Reigning Pizza Cup Champ Kro's Nest: Still Slinging Giant Pies

To get you in the mood for the ongoing voting in the 2014 Pizza Cup (Round 2 closes tonight – vote here before the field is cut to 16!), we've sent our minions out to patrol the streets for pizza. Here's a selection of what they've found:

Pizza giant The Kro’s Nest – winner and reigning champion of Beijing's Pizza Cup (which we last held in 2011) is still in the hunt for the prize in 2014 with the field to be cut to 16 tonight. Let’s take a look at what makes this ol’ pizza establishment special.

The Kro’s Nest came from humble beginnings as the mastermind of Olav Kristoffer Bauer, who started his business outside the west gate of Peking University. Today, the pizzeria is famous for offering 12- to 28-inch American-style pizzas to Beijingers far and wide via its five locations.

Staff at the Wudaokou store, which caters heavily towards foreign students and young workers, are confident Kro’s will leap to victory with the Pizza Cup, saying that the competition has fuelled their motivation to make their pizzas even better.

With the menu revamped every three to four months, Kro’s has come out with some new contenders. The Parma Ham and Green Bean features those ingredients amongst classic raw tomato sauce, roasted garlic, artichokes and mozzarella cheese. Omnivores will go for this choice – if they can handle the saltiness. The cheese is really plastered on this one.

Pesto Head is a rather intriguing name for a new pizza, and the assortment of mozzarella cheese, artichoke hearts, candy cane-colored peppers, red onion, mushroom, black olives and spinach reads as a vegetarian’s dream. However, the ingredients add up to a relatively bland flavor that dampens the mood, preventing the pesto sauce at the crux of it all from shining.

The sides are getting more interesting as well. The Baked Shrimp – applewood bacon-wrapped shrimp stuffed with herbed feta cheese – makes for some easy-on-the eye finger food, and the taste doesn’t disappoint either. The homemade buffalo sauce that accompanies the dish has enough tang to reawaken the senses of even someone with a heavy Beijing cold.

The Kro Dog – a baked hotdog wrapped in pizza dough, with tomato sauce and cheddar cheese – is a novelty that will appeal to the fast food lover.

And if those aren’t your cup of tea, other new items on the menu include a Southern Fried Chicken Salad, Garlic Sticks and Crème Brulee. But what really endures for Kro’s – and keeps the 60 percent Chinese, 40 percent foreign customers coming back – is the Kitchen Sink pizza, which is so named because this beauty has almost every single ingredient from The Kro’s Nest pantry on it. This masterpiece is an unbeatable combination of flavors, held together with a crunchy doughy base and crust.

However, is the Kitchen Sink enough to help Kro’s cross that victory line once again? Only time will tell ... they're currently up against Tube Station in the Round of 32: May the Best 'Za Win.

Vote here for your favorite Beijing pizza in the 2014 Pizza Cup

Photos: The Kro's Nest, Debby Ng