While we're sure tomato ice cream exists somewhere out there, that's not what Dong Na intended when she advertised her new Solana concept, Coco Pizza, with posters of tomato-sprouting cones. Confused guests can be excused for jumping to conclusions, though, because Coco Pizza is the city's first and only purveyor of pizza-in-a-cone.

"There are still constantly customers coming in for ice cream cones," she admitted, "even though it says 'Coco Pizza' on the door."

The pizza cone idea came from an Italian concept called Crispycones, and the uncommon spin appealed to Dong when she decided to get into the foodservice industry earlier this year.

"This idea is completely fresh and new to locals, and we have confidence that people's interest in it will grow," she said.

The pizza is made cone-shaped with a special machine that rolls pizza dough around a 14-centimeter-tall cone. Once it's baked, the inside of the cone is brushed with pizza sauce and then filled with cheese and "toppings" and baked upright in an oven for 8-10 minutes so everything melts inside. The pizza cone is served sans utensils, it's just wrapped in paper and passed through a window like an ice-cream cone.

"When we eat traditional pizza, most of what we eat is the pie crust, but with cone pizza the fillings play the main role in the crispy thin crust," said mother Xu Yuanhua, a customer from Taiwan who was waiting for a Golden Bacon pizza cone.

Because the pizza cone is rolled up, the toppings and cheese doesn't cool off as quickly as it would if the pizza were laid flat and exposed to the air. The cheese stays hot and melted the entire time you eat it.

There are six different combos on the Coco Pizza menu, including Margherita with mozzarella cheese and fresh tomatoes and a seasonal garden pizza filled with mushrooms, cucumbers, tomatoes and corn. The BBQ Chicken pizza has barbecued chicken, mushrooms and onions, and the Golden Bacon pizza has tomatoes, corn and bacon. The Colorful Salami pizza is filled with sausage, corn, tomatoes and green peppers. The Happy Cowboy is spicy, filled with beef, mushrooms and green peppers. Pizza cones range in price from 11.9 yuan to 18.9 yuan.

"We adopted classic recipes to fit the local customers," Dong said. "We don't use strong-flavored cheeses like blue or Cheddar cheese. We don't include those because of their strong smell."

But just because they're playing it safe with the cheese now doesn't mean the pizza cones won't get more adventurous in the future. Dong mentioned possibilities including fried rice, fried noodles and pasta going into the cone in the near future. "We want to do something more in hand-rolled food. A bigger store with a seating area at Qianmen is under negotiation right now," she said.

Coco Pizza

Address: Solana plaza, Chaoyang Gongyuan Lu, Chaoyang district

朝阳区朝阳公园路蓝色港湾广场

Tel: 5945-8253

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