Pizza delivery business : difficulties of competition

Pizzeria Piano in Nara ( Japan ) - revisited

If you remember I spotted this place two years ago, but we did not eat there.
Here is a link ( in Japanese) to Piano

The place is very interesting and they use a correct Italian ingredients, as I saw, but pizza is lucking...

They have a very strange "split" between menu on first and second level it and menu itself is small. They also run out of ice cream flavors: like duh... It is Japan and super easy to get/make ( it takes me 30 minute to make a fresh ice cream from scratch).

Anyway, pizza looks more like it should be, but it does not seems/taste right. They also put too much cheese I think and some how crust turns out too soft. Oven also burns pie kind of uniformly ... but ... it does not look ... happy ?

Bottom line ?

This place and pizza luck "love" or "soul", may be, despite all efforts. I guess they picked up some of Italian "technology" but failed to contract any of Italian "spirit" :(

Cool song and video about Pizza Party by Wired Al Yankovic

Smoked staff

Before I went to Japan I borrowed a cool vacume packing gadget from my
friend. I used it on my smoked fish and cheese so I can take it with
me on the plane to Japan.I got carried on and packed local gifts as
well. This gadgets sucks! I mean air as it suppose to:-) and seal
these spesial type of bags it work with. I have to report that all
people who got my smoked gifts, both localy and in Japan were
pleased ... And most importantly:-) still alive ! Good job, vacume
packer!

This is Cnappe!

I made it to put next to my bread sushi so people make no mistake :-)

Bread Box Sushi

My last Japanese invention, inspired by Hako sushi in Kyoto: rice
replaced with bread soaked in sushi vinegar mix and same procces as
sushi is used: wasaby stick fish to base. You can deep it in soy
souce , but gently, bread get saturated easly as it much more spongy.
Japanese relatives liked the idea, after I spent some time explaning
that it is NOT a cnappe!

Japanese pizaola in training

I tried to pass my pizza love and skilz over to some of the guests as
I alwas do on my pizza parties :-)

Thanks to my pizza sensei Mario for teaching me this art: I am still
on a long jurney to perfection ( kazen) but he blessed me with his
Italian pizza wisdoms!

It is fun!

Oven waits for next pizza

As I said I close the door when pizza is ready. Pay attantion on the
tool I made from some very old metal disk( probably come from Samurai
costume). I can nor close door in my big oven: it is air tight and
will chock, but this one is just fine: also door is not vertical, but
closed in tilt: that aloe air in. Chimney is not working as good: too
many hols without concreat , but oven works great and it price and
build time is simply unmatched: this is probably one of the quickest
and less expensive ways to enjoy a real Italian pizza pie in your back
yard: catch you do need at least 23 or so fire bricks: the floor is 6
bricks size: probably as small as it can be. I would make it bigger of
cource, if I only had more bricks or time to order ;-)

Japanese DOC pizza

It is super small so hard to make a perfect shape . No right tools :
improvised, but I use Italian tomatos and Mozarela freska, as well
Italian super virgin first cold press oil. Flour is Japanese :-( not
bad so and yeast is from France! My wife made the dough using super
secret recepy from Esposito familia:-) she did a realy nice job as
usual, despite luck of dough mixer here : she worked hard with her
hands. As you can see pizza turned out nice: dough was easy to stratch
and it buble in oven: so temperature is about right. I also managed
not to burn it to much: tricky in super small chamber with improvised
tools.

I made a lot of mini pizzas: guests liked it and we had a nice
Japanese pizza party with good Italian chianti.

Yammy!

Another shot

Of oven baking pizza.

Mini mini Japanese pizza

I used spesial breathing design so oven can operate with door closed:
that alow me to bring bricks to white - right temperature( after they
black and warm up they became white again). I open door to cock pizza
and close it again to keep this super small oven hot for next. I add
wood and clean bricks as needed .

Baby is born!

It is my oven #3! I named it 'sun-sun' or you can call it 'sun-suma'
to be even more polite:-) now let's make some pizza !

Oven is ready!

It is done and fire started!

My Japanese pizza oven #3

I started to build it and made it tall and tried to make internal
chamber as big as I can with few bricks I have: no more firebricks in
store and not enough time to order.

Here was my first oven

It is down and in bricks form again: my LEGO pizza oven: I am going to
build a better one just behind the corner.

My first pizza oven in Japan

After two years I am back to Kyoto and my oven survived :-) A few
internal blocks were removed for other projects but it looked OK from
outside. I have to move it to a new location so...