Having lived in the Boston/NYC area for quite some time I have a fairly high standard for quality when it comes to pizza. I was quite excited when the Xiaoyun Lu branch opened since work consistently brought me over there, so a few weeks and a few recommendations after it opened, my friends and I went to try it out. When we arrived we had a bit of a seating issue, as they wanted to seat us in a booth and then let someone share it with us if the restaurant became too full. We were four and there was only room for about 2 more at the booth so we simply said no and took the booth anyway. They were persistent, but not more so than us and eventually they just gave us the booth. I hadn't eaten a good pizza in Beijing...ever, so I was excited to try Kro's. I forgot what exactly we ordered, but I remember the first few slices were quite good, but did leave me with a somewhat "full" feeling(not in a good full way, in a bloated full way). We did have a problem obtaining drinks - the pizza had arrived and it took us 5-10 minutes to get our drinks, and subsequent refills would take the same amount of time. Nonetheless, the pizza satisfied my craving for a decent pizza so I marked it down as a place I would return (sans the bad service).
The next time I went, I brought some Chinese friends in hopes of showing them a good "American" style pizza. We ordered a basic pizza, half meat, half veggies, and the service was prompt and much better than my first experience there. However, the pizza's taste left something to be desired. The crust...very doughy, heavy, and flavorless. For me it almost tasted like the consistency of Mantou combined with the complete lack of flavor, so ya, its a "Mantou" crust. The toppings were no issue, but the cheese and the sauce also were a bit lacking. The sauce(what there was of it) seemed sparse, and again, flavorless, this coupled with the massive amount of cheese led to a weird mixture of doughy crust with cheese on top, with a thin layer of sauce in between(for color). So, this time the pizza was quite a disappointment. I wanted to get the flavor out of my mouth so we ordered a good ole Banana Split. The banana split came out melted. It was basically melted soup ice cream containing no toppings and bananas swimming in it, a complete embarrassment for a "banana split". In the end, I would not recommend this place for a "real" pizza, to me its just about equal to all the other pizza's I've had in Beijing (besides Pyro, which is actually decent). The only real positive I would give about the place is the atmosphere which is decent.
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