Saying a pizza is the best in Hua Hin (or any city you are in) is only a personal preference, everyone has their own preferred style of pizza and for me I actually like to mix it up a bit. Generally if I want a quality Wood Fired Napolitana pizza, I’ll eat in at a restaurant, because the quality just isn’t as good when delivered. But if I’m ordering online, I can eat all different types depending how I feel, including a Pizza Company thick crust pizza. So I won’t even touch the whole “best pizza” thing in this post, but I wanted to write a little on the quality of the Da Mario Pizza, and in particular, their home delivered pizza. I’ve eaten in at this restaurant at least 5 times and generally get their Margherita with Mozzarella di Buffala, it’s definitely worth the extra bucks (or bahts) for the fresh Mozzarella! But recently I’ve tried their home delivery using Food Panda – and in the last 3 weeks, tried 3 different pizzas and was very impressed with the quality and freshness of all of them, in fact, it wasn’t much different to the quality you get fresh out of the oven when dining in their restaurant.
There’s some great Pizza restaurants here in Hua Hin doing the real traditional wood fired oven pizzas exceptionally well, however I find that there is a big difference on the pizza you get when dining in, to the one you get on the back of a motorbike. For good reason too, food is always best when it’s fresh out of the oven, but the other thing I’ve found is some of these pizzas being delivered deconstructed, where half of the ingredients are in plastic bags for you to construct yourself once it arrives. I understand why this is done, especially when ordering Pizza’s with ingredients like Rocket, Fresh Mozzerella (Di Buffala or Buratta) as it needs to be served fresh, however to me, the whole point of ordering a pizza is to have all the work done for you, and you just have to open the box and start eating. In my opinion, I think these deconstructed pizzas are better left off the home delivery menu. But – like I said, these pizza’s are EXCEPTIONAL if you’re dining in, just not a home delivery option in my opinion.
The 3 recent pizzas I ordered from Da Mario were spot on, and exactly what I expect from a home delivery pizza. It wasn’t a complete rustic wood fired napolitana pizza, but I’m not looking for that in a home delivery pizza. The important thing for me is that there’s a good coating of cheese and other ingredients (not scabby like the Pizza Company can often be at times) and the pizza is still rather hot when it arrives. I generally have the oven preheated to warm it up a little when it arrives anyway, however the 3 times I’ve ordered from Da Mario, the pizza was so fresh and hot, I didn’t need to put it in the oven, it was perfect on arrival! Ready to eat straight away.
The price varied for each pizza as I ordered a different one each time, but generally you’re looking around 280 – 320 baht for a decent pizza, which is a bit less than some of the other guys doing home delivery pizza. Even Pizza Company can be more pricey than Da Mario depending on what you get. They also have a great selection of pizzas to choose from, and you customise it by adding/removing ingredients if you want to.
The delivery is done by Food Panda, so some credit has to go to these guys as the delivery time has a lot to do with how fresh the pizza is. The delivery time was super quick! All three orders, there was about a 15-20 minute preparation time and 10 minute delivery time. Using the new Food Panda app you can track the dude on delivering the pizza, and they’ve been very efficient. They’re at the Restaurant door the moment the pizza is ready, and zap across town pretty quickly. In my experience Food Panda (Hua Hin) have always been fast and reliable, however I have seen photos on the Hua Hin Food Groups of pizzas with half the topping missing due to the reckless driving of the motor bike riders. Anyway, enough of the negative talk, but yes – they have been known to present some “dropped a couple of times” pizzas, but in my experience, 100% satisfaction!
After paying the delivery surcharge and a little tip for the driver, the total cost for the pizza to my door was around 350 baht per pizza (give or take), and all 3 pizzas were absolutely delicious.
If you’re looking for a good Pizza Delivery, these guys really do a fantastic job in terms of quality and price! A big thumbs up to Da Mario for consistently doing a top notch home delivery pizza! Grazie e buona giornata!
