Pizza Maru Singapore invited us for a tasting but we rejected it to write a fair, honest, anonymous review. Huccalyly visited the outlet at Northpoint and she highly recommended the place for our gathering.

Right off the bat, I didn’t like their pizzas although they are the largest pizza chain in Korean. Their pizzas come in the style of deep-dish, that is, the crust is thick and chewy, much like the pizzas in the 90s.

Their pizzas are different from the Italian ones because of two things: firstly, they use green tea dough and black rice dough, both of which they claim are healthy. Secondly, their toppings are a combination of sweet and savoury.

Kimchi bay pizza

There is a kimchi bay Chicago pizza ($29.90), which uses the black rice dough but we had the similar Kimchi bay pizza ($19.80 + double cheese $3.20), a green tea dough pizza, consisting of shrimp, crabmeat, chicken ham, onion, mushroom, pineapple, bell pepper, corn, sweet ranch sauce, sriracha sauce, and mozzarella cheese. This is a damn messy pizza, made worse by using green tea dough, which is very strange and doesn’t go well with the ingredients.

Real Chicago pizza

The real Chicago pizza ($26.80), a black rice dough pizza, uses double mozzarella cheese, string cheese, pepperoni, tomato, parmesan cheese, icing sugar, Maru tomato sauce, and parsley flake. This is only slightly better than the green tea dough. At least it is slightly more savory, although the icing sugar tastes gross, and the black rice dough is too chewy.

I don’t think their sweet-and-savoury pizzas with overly chewy crust work. I won’t die if I never eat them again.

Original Flavour

In general, Koreans do fried chicken really well, and Pizza Maru is no exception. They have different flavours for fried chicken but it is worth ordering “Two is Better than One” (12 pieces, 2 flavours, $29.80) to try more flavours.

Sweet Chilli Dak Gangjeong

Basically, it’s fried chicken drizzled with the sauce of your choice. We tried the original, sweet chilli dak gangjeong, onion tartar, and honey butter.

Onion Tartar

The chicken are fried perfectly: crispy, tender, and succulent. The pieces are meaty, always a great thing. However, the toppings, even the butter honey, aren’t memorable. In fact, if you only oreder the original flavour, it is good enough and you won’t miss anything.

Honey Butter

What really made this experience enjoyable is the service. There was a young (Malaysian?) male service staff–might be the team leader–who was friendly and thoughtful. I cannot remember the exact thing he did, but he did leave a good impression.

We paid $158 for 5 persons. Not cheap but we only managed to finish 3/4 of the food.

Pizza Maru
Bugis+ #04-03/04, 201 Victoria Street Singapore 188067
tel: +65 6634 0930
11:30 am – 10 pm daily
facebook

Price / value: 5.5/10
Decor / ambience: 6/10
Food: 6/10
Service: 7.5/10

You may be interested in…
–NY Night Market, Westgate: Chir Chir Brings Korean Interpretation of New York Food
–Nipong Naepong, JEM: Chinese-Korean Chain Restaurant with 70 Outlets in Korea Comes to Singapore
–Twins Korean Restaurant, Tanjong Pagar: Super Delicious Korean Fried Chicken by Hot Twin Chefs
–Chir Chir 치르치르, 313@Somerset: Korean Fried Chicken for the S(e)oul

Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.