This is it, the final stretch leading to pizza mecca. Come the weekend, Beijing will be officially treated to not only the biggest pizza-related event that the city has seen this year, but the biggest pizza-related event it has seen ever. That’s because as of late last week, we welcomed the 30th pizza vendor for our 2017 Pizza Festival in Wangjing Soho, September 16-17, 11am-8pm, marking a 30 percent increase on pizza-slingers last year.
READ: Build Your Appetite With an In-Depth Look at This Year’s Pizza Vendors
What that means for you is more variety in your pizza choices, more opportunities to try new venues, and more people to add to the carnival-like atmosphere of this year’s event, which luckily, just happens to be this year’s theme! In alphabetical order, this year’s 30 pizza vendors include:
- Alley Ale Taproom
- Annie’s
- Boxing Cat and Baozza
- Dongli
- East Hotel
- Eatalia
- Eudora Station
- Fly Pizza & Hoodadak Chicken
- Four Ace
- Frost
- Gung Ho! Pizza
- Hutong Pizza
- Jushi Pizza Just in Time!
- Legend Beer
- Leos Pizza
- Luga’s
- Max Pizza
- Mr. Charcoal
- Peiping Machine
- Pie Squared
- Pizza Factory
- Pyro pizza
- Q Mex
- Qiangan & Bonu Pizza College
- Radici
- Tiago and Casa Talia
- Tube Station
- VSports
- Whale Pizza
- Yummy Box
Other vendors in attendance will include:
- Aidi School
- Alfa Romeo (Beijing Haipai)
- Australian Natural Wines and Orchard Pig Cider
- B-13 Ice Cream
- Billy’s Fish & Chips
- BlaQ Coffee
- Bruno Caffé
- Cheers Wines
- De Refter
- Drinking Buddies
- Flora Steak and Bar
- The Granary
- Jay Burrito
- König Ludwig Weissbier
- Move Gelato
- NHL
- PEC
- Ponty Winery
- Asahi Super Dry and Calpis
- The One
- Vedett, Firestone Walker, and Boulevard
- Viola Premium Italian Beer
- Zeffer
Apart from delicious pizza in all of its glorious forms (and some new groundbreaking types for good measure), there’ll be plenty of entertainment too. The weekend fun so far will include titillating performances from the girls of Moonglow Burlesque, a Chinese lion dance, energetic moves from square-dancing grannies, and even cheerleaders, pom-poms and all.
Steve Mac and The Mac Daddies
As for the music, The Hunters will be on hand to energize the crowds on Saturday, whereas Stevie Mac and the Mac Daddies will be crooning soul favorites come Sunday, and jazz band Time Out will be teasing out twirls, foot-taps, and head-nods throughout both days as well as DJing from our very own DJ Cousin Kippy. Later into the party, once pizza delirium and perhaps a little beer has taken hold of your senses, DJ Bombaklat Lee and DJ Freshmoney will be on the decks courtesy of Club Mix, getting us moving with Carribean, reggae, and funk.
There’ll be plenty of fun for the whole fam
Finally, we’re almost completely sold out of presale tickets. The benefits of buying ahead of time are threefold: not only will you gain access to the pizza quicker than those buying tickets at the door, you’ll also get priority entry should security decide to limit the flow of hungry patrons (we hope this doesn’t happen, but sadly it has been the case in the past). Finally, you’ll also receive a nifty little (actually, large) picnic blanket upon entry so that you and your friends and family can get comfy on the grounds should you want to find a quiet corner to eat your pizza in peace.
Be first to the pizza-y prize by reserving tickets ahead of time
And with that, we’re off to go finalize proceedings to make this the biggest, best, and tastiest Pizza Festival in the history of the Beijinger, but in order to do that, we need your hungry mouths! Scan the QR codes below to come join in the fun.
Scan here to reserve tickets in English
Scan here to reserve tickets in Chinese
Photos: Uni You, the Beijinger, courtesy of the participants
This post first appeared on our sister site, The Beijinger.
