The Deep Dish: Square Pizza That Might Just Make You a Believer in Thick Crusts

In the lead up to our September 16-17 Pizza Fest in Wangjing Soho, The Deep Dish will be previewing a few of the restaurants that you can expect to see slinging their thick, gooey, and tomatoey slabs of doughy goodness. Now that you're hot and dribbling, let's go!

Nestled cozily in a yard between the sparse woods and highways of Shunyi, longtime Pizza Cup participant Pie Squared is still filling up the Shunyi crowds with soft and cheesy pizzas. The afternoon I met the owner Asher Gillespie for a chat, he was teaching his gym-owning friend about the pizza craft. My suggestion that they open a gym on the second floor was met with a “naaaah," but after gorging on their food, I stick to my suggestion. While downtown Beijingers may scratch their heads over Baidu maps as they try to navigate the relatively untamed land of Shunyi, local crowds have been merrily chewing on the square pizzas since 2013.

Don’t let the name mislead you: Not all of their pizzas are square, nor are they all deep dish. They also offer more traditional round pizzas and thin-crust flatbreads, which are first grilled, giving them a nice smoky touch, and then baked after toppings are added. Asher said they cater to all tastes, and that everything is made from scratch. The sauces are whipped up fresh every day, and the dough was perfected by the owner himself to ensure his pizzas have the right taste and texture using local ingredients. 

The menu offers plenty of options (right down to the pizza's very shape), but most of them are quite traditional and won't shock anyone with inappropriate or novel toppings. 

The detail that will most likely get you drooling is the soft and light deep dish pizzas being entirely covered with a layer of cheese that melts slowly and forms a crispy cheese crust along the edges. While Asher said he is a pretty liberal pizza lover and maker without a strict list of things he believes should never be on a pizza, they do serve a unique BLT square pizza (RMB 42-128). A layer of mayo and chopped lettuce is spread on a steaming crispy bacon and cheese pizza.

Vegetarians are also catered to, with a veggie pizza (RMB 42-128) or customizable pizzas. Square deep-dish and traditional round pizzas come in four sizes, ranging from individual to family-sized pies, while thin-crust flatbreads come in three sizes. The round pizzas seem to be much bigger, but Asher assured us the amount of dough is exactly the same, just stretched thinner than the square ones. To preface the feast of square pies, they serve mozzarella bread, chicken wings and other fairly standard pizzeria fare.

To help and make the pie slide down even smoother, they serve soft drinks, sodas, and local JingA on tap, in bottles and refillable two-liter kegs (because it's common knowledge that a 330ml baby with a deep-dish pizza is a complete joke). Truth be told, as a pizza purist loyal to the pies of its homeland, Napoli, I was slightly skeptical about the American-style deep-dish. But while yes, the vibe is completely different, I may have none the less discovered a new dish I would love to overeat. 

Pie Squared mostly serves expats with families but Asher said more and more local Beijingers are coming by. He also remembered the wild, wild times when the restaurants surrounding the Shunyi-based international schools would venture to their gates with ready-made food to sell to the students through the bars. That behavior has since been banned, but schools still often pre-order food from nearby for delivery. 

If you happen to live in the 3 km radius of Pie Squared, you can have their food delivered straight to your door. And there's even better news for Shunyi outsiders – Pie Squared is looking to open another branch closer to downtown Beijing, so soon we will all be within range of these crispy, fluffy, sometimes-square pies.

Fast for a few days and then look out for Pie Squared at our Pizza Cup on September 16-17 at Wangjing Soho.

Photos by the author.