June 27, 2009
New York Pizza Kitchen
Wife's mom took the baby so we finally had an evening to ourselves. Wanted to go some place nice for dinner, but nothing too formal, and there's certainly nothing formal about pizza. Located at a prime location on the 仁愛-安和 intersection, down the block from the Dunhua Eslite bookstore, NYPK is an Italian-American restaurant offering American brunches in the morning and New York style pizzas and pastas at night. The restaurant was full of ABCs looking for decent pizza, and hip chicks stopping in for a bite before heading out to the many lounge bars nearby. Us unreserved late-comers were exiled to an outdoor courtyard. Thankfully the evening had cooled down just enough to make the outside temperature tolerable, and we were reasonably sheltered from the street noise, such that we were disinclined to move inside even after a table opened up.
We were there mainly for the pizza, but we weren't hungry enough for a whole pizza, and they also offered other dishes. So we got a red-sauce seafood spaghetti and a Sprite float to go with a couple of pizza slices. The pasta was decent but forgettable. The pizza base ain't bad, thin-crust but not too thin, cooked in a dedicated brick oven visible in the open kitchen. But NT95 for three pieces of pepperoni is not a good $/meat ratio. It's even worse with the chicken-parm pizza as it's NT120 for three chunks of chicken.
NYPK is an American restaurant in Taiwan, and much like a Chinese restaurant in the US, it may be pretty good, but it's still not the same. On the other hand, it's nice to have a safe option for a good-old American slice of pizza. Not Italian authentic-but-different, and definitely not the Asian-style franken-pizzas.
NY Pizza Kitchen
台北市大安區安和路一段53號
02-2775-1582