Pizza 26 (26 Pizza?): New York style pizza in northwest China, seriously...

So this is unexciting news for anyone who lives in a city with moderately decent pizza (read…most places in the world), but for us here in northwest China, it’s a phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong, I love Chinese food: Anhui, Hunan, Sichuan, 饺子，面条…I’m a big fan. But sometimes you want pizza, and yeah, most cities in this area HAVE pizza – the Pizza Hut corn and shrimp and no sauce version, for example; or the over-salty, too-expensive made in a toaster oven version, also popular. But this…has real sauce, real cheese, mushrooms, olive, pepperoni, and most impressive of all, it’s USA SIZED! (That means giant, international audience). Specifically, 26 inches. 26 Pizza (or Pizza 26? Don’t understand this name), located in Lanzhou’s still growing western district of 七里河 (Qilihe), is in a fancy new outdoor shopping area next to about 10 (no joke) over-priced, mediocre, dimly lit coffee places. The smaller pizza (12 inch) costs around 70元 (about $10), with the bigger one at 170元 (about $27). For semi-decent western food in China? Not bad.

The décor is typical “Chinese western-style lounge” (what a Chinese designer thought western lounges look like), and while eating a giant foldable slice of pizza in a couch seems like it could lead to problems, I didn’t see any stains yet. The wall has a lot of vintage American ads and movie posters, which is fun, and the waiters all wear plaid – now standard uniform for trendy Chinese restaurant waitstaff and coincidentally, also a signal that this pattern is NO LONGER HIP…fyi 20-40 year-old American men.