Pizza+, The Tree, Annie's and Sureno Top Seeds as 2014 Pizza Cup Announced
Sixty-four of Beijing's pizzerias have been named to the ballot in the Beijinger's 2014 Pizza Cup and are now locked in head-to-head battle over the next three weeks to determine the King of 'Za in the' Jing.
Beijing's pizza purveyors will be battling it out in four divisions, with Pizza+, The Tree, Annie's and Sureno currently the No. 1 seeds in each.
In the interest of encouraging you to expand your pizza horizons, we’re releasing the Field of 64 today but we won’t open the actual voting until Thursday, as we encourage you to visit some of these spots before you settle on your favorites.
Each contestant has been classified into four categories (for reasons we'll explain below). Here they are ladies and gentlemen, the class of the pizza set in the Northern Capital, listed in order of pre-tournament ranking:
PIZZA SPECIALISTS
1. Pizza+
2. The Kro's Nest
3. La Pizza
4. Hutong Pizza
5. Gung Ho! Gourmet Pizza Factory
6. Pie Squared
7. Tube Station
8. Pizza Express
9. Papa John's Pizza
10. Pizza Buona
11. New York Pizza
12. Domino's
13. Yummy Box
14. Pizza Hut
15. Flypizza & Hoodadak Chicken
16. WhaleWell Pizzeria
MID-RANGE RESTAURANTS
1. Annie's
2. Eatalia
3. Vineyard Café
4. Alio Olio
5. Lily's American Diner
6. Stuff'd
7. Scott's Family Ristorante Italiano
8. Charlie's Italian Café
9. Peter Pan
10. Loft Eatalicious
11. Mrs. Shanen's Bagels
12. The Veggie Table
13. Peter's Tex-Mex
14. Grandma's Kitchen
15. Abella Italian Restaurant
16. Elisa's Italian Restaurant
UPSCALE RESTAURANTS
1. Sureño, The Opposite House
2. LMPlus
3. Tavola
4. Mio, Four Seasons Hotel
5. Isola
6. La Dolce Vita
7. Kitchen Igosso
8. The Rug
9. Via Roma, Kempinski Hotel
10. Agrilandia
11. Fratelli Fresh, Renaissance Beijing Capital Hotel
12. Matta Italian Restaurant
13. Prego, Westin Financial Street
14. Bene, Sheraton Beijing Dongcheng Hotel
15. Time Cafe
16. FA Cafe
BARS/CAFÉS
1. The Tree
2. Mao Mao Chong
3. Sugar Shack
4. Xian Bar
5. Luga's Little Italy
6. Frost
7. The Irish Volunteer
8. The Local
9. The Den
10. Twilight
11. 1st Floor
12. Ramo
13. Bang Bang Pizza
14. Passby Bar
15. Nanjie
16. Lakers
Now that you have the list of the best, we encourage you to throw your diet plans out the window and try new pizza spots throughout thew next 21 days. You may think you know pizza in Beijing, but you’ve likely just scratched the surface. Then we'd like you to come back to vote when we open the polls beginning Thursday.
To get your mouths watering for the coming competition, let us tell you little about the methodology of how we came up with our 64 contenders:
How we ranked them
We started with a comprehensive list of the 153 restaurants in Beijing that serve pizza we culled from multiple online and offline sources. We then invited a list of 200 Beijingers (100 selected from our personal contacts and another randomly invited from previous dining contests we’ve held) to rate them using one of four values: love, like, dislike or don’t know.
After collecting all this input, we used an algorithm that takes into both account overall rating and relative popularity, to came up with a raw ranking of all 153. Our voters were surprisingly well informed of what’s out there, with only a handful of the most obscure places getting no votes at all.
How we categorized them
We thought hard and tried to solve the conundrum of: how do you compare a large international pizza chain to a local bar that serves great pub pizza, to a five-star dining establishment that serves gourmet pies? It's hard, and its just for this reason that we asked our pre-seeding balloters to categorize their choices into one of five distinct categories:
Upscale Restaurant: High-end restaurant, with table service, refined presentation and environment. Typically serves pizza as part of a larger Italian menu.
Mid-range Restaurant: Casual sit-down restaurant with usually moderate prices and less formal atmosphere.
Bar/Pub/Café: A place primarily known for its drinks but serves food such as pizza on the side.
Local Pizza Specialist: A restaurant that is primarily known for its pizza above and beyond anything else (although it often will have more on its menu).
Big Chain/Fast Food: International or local chains that usually have a large number of locations or inexpensive, relatively lower quality pizza places, often delivery-only.
Not all restaurants fit neatly into one category; some could easily straddle most of the categories; however, we took the word of the crowdsourced masses as gospel in this regard: We made the call that if most of our readers considered a place to be upscale, we’d categorize it as upscale even if the venue itself considers itself more of a mid-range place. Power to the people and all that.
Keeping the Chains
At first we thought we’d toss all chain stores out of the balloting, but as we analyzed the data, we found that it was nearly impossible to draw the line between what we’d consider a "chain" – does a “chain” start at three stores or four? Or eight? There was no clear place to draw the line, so we decided against tossing anyone based on the number of outlets they had in Beijing.
We also considered eliminating all foreign competition so that we could reward only the best of the local scene – but then we thought: a great pizza is a great pizza, no matter what the origin. We also were surprised to learn that just because it was an international brand with lots of locations in Beijing did not give it a significant competitive advantage – in fact, the local places and the one-stop shops most often outranked the overseas chains in our readers' minds.
In the end, we declared all chains and international competition free to be ranked, and again we took the readers' word as gospel.
But wait, don't the chains a competitive advantage against a single-venue establishment?
Yes, places with more locations do have an advantage in terms of sheer name-brand recognition. However, our data indicated that in general, as chains get larger, their average perceived quality decreased, which kept them from leveraging their status as a chain. However, a slight volume advantage remained, so we’ve added another element to our ratings on the balloting, factoring in the relative power of a place that has multiple locations via a one-stop shop, so that the individual venue has more of a chance against the mighty beheamoths with locations across the city.
Hey wait, you've obviously rigged this contest to make your advertisers win.
Ah, nothing like this old saw. We’re repeatedly accused of favoring advertisers, and while we love ou advertisers dearly (and we strongly encourage all of the rest of them to support us), we don’t rig the results to make them win. Our readers determine the results in all of these contests, not us. Historical precedence in our previous Burger Cups, Pizza Cups and Restaurant Awards show no direct relationship between the winning restaurants and those that advertise (of course many of our advertisers do win, and we’re quite happy when that happens).
Ah, this is just a popularity contest.
Yes. That's the point. We ask our readers who they like best. Our editors and writers regularly review restaurants, including pizza places. Expert opinions are valuable, but to choose the best, we'll leave it to the people that matter most to us: our readers.
Everyone knows the venues stuff the ballot box.
Of course there are the sticklers who do attempt to stuff the ballot box by hiring goons (or idle staff) to pepper the voting with ballots cast for themselves. And we’ve got multiple fairly sophisticated methods of detecting such voting fraud. Luckily this is limited to a few pesky venues, and their efforts in the end go to naught, as we've been known to toss up to half the voting total after we've determined there is ballot-stuffing going on. We also screen and verify votes and our algorithms are able to detect patterns of vote fraud.
Suffice it to say we like the game to be fair and on a level playing field, and we do our utmost to keep it that way.
And after all, in the end if you disagree with the results, that's up to you. We're not forcing the pizza down your throat or anything, and don't let anyone tell you what your favorite pizza is: go out there and decide for yourself.
Stay tuned to the blog as we list ways for you to partake in said pizza in a post that will go live tomorrow.
Image: The Beijinger
