I usually ignore fast food advertising, but I recently got a flier in the mail that grabbed my attention. A new place has opened nearby called Kono Pizza that serves pizza in a cone. Pizza. In a cone.
New Jersey has some of the country’s best Italian fast food. There’s a mom-and-pop pizzeria in just about every strip mall. You can buy a $2.50 slice or a $14 pie as big as a manhole cover: delicious with a fragrant, firm, yeasty crust that stands up to generous amounts of delicately seasoned marinara and gobs of salty mozzarella, plus whatever toppings you please (unless you’re into freaky things like sweet corn and shrimp. If that’s the case, you can just get on the Turnpike, get off at Newark Airport and fly back to wherever they think that kind of thing is okay). But fast food chains are also ubiquitous, and we have Domino’s and Little Caesars, which has never made any sense to me. So it’s Kono Pizza’s turn to pitch up and give it a try. Okay, why not?
It turns out that Kono Pizza is an Italian chain that sells franchises in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Australia. As their nicely designed but awkwardly translated website states,
Konopizza is a very innovative format, created for very profitable activity and for people who are at their very first experience in the restaurant market. Konopizza is easily managed and can exploit the whole potential of the pizza market, the real symbol of made in Italy, well-known and appreciated all over the world.
Yeah, okay. Whatever. I took my $1 off coupon to the shabby strip mall to check it out.
The shop didn’t look like much from the outside, but it reminded me of other European chains like Maoz, or maybe a small-scale Chipotle or Chop’t: meticulously designed and streamlined with a decent menu of dishes that are assembled in front of the customer. Of course looks can be deceiving. Subway keeps its food in the open, and yet we all have feelings about that yoga mat-infused bready smell. Subway seems kind of gross. Kono Pizza really doesn’t. I asked the woman behind the counter if they had ingredients lists. No, they didn’t, and I couldn’t find any detailed nutritional information on Kono Pizza’s website. Not too encouraging, but that’s not really the point. Who knows what’s in any pizza? This is not health food, and the important part is the taste.
Okay, down to choosing. There were several menu categories: classic, deli, salad, breakfast and dessert. All the options sounded appetizing, which surprised me. I liked the sound of the Greek salad cones, but I didn’t want to lose focus. I was here for the pizza, so I chose the classic Margherita (marinara, mozzarella, and basil). Its undiscounted price was $3.99 plus tax. Not cheap but not outrageous.
The nearly silent woman behind the counter went to making up the cone. She grabbed a raw cone (they were laid out flat in a cooled area), filled it with sauce and cheese and then put it in a cone-holder thing that rotated into a special oven. I didn’t make a note of how long it took to bake, but seemed like a while, 5 to 7 minutes maybe. It came out looking like this.
Hey, that’s pretty sassy. I like it. It smells good, too. I grasped the kone and started to nibble away at it. The cheese and sauce were flavorful and well cooked. I was most concerned about the quality of the cone, which looked like something from a theme park ice cream parlour. While not of the usual texture of a standard NJ pizza, the Kono Pizza held up admirably. It was baked firm on the outside and was not too crispy, nor was the inside underdone or mushy. This is clearly a triumph of Italian food technology. It tasted artificial, but it worked.
I ate a bit further and things got a bit dicier.
Oh, dear. It looks kind of gross now and is a bit salty. Really, really salty as a matter of fact, with a lot of cheese to get through. If I was to try a Kono Pizza cone again, I think I’d want to have some black olives or artichoke hearts to break up the mass of cheese. The sauce is nice and hot and tasty, but the cheese is not enough to keep your interest through the whole cone. Lesson learned. Almost done.
To my surprise, the contents of the bottom of the cone were still hot, and I got a little burned from the liquidy sauce near the bottom. This exceeded my expectations.
To wrap up, Kono Pizza is better than I thought it would be. I really expected it to look and taste like a Hot Pocket. It was much better than that. But it is still highly processed fast food, so it can never be that good.
So, would I eat it again? Yes, I would if I was in an airport or some other place with standard corporate food options. Would I choose this over an average Jersey slice? No.
Do I think this shop will still be here this time next year? It’s hard to say. The menu is diverse enough to support all-day business and there appears to be a real care taken to make sure that the end product looks and tastes good. However, there are so many better and cheaper options for pizza in the area. Kono Pizza is a novelty, and people enjoy that kind of thing. How else can you explain the fact that Dippin’ Dots ice cream still exists? There’s a high school nearby, so this could turn out to be a popular place. Good luck to them. The neighborhood could do worse.
Top image konousa.com / Other images by the author
