Deep Dish Your Thing? Then a Trip To Wangjing's Yummy Box is in Order

To get you in the mood for the ongoing voting in the 2014 Pizza Cup, (see our round-up of pizza meal deals here) we've sent our minions out to patrol the streets for pizza. Here's a selection of what they've found:

Yummy Box Pizza’s Chicago-style deep dish pies are thick. Super thick. While some other Beijing pizzerias ply the thin crust trade, Yummy Box is unabashedly hearty and puts the "pie" into "pizza pie."

Though they also have thinner-crust pizzas they refer to as New York style on the menu, it's their super-deep pizzas that are their calling card, and work perfectly as winter’s chill sets in.

At 9 inches, their deep dish pizzas aren't big in diameter, but their thickness is enough to leave a lone eater incapacitated after one or two hulking slices.

Make no mistake: these pizzas are meant for sharing with pals in the wee hours. Thankfully, the restaurant’s solid selection of imported beers (about a dozen in all, from across the US and Europe) and its American sports bar decor (replete with football games on the tube and US license plates on the walls) make it perfect for just that.

While these features may remind some expat customers of home, others may be unfamiliar with Chicago style pizza, whose characteristically tall crusts hold about three times the cheese, sauce and toppings normally spread across a flatbread style pizza. The pies take longer to cook and are generally assembled in the opposite order of a typical thin-crust pie, with the cheese and toppings going at the bottom while the sauce is ladled on top.

At well over an inch thick, The Hot Chicago pie’s heartiness was apparent at first bite. Its inner layer is rife with gooey cheese and generous heaps of ground beef and pepperoni. All that mess is contained by an outer crust that has a fantastic, slightly flakey texture, almost akin to a biscuit. The whole package is reminiscent of both lasagna and shepherd’s pie.

The Hot Chicago is topped with a few spicy peppers, but its relative mildness may leave spicy food fanatics wanting more. It could certainly stand to be a bit more fiery, although its tasty ingredients and unique texture are more than satisfying.

Yummy Box’s deep dish pizzas have another major flaw: a staggering 50-minute cooking time. The menu announces this outright, and claims that “it is worth the wait.” Certainly if you partake of a few beers and some starters, the 50 minutes won't be an issue, but fast food this ain't. 

The 9-inch Hot Chicago is priced at a seemingly outlandish RMB 168, though that seems a lot more reasonable when you realize it'll likely feed three hungry customers. My appetite was annihilated after digging into two slices – a mere one-third of it.

On the flip side, if you’re dining solo and looking for a light midday meal, this is most definitely not the right spot, due to its lack of individual-sized items. The sides – including a decent selection of wings, parsley sausage (which would be bland without its sharply tart sauce),  and an admittedly tasty butter fried shrimp – won’t quite satisfy without a pie.

Bottom line: Yummy Box's thick, pricey deep-dish pizzas and the restaurant’s casual, sports bar vibe make for a fun evening out with a few buddies (especially immediately after payday). But if you eat here at lunch on a work day, your boss will surely notice your calorie-riddled sluggishness all afternoon.

Though Wangjing isn't on many expats' radar screens, Yummy Box does deliver to the Lido and 798 area (and may even deliver as far northeast as WAB if you ask them nicely).

Co-owners Nick Ran and Ivy Li first opened Yummy Box in Huilongguan in 2006. At the time, they were fixated on recreating New York-style pizzas in Beijing. But that changed during a subsequent trip to Chicago, when the couple tucked into their first deep dish, Windy City style.

Today their Huilongguan location still focuses on NYC thin crusts, while their Wangjing location serves both.

One of their regulars at the Wangjing restaurant acquired such an appreciation for deep dish pies that he decided to partner with Ran and Li. Ran says: "He tried our pizza and loved it so much that he decided to open a branch in Wenzhou, his hometown. Next frontier for Yummy Box? Before the end of the year their fourth location will open in the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot.

Yummy Box Pizza
Kylin Plaza AF105, 11 Fu'an West Road (close to Wangjing SOHO) (5738 9034, 5738 9134)
朝阳区 望京阜安西路11号麒麟社新天地AF105号(近望京SOHO）

Photos: Kyle Mullin