Tuesday, August 23, 2011

California Pizza Kitchen brings 25 new, exciting dishes



California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) brings in twenty-five new, exciting dishes to their menu list, which span from their appetizers, small cravings, salads, soups to their pastas, pizzas, sandwiches, and desserts. These additions combine the diverse flavors of East and West that will surely tickle the taste buds of us foodies.

Aside from that, they have also made improvements on their menu by adding more mouth-watering food photos, offering personal-sized pizzas of 8-inches in diameter, as well as introducing menu items paired with wines. In addition, some of the prices of food items were lowered to attract more customers - young and old alike.

Last August 17, I was invited alongside online and print media to taste the new dishes that CPK is offering. From our discussions, I found out that California Pizza Kitchen undergoes a long process of research and development, taste tests and approvals from the Philippines to CPK Shanghai to CPK USA and back and forth whether the dish is new or the ingredients are just revised. This is to ensure food quality and taste are still  at its best.

Among the 25 new menu items, here are a some of the bestsellers I got to taste. Feast your eyes, dear foodies!

A good appetizer that California Pizza Kitchen offers is the Karaage Chicken. It can be described as Japanese-style fried chicken cubes served with a side of ponzu citrus-dipping sauce. Not only can it be an appetizer, but also a viand we can pair with rice.

The Dynamite Seafood dish may sound a bit scary to non-spicy foodies, but fret not, because it isn't as spicy as it seems. Especially made for Filipinos' taste, this appetizer has hints of spices only as compared to its counterpart in Shanghai or USA. It has shrimps, baby clams, mussels and calarami sauteed in marinara sauce, and served with toasted garlic baguette slices.

Disclaimer: the photo does not do justice on the food - you must try this! It's called the Roasted Duck Salad. It has shredded roasted duck breast, spring mix, julienne cucumber, edamame, celery, roasted peanuts tossed in a spring onion vinaigrette and topped with crispy wantons and tossed sesame seeds. The salad is garnished with hoisin sauce, which is a great combination to the roasted duck.

Spaghettini Vongole is a delicious pasta dish with mixed seafood containing clams, shrimp, calamari, and zucchini in white wine and broth, tossed with spaghettini and basil.

Roasted Duck Pizza is one of a kind. It's the first time I've encountered a restaurant offering such a pizza variant. It contains shredded duck, shiitake mushrooms, mozzarella and hoisin sauce. I love its garnishing of wontons, more hoisin sauce and slivered scallions.

Black Pepper Beef Linguini is another pasta dish that caught my taste buds. The beef is sauteed with onions and peppers in black pepper sauce and topped with slivered scallions.

California Pizza Kitchen offers both regular crush and thin-crust pizzas. This one is called Roasted Artichoke and Spinach Pizza cooked on thin crust. It has oven-roasted artichoke hearts, spinach, garlic, fontina, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses with spinach artichoke sauce. I love this pizza!

This homegrown Mudpie made with Oreo would really be a great dessert to top off your CPK experience. It contains ice cream that is especially made by CPK chefs, where it mixes the flavors and textures of chocolate-coated Oreo cookies, hot fudge, whipped cream and Oreo cookie. It's not very sweet nor bland, so it's really a must try.

With a wide array and better set of choices, diners at the California Pizza Kitchen can surely treat the palettes to a global adventure right on the table. We can be as adventurous as we want to mix and match orders according to what will satisfy us.

What I like about CPK is that they are customer-centered in such a way that they give in to customer's wants as much as they can. For example: if you want to order a dish no longer offered but previously available in their menu, you can request for it and they'll see if they still have the ingredients. Another example: if you don't want nuts, garlic, onions on your dish, you can inform them and they'll suggest if the dish will still taste delicious even without those ingredients.

For me, California Pizza Kitchen sets apart itself from all other pizza chains because of their menu offerings that you cannot find in other restaurants. From appetizers to desserts, you'd surely find something on their menu that will definitely make your tummy happy.

To date, CPK can be found in the following locations: Glorietta 3, Alabang Town Center, Shangri-la Plaza Mall, TriNoma, Greenhills Promenade Mall, Power Plant Mall, and Greenbelt 5.

New beverages are in CPK's funnel already. Watch out for it in September or October.

Check out their website or Facebook fan page for updates on promos, giveaways, and new menu offerings. Bon apetite!

2 comments:

Your pic of the duck is so tempting and making me cannot resist it.

Which one would you like to try - the salad or the pizza with roasted duck? :)

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