COCONUTS HOT SPOT — Artisanal is a word that’s being tossed around at Project Pie on Shaw Boulevard, near the side of Wack Wack Golf & Country Club, where they give you the option of building your own pizza (PHP285) if you can’t pick among the seven variants on the menu (PHP245-PHP285). Their slogan: “Everything that should be made fresh daily, we make fresh daily.” We normally don’t settle for anything less.
THE LOOK: You’d be surprised how many tables there are inside once you enter the gray-colored building. With hanging naked lightbulbs, white walls adorned with random, handwritten quotes about the importance of trying hard and failing in order to succeed, this airy restaurant has got the indie-hipster ambiance down pat. Near the door is an iPad Mini tacked on the wall and permanently switched to the restaurant’s Instagram account so guests can take their photos while waiting for their orders to arrive, which should take less than five minutes.
HOW TO ORDER: It’s pretty much like ordering a sandwich at Oliver’s or Subway, except here there’s only one kind of dough and, if you order the pre-selected pizzas on the menu, all you need to do is join the queue and tell the staff which pizzas you want. Then you can watch them heat the dough, lay out the ingredients and stick it in the oven. We reckon it would be more fun if you make your own pizza because then you could point to the ingredients in the vitrine and design your own toppings, but not when there’s 10 people waiting for their turn behind you. For drinks, you have a choice of imported beer like Hoeegarden and Heineiken (PHP150), a mini-bottle of wine (PHP250) or iced tea (PHP65) which, we are sad to report, tasted like gulaman without the sago.
THE GRUB: We got five of the seven pizzas available, but only liked three of them. Five forks go to the signature red sauce pizza (pepperoni, mozzarella, Italian sausage, garlic, crumbled meatballs); prosciutto, caramelized onions, mozzarela, paremsan in white sauce; and the tomato, artichoke, red onion, pesto, feta and mozzarella cheese in white sauce. To be honest, all the white pizzas tasted the same so we relied on the onions to break the monotony of the flavors. The dough was evenly cooked, though we would have wanted it more crispy and skinny. It’s hard to enjoy pizza when starch overpowers the ingredients. Will we go back? Probably not.
OUR NOTES:
Cost: PHP 1,555 for five pizzas and two cups of iced tea.
Cleanliness: The table and the chairs assigned to us stil had crumbs from the previous party.
Service: Quick and easy, cheerful. The manager came to our table to ask for feedback but we didn’t have the heart to say anything bad.
Sound level: For a packed-to-the-rafters afternoon, we could hear each other clearly, though we sat in one of the banquettes, not in a communal table.
Lighting: Bright and cheerful, the glass facade helps give the place an urban vibe.
Project Pie, 515 Shaw Boulevard cor Laurel St, Bgy Wack Wack, Mandaluyong; +63 2 650 0925. Daily 10am-10pm.
Photos: James P. Ong
