Yesterday was the soft launch for The PZZA.Co Italian restaurant so I passed by and had a late lunch there. PZZA.Co is a gourmet italian concept brought to you by the same people behind BRGR.Co, which is by far my favorite burger place in Lebanon. PzzaCo is located right next to Brgrco at the Beirut Souks.

The outside of the place looks very similar to Brgrco. The interior is simple but quite artistic and catchy and gives a cozy feeling. There’s a huge artwork done by Gregory Gatserelia (resembling an erupting volcano, Mount Vesuvius maybe) above the oven that expands to the whole roof that you can see in the picture below.

As far as the food is concerned, PZZA.Co servers starters, salads, mozzarella specials, pizzas (including 3 Hussein Hadid signature pizzas), pastas, risotto, a couple of chicken and veal dishes, and of course desserts. The wine they serve is an Italian one. Here are some of the stuff I tried out:

Salads:
Baby Spinach salad with toasted pine nuts (with a traditional balsamic vinaigrette)

Fennel with oranges, pomegranate and pecorino romano (with an orange and pomegranate vinaigrette)

Both salads were fresh and tasted great and I absolutely loved the Fennel with oranges one, specially with the Orange and Pomegranate vinaigrette sauce.

Starters and Pastas:
Bocconcini in Carroza (baby mozzarella cheese breaded served with a tomato basil sauce)

Rigatoni Creamy Bolognese (served with Minced beef)

The breaded Baby Mozzarella balls were a delight and didn’t feel that heavy even though they were breaded. The Mozzarella tasted fresh too. As for the Rigatoni Bolognese, I am not a big fan of minced beef so I couldn’t really judge if it’s any good but I didn’t mind it.

Pizzas:

Marinara Fresh: Tomato, garlic, oregano, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil

The Wild Mushroom: Mozzarella Cheese, taleggio cheese, wild seasonal mushrooms and truffle oil

The Italian Chef running the cuisine is from Napoli and he takes great pride in preparing fresh tomatoes for his pizza. The Marinara is an authentic Neapolitan pizza and consists of fresh tomato, garlic, oregano and fresh basil. I noticed a lot of people in the restaurant had ordered it and the tomato did taste very fresh, but I’d rather have some cheese on top or mixed with it.

Moving on to the Hussein Hadid signature pizza, The Wild Mushroom was just delicious and I think I finished the pizza by myself. The dough was just perfect, not too thin not too thick, a bit crispy on the sides but tender when you eat it. The ingredients were all fresh and I liked the taleggio cheese which I hadn’t tasted before, at least not to my knowledge.

I noticed that they have a Calzone on the menu as well. The last decent one I had was at Pinocchio Achrafieh years ago, so I am looking forward to trying it out next time.

Desserts:
Caramel and Biscuit Pizza

Vanilla Bean Panicotta

Tiramisu

I didn’t want to try the chocolate or caramel pizzas because I usually find them too sweet but my friend insisted I try out the Caramel and Biscuit Pizza and I am glad I did. I will let u figure out which biscuit is put on top but it was a heavenly sweet pizza. The Panicotta is a dessert you won’t find in many places and is worth a try and the Tiramisu was good.

Price-wise, PZZA.Co is really affordable as the salads, appetizers and pizzas range between 10$ and 20$ and the quantities are decent. Of course there are few special dishes and signature pastas and pizzas which are a bit more expensive, but you can easily have a salad or appetizer, a pizza and a dessert for like 30$.

I really liked PZZA.Co and I am definitely going there soon to try out the Calzone and have that Caramel Biscuit Pizza again.