Pizza popular but hold the anchovies

T.Sima Gunawan, Contributor, Jakarta

If the restaurant opens at 11 a.m., what time does the cook start working? At 10, nine or eight in the morning? All of these answers are wrong if the restaurant is Papa Ron's Pizza.

The cooks at the restaurant are already busy at 6 a.m. to prepare the pizza dough as it takes five hours to rise.

"Basically, you need dough and extra flour to make it", said Rodiah Dewi, marketing manager of PT Eatertainment, which manages Papa Ron's Pizza.

And how to make the dough?

"That's a secret," Rosdiah said, smiling.

Thanks to the secret recipe, Papa Ron's pizza is tasty and crunchy. Papa Ron's offers a wide selection of pizzas, from seafood to vegetarian with toppings that you can choose yourself. In total, there are 19 kinds of pizza on the menu, five kinds of pasta and seven kinds of calzone as well as some starters.

Calzone is a new dish at Papa Ron's. It was introduced on May 1, along with several other new pizzas like tuna and eggplant and Asian veggie.

A calzone is a sandwich with bread that is made with pizza dough. Besides vegetarian calzone, those on offer include calzone with beef and vegetables; pepperoni and cheese; and egg, cheese and smoked beef.

"We serve calzone to meet the demands of our customers who have asked for more variety," said Rosdiah. "We are the only pizza restaurant here that serves calzone," she added proudly.

Another new item on the menu is the yummy bread stick, which is prepared for those who want to taste a different kind of starter, other than the garlic bread, bruschetta, chicken wings, soup and salad. There are two choices for the bread stick: garlic herb butter and sesame seed, and cheese and sesame seed.

Most of the ingredients to make the pizzas and the other dishes are local, but some, like cheese and olives, are imported.

Pizza is certainly not an authentic Indonesian food. People in Greece, Egypt and Middle East countries ate bread similar to the pizza crust in ancient times. According to Rosdiah, the modern pizza -- like the thin and crispy one -- is originally from Italy, while the thick one, called the pan pizza, is from America.

Indonesia has a lot of pizza restaurants as it has become a favorite food here since the 1990s. The most popular pizza restaurant is Pizza Hut -- an America-based chain pizza restaurant -- which opened in the country for the first time in 1984. In 2000 Papa Ron's Pizza was established in Jakarta, followed by Izzi Pizza two years later.

Pizza Hut used to serve both the thin and crispy pizza and the pan pizza. But the thin and crispy pizza is no longer on the menu as most Indonesians seem to like the thick ones better. Both kinds of pizza are available at Papa Ron's Pizza and Izzi Pizza.

Papa Ron's Pizza has given its menu an Asian flavor, which is obvious in some of its pizzas, like the Java chicken satay and the Lampung black pepper chicken. Its most popular pizza is the Load to the Max, while the choices for spicy food lovers include Thai garlic chicken and Texas barbecue chicken.

Pizza prices range from Rp 15,000 to Rp 17,500 for the small one, Rp 32,000 to Rp 38,000 for the medium one and between Rp 45,000 and Rp 55,000 for a large pizza. The calzone costs between Rp 17,500 and Rp 21,500.

Even though Papa Ron's Pizza offers a wide selection of toppings, anchovies are not an option. This is not surprising as anchovies are similar to ikan asin (salted fish), which are mostly eaten by poor people here due to their low price. Pizza on the other hand, like hamburgers, is mostly eaten by people in the middle-upper income bracket.

You will not find pizza with anchovies at Pizza Hut either, but it is on Izzi Pizza's menu, as that restaurant prides itself on serving "real Italian pizza".

The name Papa Ron's is derived from the brand owner, Ronald Mullers, a Sundanese-Dutch man who is an American citizen. He was formerly a Pizza Hut license holder and had earlier worked as the food and beverages manager of the Sari Pan Pacific hotel in Jakarta. He is also the owner of the Green Pub, which is now called Amigos Mexican Restaurant.

Papa Ron's Pizza has 44 outlets in big cities throughout Indonesia. Seventeen of them are located in Greater Jakarta and the others are in cities including Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Batam and Medan. Most of them are operated under a franchise agreement.

"We have signed a contract with a Malaysian investor, who is still looking for the right location," said Rosdiah, adding that Papa Ron's Pizza would also open in Singapore and the Middle East.