La Pizzeria Napoletana Regalo in Fukushima-ku, Osaka
In our search for the best pizza in Osaka, we heard talk about this Regalo pizza place. We stopped by, and below we share our review of La Pizzeria Napoletana Regalo in Fukushima, Osaka.
Sometimes a long line is a sure sign of a good thing. Other times, it is an indication that the whole experience is not going to be particularly comfortable.
(How’s that for foreshadowing?)
Regalo pizza in Osaka serves a Neapolitan style pizza. And in that way, it is like 20 or 30 other pizza places in Osaka, among hundreds in Japan. The pizza is cooked in that same Italian-style oven, also wood-fired, like so many others. It’s a very traditional pizza.
Someone will argue that Fukushima’s Regalo pizzeria makes an especially delicious Napolitano pizza. I’m not going to do that. What I will say, is that anything that goes right about that pizza is mostly entirely eclipsed by that ongoing hassle of eating there.
He lists his lunchtime hours as 12:00-2:30. While he may be technically open during those hours, his shop has some degree of fame, so lots of people show up. When I got there at a little after 1 PM (on a Monday), he had a sign out front saying he was not taking any more customers…
So even if you’re there more than hour before closing time, it is very possible you’re not going to be able to eat there that day.
Here’s the deal: He runs a small, one-man shop. Regalo is tiny. It seats maybe 10 people. So, there is a supply problem at Regalo. Demand for his pizza has exceeded his capacity to service that demand. While that may be good for him, it’s not great for customers. His lack of capacity has lead to some “rules” for how you are to behave if you want to try this – I’m going to say, vaguely average – pizza.
To cope with the reality that he has more customers than the can service, he has established a series of hoops for his customers to jump through. The waiting, the serving yourself, and the being a bit rushed through your meal – none of that makes the pizza taste better. And since you have lots of choices for this kind of pizza in Osaka, I recommend you go almost anywhere else.
—
Like I was saying, I was turned away the first time I came for lunch, but I still wanted to try this place. And, because I am the hardest working man in the Pizza Czar business – I don’t like to give up easily. I waited around in the his neighborhood, and came back, again, same day, several hours later.
If I couldn’t do lunch, I would try dinner instead. I was at his shop little before 5 PM, to be certain I was first in line when he opened: I was not going to be turned away twice in one day.
His dinner hours are 5:30 – 9:00 PM (but if you’re coming for dinner, I would not bother to show up past 7:30 PM). I was literally the first person on his waiting list that night (I made sure of it). If you look closely at our pictures, you’ll see OSAKA CITY .COM on the list. I was all set up to get the first seat when he opened for dinner at 5:30. And that, I did.
From 5 PM to 5:30, I waited outside in the little street in front of his shop. When you choose Regalo for a meal, the waiting is part of what you’re paying for. In theory, the lists, and rules, and waiting might be worth it. In my experience, it was not.
When the doors opened at 5:30, he called for me. He was stern and not particularly friendly. The feeling was bureaucratic, a lot like being at a government building (like the Department of Motor Vehicles in the US). I was already pretty sure this was not going to be a good meal, but… let’s get to the pizza:
La Pizzeria da Napoletana Regalo has a large selection of Naples-style pizzas. He has 14 “Rossa” (tomato sauce) pizzas and 14 “Bianca” pizzas (no tomato sauce) on the menu. I’ll never go back (no way), but if I did…maybe I’d try the Popolo (tomato sauce, cherry tomatoes, salami, olives, mushrooms, garlic, oregano and capers) or the Gigione (cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, salami, zucchini, basil, cream, and chili).
In this case, I did what I almost always do: I asked for a recommendation. As I did that, the owner gave me a disapproving look, and said, “No, no recommendation.” Hmmm. I am giving this guy a terrible review, I know that. And I think he absolutely deserves it… in every way.
I asked, “What is your favorite?” (I did this in Japanese, by the way.) He said “no favorite” (also in Japanese). Curt, to say the least.
Okay, dude. He then volunteered that I should get the Margherita… but with 28 choices on the menu, I wanted something other than a very plain pizza served at 100s of pizza shops in Osaka (every cafe in Japan makes a Margherita pizza).
I had heard he was once voted (by who??) the “#2” pizza in the “world” (or something, whatever, doesn’t matter). But as I think about that: Imagine that your job was eat 10s or 100s of the same Margherita pizza – which is not necessarily bad, but is the most plain, most generic of all pizzas in Japan.
But maybe “generic” is supposed to be a virtue? The whole point of Napolitano style pizza is to be soundly within a tradition. That is a nice way to say it. And it seems the whole point of Japanese men studying the Naples pizza tradition (there are many of them), is to make certain they do something nice, that same something that everyone else is doing. I like tradition, a lot of the time. But when it comes to pizza, and particularly pizza in Japan (something I know quite a bit about), the same pizza, in the same style, cooked in the same ovens… this is formula to take an opportunity to create some special pizza, and to intentionally turn it into a commodity; “just another Margherita.” Who cares.
Above a certain level of quality, I dare you to make one Margherita stand out from another. Good luck. And if it did stand out, would it still be “traditional?”
The whole experience of asking for a suggestion from the guy that runs this place was harsh, almost hostile. I was not having a good time. If I didn’t want to write this review, I would have gotten up and left.
Wanting something more than the Margherita, I choose (perhaps ironically) the Napoletana pizza: Tomato sauce, mozzarella, anchovies, basil, and capers. 1600 JPY. The anchovies and capers promised more flavor than the Margherita. I was right about that, it was a good choice.
Get ready: Here are the only nice things I can say about Regalo (a pizza place I don’t like):
Great ingredients. I could really taste the anchovies, and I liked that. Smashingly good salt-fish taste. The basil was almost explosive, excellent flavor. Good sauce, not the best I’ve had (not even the best in Osaka), but tasty. His crust is too thin and floppy for what I like, but was solid.
Regalo pizza meets the standard of high-end, thin-crust, “fancy” pizza. As a “traditional” Neapolitan pizza, that is a bare minimum, and often means you taste very much like every other pizza that meets that standard. There are exceptional Napolitano pizza, I don’t happen to think Regalo is one of them.
As the Official Hakujin Pizza Czar of Japan (like my father, and my father before him, I come from a long line of Hakujin Pizza Czars), when I eat pizza, I like to apply my perfectly calibrated “pizza test”: I try to pick up a slice. If, even folded (for added strength), it’s hard to pick up and eat – I think you can do better. As our pictures show, Regalo was hard to eat with your hands.
When I call pizza “knife and fork pizza,” it’s generally an insult. (It is absolutely an insult.) Pizza that requires a fork is not “fun” pizza. Regalo literally serves the pizza with a fork on top of it… and a knife stuffed under the crust. This is peak “knife and fork pizza.” On that the owner and I agree… even if we disagree about what the means.
(It means you should go someplace else.)
And then… it all goes downhill from there.
Out front of his tiny, little, shop, while you’ll waiting (for an hour?) to get a seat, he has a sign that says you should not sit in front of the neighboring shops (which makes sense, I bet his neighbors hate the crowds). He also has his signs about “cash only.” He has another sign about how after he serves your pizza, you have 40 minutes to eat your pizza and then you have to leave.
“After the first pizza comes out, we limit it to 40 minutes.”
You see: At La Pizzeria da Napoletana Regalo – you get to wait as long as he needs you to, but as for your enjoyment, that is strictly limited: Eat up, and get out. That is not my idea of a good experience.
Soooo many… rules. He has a series of little signs on everything, moving you around, telling you what you can and cannot do, getting you prepared to leave.
Going out to eat is a kind of entertainment. And being served food is generally considered in the category of “hospitality.” There is nothing hospitable about Regalo.
All of his “crowd control” measures are basically a nasty by-product of whatever reputation draws people to his store. Because his little shop is inadequately prepared for the demand, he has become a specialist in herding and directing his customers – like cattle. Like dumb beasts that help him earn his living.
To “dine” at Regalo, is to guest star as a dumb beast in this daily economic drama. I’ll pass.
For example, at Regalo pizza in Fukushima, you have to serve your own drinks. Okay; In a more friendly place (which this is not), I might even be into that. In Regalo, that self-service includes the wine. You have to pour your own wine – he doesn’t want to pour it himself, and he also doesn’t want you to pour yourself too much, so he has an “example glass,” with a line drawn on it (who does this?), and he wants you to set your glass next to the example, and pull the bottle out of the cooler, pour just that much wine – and not more – then put the bottle away, and go back to your seat.
“You got it, tourist?”
I watched him scold some nice Japanese girl (probably not a tourist, actually) for pouring herself a glass of wine that was above the line on the little example he had set up (which she clearly did not understand). He was not cool about it. He is not a cool guy.
Luckily, I am beer drinker. I still served myself, but… there are fewer rules if you just want a bottle of beer. I didn’t bother to finish that beer, because I was kind of in a hurry to leave. I left it on the table, half finished.
You might notice that in overly popular events or situations, the staff tend to treat the customers like animals. I can imagine their position: So many clueless visitors, thinking they can “pay with a credit card,” not being prepared to order, all that. The staff in those kinds of businesses get impatient (I see the same hostile, insulting vibe at Lolo Coffee in Shinsaibashi), and they forget about service; they start to think their whole job is just to “move the animals around.”
If you pay attention: the more touristy the place, the more often you will see this kind of application of rules.
There were what seemed like local Japanese in Regalo, but there were also other signs of typical tourist-focused intentions:
Did I mention the walls are covered with scribbles from his previous guests? I know that writing (or carving) your name on the wall is a kind of tourist tradition, a tradition of mostly low-end tourist spots. The “very popular but below average” El Pancho in Osaka is also covered in marker-scrawl. There is something patronizingly low-end about that – sacrificing what could be a nice atmosphere for an indulgence for out-of-towners. Regalo pizza is more than a tourist trap, but it has a lot of the same qualities.
His music selection for the night was a culturally nonsensical reggaeton-pop. No points there either.
—
If you spend some time in Japan, and visit some businesses that are not quite as “over exposed” as Regalo’s Cattle Shop, it’s common to hear the phrase “go yukkuri dozo” (ごゆっくりどうぞ) – which roughly translates to “take your time.” It is a casual phrase, said without much thought, but there is a quality of relaxation in that sentiment. I like that.
Regalo is the exact opposite of that sentiment. As I ate his rather unremarkable pizza, he didn’t tell me hurry, but I felt like he might. And that feeling took any possibility of joy out of my meal.
We know one of his rules is “you can only stay 40 minutes after your pizza is served.” So, the “hurry up” is actually explicit – completely the opposite of most of your choices of Osaka pizza restaurants. I did finish quickly. And I left – happy to be on my way to some place with more “hospitality.”
I couldn’t wait to get away from what he had created.
I do think Regalo makes a decent pizza. Nothing special, but good. While that is true, Pizzeria da Napoletana Regalo is an absolute below average experience. Absolutely “bait” for tourists, people who like to wait in line, and people that don’t know any better… but you can do better.
Regalo is not recommended.
Go to Critter’s Pizza, which is a great spot. Go to Atarizza. For something actually special, go to Dal Donnaiolo. If you can break out of the Napolitano tradition, go to Craft Beer & Pizza Imazato for a curry spice Detroit pizza (he only serves pizza a couple night per week).
For more Osaka Pizza see:
— Critter’s in Chuo-ku makes a good pizza
— Nipponbashi’s A PIZZA in Chuo-ku
— Craft Beer & Pizza Imazato in Ikuno-ku
— Pizza Bar Full House in Kita-ku
— NYC-style slices at Hughes Pizza in Kita-ku
— More slices at Henry’s Pizza in Chuo-ku
— That’s Pizza in Nishi-ku
— Atarizza Pizza in Nishi-ku
— Pizzeria da Dots in Taisho-ku
— Drunk Bears Pizza in Kita-ku
— The Goofy’s Pizza in Kita-ku
— For a fancy pizza, see Dal Donnaiolo in Nishitenma in Kita-ku
— Pizzeria da Tigre in Shinmachi in Nishi-ku