I would go back, anytime.
Let’s tell this story:
Pizza ＆ Burrata Vespa 名古屋栄 is not quite a shop; it is pizza place located in what feels like a redlight district on 1F of a building I believe is called Exit Nishiki. Even on a Wednesday night, the streets where full of hawkers trying to pull passersby into bars, and of girls in overly-short skirts (and shoes that were clearly not designed to be walk in).
I had come from yet another pizza restaurant in Nagoya, from Pizzeria and Steakhouse Tratt – which was just a short walk away. While my first impression of the neighborhood where Tratt Pizza is located was that I was in a business district, just around the corner, the building that houses Pizza Vespa Nagoya is an a part of town that felt more like a party.
Before I continue with the story, and to return to a theme of pizza, allow me to provide some evidence of the pizza.
I cannot say what the pizza at Pizza Burrata Vespa look like to you, my dear readers. I can say for myself: It was very tasty.
Let’s go on with the story:
As you walk in the doors of the Exit Nishiki Building, you enter a cultural phenomenon known as a yokocho. A yokocho in Japan is a series of little “mini-restaurants” and miniature bars (each with something like two to six seats), serving a wide variety of foods, all strung together in the same space. You’re often sitting right next to people walking by and people looking in. There is usually a ton of smoke from the cooking of greasy foods (and in this case, cigarette smoke as well). The yokocho experience is a sit-down version of the collection of mini-shops at the bottom of a department store (known as baiten). Depending on your own preferences, the casual, mixed association of it all may be chaotic (and smokey) or a great opportunity to socialize.
In the middle of the yokocho at Exit Nikishi in Nagoya, there is the Pizza and Burrata Vespa pizza shop. While there are a deliberate attempts to signal a pizza culture, there is contrast as well. While the big cans of imported tomatoes line the interior wall of the kitchen, the pizza-shaped seat cushions start to go past real pizza protocol, and into something like a carnival imitation.
As I sat down, the experience was much more like a low-end izakaya, which wasn’t really what I wanted. After sitting down for a minute, a woman came by with a sign (in English) instructing me that everybody has to order one thing to eat and one thing to drink. Okay, I said; that was definitely the plan.
I ordered a beer, and they delivered the otoshi; a slimy okra dish. Not only “must” you order food and drink, but you must also pay a table tax. Okay, fine. This is not at all abnormal for izakaya culture, but this isn’t my idea of a good experience.
It was at this point I began to write this review, and I wasn’t happy. The cigarette smoke, the table charge, the “not quite right” feeling of the place – I wanted to leave. To their credit, while the otoshi was unappealing to look at, it was sweet, and actually pretty good.
And because I am very dedicated Pizza Czar – come Hell or high-water – I would most definitely stick around to try the pizza.
In addition to offering burrata cheese ala carte, and some generic deep-fried bar food, the pizza menu at Pizza & Burrata Vespa includes eight different pizzas: A Margherita Pizza, a Margherita Burrata Pizza, a Nagoya Diavola Pizza, Cicinelli Pizza, a oyster Mushroom Pizza (with bacon), a Bismarck Pizza (with egg), and a Gorgon Honey with three kinds of cheese (gorgonzola, parmesan, and mozzarella).
I wasn’t hopeful I would have a good experience, but I would quickly learn otherwise.
While I can appreciate many different kinds of pizza, I usually tend to order something with meat. In this case, as there is no sausage or pepperoni on the menu, I went with the Diavola no Nagoya Pizza.
What I didn’t do then, but I have since done for the purposes of writing this review, was to read the small print on the menu in Japanese:
Diavola Pizza: Chive, Taiwan mince.
— From the pizza menu at Pizza & Burrata Nagoya
Look at that pizza. If I had the sense of something foreign before I even sat down, now I was sure of it. What the hell is that? A Diavola is a classic style of Italian pizza, usually done with a spicy sausage; I wrote about a Diavola pizza in my review of PST Rippongi in Tokyo. I have seen pizza restaurants in Japan that make a Diavola pizza with a spicy kind of chicken (here in Nagoya, Tony Tony does a “spicy fried chicken” Diavola pizza). But this “minced pork?”
I had never seen anything like it. The lack of red sauce made it easy to confuse for some other kind of food. The pizza crust was “pizza like,” but also like a flat bread, or Indian naan. The big, creamy splotches of burrata cheese added to the alien look of it all. And the minced meat? Expecting a pizza that would look like a traditional Diavola, and having not read the menu, I was taken completely by surprise. And…
It turns out that their Taiwan-flavored pizza was delicious. Spicy, for sure, completely original, and excellent.
Having eaten hundreds of pizzas, I know that there can be a lot of variation in how a Diavola pizza put together. The Vespa Pizza in Nagoya is up there with the most creative interpretations of all time; Taiwan-spice and ground pork create a very “Asian” pizza, but a successful one. It all works. It works so well, that even though I actively disliked this place (up until I was eating the pizza), I have now written a rather supportive review.
I think about this pizza all the time, and I would definitely go out of my way to eat that pizza again. Because of it’s shocking originality, the Taiwan-style Diavola pizza at Pizza & Burrata Vespa is one of my favorite pizzas of all time.
As I wrote the review, I took a note:
What is that Chinese noodle dish w/ ground pork and hot chili oil (?) – it was like, but a pizza. There might be fish sauce in that pork, as well.
— From my notes the night I ate at Pizza Burrata Nagoya
On my way out of town, at Nagoya Centrair Airport, I was walking through the many choices of “international” restaurants and I saw this advertisement:
To be clear: They do not serve tantan noodles at Pizza and Burrata Vespa in Nagoya. But the taste of their Dailova pizza immediately brought this kind of noodle dish to mind. Tantan noodles, yeah. That’s right. Or maybe a Thai pork larb. Very Asian, and somehow, an incredible idea for a pizza. So interesting.
Perhaps they should have to pay some kind of fine for using a traditional Italian name, perhaps they should be forced to call it something equally original – like “The Taiwanese Banger” (or something like that) – but, it was so good, as the unofficial Official Pizza Czar of Japan, I give them a pass.
I was so surprised, and instantly a fan.
As the pictures show, the crust was simple, indeed flat, but tasty. And it passes the Pizza Test; sturdy enough to be picked up. You can see the blackened “leoparding” on the perimeter, and on the underside, of the pizza.
I poked my head around the corner, peered into their tiny kitchen, and caught a shot of their miniature pizza oven – a “Carino Pizza Oven” (I took a quick look and saw one on Rakuten for 600,000 JPY).
Even though I knew the Exit Nishiki was going to have this yokocho “Japanese drinking place” vibe, I was turned off by non-Italian, alien Taiwanese pizza vibe (which I couldn’t identify at first). But then; I loved that pizza. Spicy as hell, but interesting.
I really don’t like these kind of places; I don’t like the smoke, the cramped quality is unsettling; there are much more comfortable pizza restaurants in Nagoya (the aforementioned Tratt, as well as Pizzeria Quarantuno 41). Vespa Pizza & Burrata is a more low-end, “on the street” experience. But, I know a lot of people in Japan really enjoy this kind of thing. Maybe you will too?
I imagine their Margherita Pizza would be unexceptional. Maybe their other pizza descend into a kind of “bar food” mediocrity. But their Taiwanese twist on the Daivola was a pizza I’ll never forget.
This review was fun to write, because while I have started out liking a place and changed my mind as the experience unfolded, before my experience at Pizza Burrata Vespa Nagoya I have never gone from disliking a place to being excited to go back.
Bravo, Pizza & Burrata Vespa – this is unlike any review of I have ever written before. Well done.
For more Nagoya Pizza see:
— Pizzeria and Steakhouse Tratt is nearby in Naka-ku, within walking distance of Pizza Buratta Vespa
— Pizzeria Quarantuno 41 pizza restaurant in Higashi-ku, Nagoya
— Pizza slice place Dookie’s Pizza in Naka-ku, Nagoya
— Cesari Pizza in Naka-ku, Nagoya
— Vacanze Nagone Pizza in Chikusa-ku, Nagoya
— Gold Caravan serves pizza in Sakae in Naka-ku, Nagoya
— Old Forge “Pennsylvania-style” pizza at Tony Tony in Nakamura-ku, Nagoya
— Solo Pizza in Osu is one of the worst pizza experiences in Nagoya
— One of the best Chicago pizzas in Japan at Izakaya Ja Nai!!! in Okazaki, Japan