I said previously that to maintain the sustainability of my blog and juggling my day job, I will write a full-length review only if the restaurant is fantastic or awful, Guess where Goldenroy Sourdough Pizza stands. Once a takeout only stall, it now has a dine-in restaurant at Desker Road. No reservations, walk-in only.
The pizzeria has a great story: the owner Roy Chan, son of boss of Red Ring Wanton Mee which I ranked #4 in Singapore, studied PhD in Chemistry in California while auditing Computer Science classes (this factoid will come in useful later in this review). And he fell in love with San Francisco style of pizza, joined a pizza enthusiast club, and someone gave him a 100 year-old starter which he brought back to Singapore to use in the pizzas. Doughs are left to ferment for 48 hours.
What’s the difference between San Fran and Neapolitan pizzas? Neapolitan pizzas are cooked under high woodfire heat for under 60 seconds and they have those distinct “leopard spots” (char tah parts that pop up like pimples). But San Fran style has a thin/medium/thick base, crispy at edges, and full of sauces, and cooked for a longer time at 250C. Roy also said that he created his recipes to be more flavourful as (I am paraphrasing this part, these are my words:) Singaporeans have tastebuds.
What’s so good about the pizzas is they painstakingly and manually place toppings on each slice. That’s because they see each slice as 9 different zones so when you bite at different part, the pizza will present different flavours and won’t be monotonous. For example, they spread their tomato sauce (precisely 25g on each slice!) on pizzas in strips (like a tiger) and not slop everything at the base.
Ingredients are imported from all over the world. They use California tomato as their base after experimenting with many different types. They don’t use salt and depend solely on the salt in the hard cheeses that they sprinkle on pizzas.
Each pizza is about $30 (4 slices, suitable for 2 adults). They currently have 8 different flavours, their pesto mushroom (a vegetarian option) is most popular. Besides the pesto mushroom, I also recommend the scallop cream-based pizza and the blue cheese pizza. I know many people don’t like blue cheese, but hear me out, they place the blue cheese on the pizza and then bake it, so, like using wine and sake in cooking where all the alcohol evaporates, the funkiness of blue cheese evaporates too, leaving the goodness behind. My two friends who didn’t like blue cheese like the pizza too.
Okay, so after all the nice things said, here’s some constructive feedback:
– I really miss woodfire pizza which has that smokiness that these San Frans pizza lack. In the future, I hope they switch to woodfire. That would make the already-outstanding pizzas perfect.
-When I was there, the floor was slippery and was quite dangerous with flights of stairs. I already feedback-ed this to Roy.
– It’s not really a proper restaurant in the sense that there’s no service. You order, you collect the food, and you clear your own table. You even take your own drinks and pay by honour system (which is paynow). There are no plates, no metal cutlery, no forks, only plastic knives. I suspect they don’t have a dishwasher, so you have to eat with paper towels and hands. Because the pizzas are quite saucy, it can get quite messy.
Oh yes, the computer science class. Roy came out with an AI (“It’s really a simple algorithm” Oh Roy.) that detects whether the correct pizza is delivered to the right customer. The AI scans the QR code on the order on the pizza box, takes a photo of the pizza, and decides if the pizza matches the order. Before the AI, they used to make 1 mistake out of 200 pizzas, but now there is none.
I took my leftover pizza home, put it in the fridge, and then reheated it as per given instructions. The pizza tasted exactly the same as in the restaurant. Just eat it hot. Last word: order the Sourdough Knots.
Goldenroy Sourdough Pizza
125 Desker Rd Singapore 209642
12 – 10pm, Closed M
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Food: 7.25/10
Price: 7/10
Decor/ambience: 7/10
You may be interested in…
– Lucali BYGB, Lavender: Lifestyle Pizza
– Blue Label Pizza, Ann Siang: Atas Pizzeria from Sister Restaurant of Luke’s Oyster Bar
– Pizza Maru, Bugis+: Korea’s Largest Pizza Chain is Better for Their Fried Chicken
This was a tasting. Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.
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