In Pizza We Crust: Avocado Drum Leads in With Cheesy Jianbings and Tacos

The Beijingers | Oct 13, 2018 9:00 am | Add a comment | 2204 reads

Ahead of the 2018 Beijing Pizza Festival this weekend, Oct 13-14, 11am-8pm, In Pizza We Crust will detail several of the vendors who will attend this year's event and what makes their pies special in the capital.

It's official: writing about the Beijinger's Pizza Festival day in day out has done permanent damage to our brains. Now, we see pizza everywhere, even at the beloved hole-in-the-wall eatery, Avocado Drum. Because at the end of the day, what is a jianbing if not a calzone pizza in disguise!?

Suitable as a street snack, even better as drunk or the morning after food, but also sophisticated enough to impress a crowd. Avocado Drum takes the Beijing's favorite street food one step closer to pizza by adding a generous scoop of shredded cheese.

The BJ hot hot spot has long been rescuing the starved and danced-off-their-feet weekend crowds that pour out of Dada and Temple, but don't take our word for it. Just one glance at the ungodly 2am queues tells the story of the great carb and cheese feast that awaits at the end of the line. Queuing for that long can seem too much to bear at the certain point of the night, but the beauty of the wee hours of the morning is that you could be queueing sitting or squatting down and no one would bat an eye.

Avocado Drum not only fries up some of the most inventive jianbings in town, but also rolls out a Mexican-style feast of burritos and tacos which are, needless to say, also served with plenty of cheese. Packed with beans and salsa, the humble and hearty street bash can restore even the most danced-out shape-cutter. We asked the master of avocado jianbings, A Kang, a few questions before the pizza madness unravels on the weekend.

What's the most popular dish in your shop?
The most popular one is avocado and cheese jianbing. I feel like this product is a happy medium for foreigners who are just learning to accept Chinese pancake and also for Chinese customers, who consider avocado an internationally accepted health food.

What are you bringing to the Pizza Festival this year?
Our specialty is the aforementioned avocado and cheese jianbing, we are definitely bringing that. Also tacos.

What kind of pizza do you like the most?
I like salami pizza best.

Is there anything you can't put on pizza?
This question is really hard to answer because I am very tolerant of ingredients.

What is the drink you would pair with pizza?
Coca-cola. I think it balances out the greasiness of the pizza and can aid digestion.

Click here for all of 2018 Beijing Pizza Fest coverage.
Early bird tickets have now sold out, but tickets will still be available on the door for RMB 30.