Cona is part of a chain of 500yen pizza restaurants which also includes Voco (in Ebius) a similarly named branch in Dogenzaka and Ura-Cona in Maruyamacho. While the speciality is Roman Pizza, the exhortation of the menu for “High tension Please!” should tell you that this place is intended more as a fun place to hang out with your friends rather than as a place to enjoy top rate pizza. The restaurant itself is a pleasant, modern feeling space spread over two floors, with lots of stainless steel and a low frequency house music sound track.
At lunch, they have a buffet option,so for an extra 300 yen you can help yourself to the salads and vegetables and the various drinks on offer. For your 500yen (as with Voco) you can choose from 27 different pizzas. Aside from the classic margherita, most of the options are quite unconventional. Included are Mexican, asparagus and mustard, potato and bacon and the mysterious Shitamachi special. I went for the Tappuri (lots of) Seafood.
I was feeling a bit extravagant so I added the 300yen for the buffet. The gobo salad was particularly good – which was lucky as it took more than 30 minutes for them to produce my pizza. On the day I visited, it seemed that they were using the opportunity of a quiet after lunch crowd to do some training. Waiting more than 30 minutes for lunch in Tokyo seems like an age – even with two trips to the buffet. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt though – you would hope that this would be a little quicker at dinner time.
Despite the time taken, the novice did a reasonable job with the pizza. As is normal with a gas fired oven it doesn’t have quite the smoky flavour of pizza from a wood fired oven. If I must take issue with my dirt cheap pizza (hey, I am a cheapo) I’d say that it had a bit too much cheese – of the mass produced industrial variety. When you order your pizza, you might want to request they go light on the cheese. The ‘lotsa seafood’ also appeared to be of the frozen ‘seafood mix’ variety available at Hanamasa – so another suggestion might be to go for the simpler, fresher ingredients.
Cona is open from 7 in the morning until 2am the next morning. Breakfast runs until 11, lunch from 11am until 2pm and the dinner menu kicks in after that. Beware of the table charge of 500yen you’ll get charged if you arrive after 6pm.
