Family restaurant chain Olive Hill offers up a whopping 10 pizza varieties as part of their eat-until-you-drop lunch special.

All-you-can-eat restaurants and courses can be found all over Japan, covering much more than just the standard fare of yakiniku barbecue and hotel buffets. Gourmands, or just plain gluttons, have been able to feast themselves on french fries, tacos, cookies, and even enough raw eggs to put Rocky Balboa to shame. The mighty pizza, king of foods, can often be found too, but now Olive Hill – not to be confused with the horror video game Silent Hill, which SoraNews24 cannot, in good conscience, recommend going to for pizza – are letting customers stuff their faces for next to nothing.

▼ Customers who order something from the menu can then add the pizza and soup tabehodai (all-you-can-eat) for just 300 yen (US$2.70), or the same with salad as well, for 400 yen.

The offer is limited to lunchtime (11 a.m. – 3 p.m.) and is available to customers who order one of their fresh pasta, rice doria or grill dishes. We decided to go for the Bolognese Doria for the entirely reasonable price of 298 yen.

▼ With tax included, a very wallet-friendly repast indeed

Good price, check! But what of the pizza? If it tastes like lukewarm slices of soggy, corrugated cardboard then the deal’s off. Almost immediately upon ordering, quick as a flash the first slices of pizza arrived; it’s almost as if they knew we’d be plundering them of pizza before we even sat down.

With the first bite, we noticed the harmony of gooey cheese and the fragrant crisp dough base. Maybe not the finest we’ve ever eaten but it had everything you need from a slice of pizza. As soon as we polished off the first two slices the next two were thundering towards us. Without time to even catch our breath we moved on to the two types of the ten-variety tabehodai.

On ordering the all-you-can-eat pizza course we were given a special card to display on our table. If you’re not careful, or just exceptionally hungry, the pizza will keep coming at the same furious pace unless you show the side of the card indicating you need a break.

The more important side, with ‘Give me more PIZZA!!!’ (note the three exclamation marks) informs the staff that you are both willing and able to continue sampling their pizza wares. On a side note, and while not something I could legally condone, this is a card I would be tempted to half-inch and wear on a daily basis in hopes of pizzery reward.

▼ The card announcing to the world, but mostly to the staff, that you remain unsated.

Then, the doria arrived. At only 298 yen you might expect a tiny portion fit only to be a side dish, but the size of the doria we were presented with put paid to that preconception. In other words, it was a fairly hefty amount of food in itself.

While perhaps a Japanese re-imagining of an Italian or French gratin, the mix of creamy cheese and bechamel sauce-topped turmeric rice was good enough that you wouldn’t think it had cost so little. Even without the pizza it would have been worth making the trip here for lunch.

Before we could contemplate the excellent value of the doria, the next wave of pizza came crashing in. This time, topped with nori (seaweed) flakes.

And then there was more.

While the photos may look a bit same-y, the flavours were fairly different, with the standard fare of cheese or tomato bases mixed up with more Japanese varieties like Mentai-ko (spicy marinated fish eggs) and Okonomiyaki too. With pizzas being delivered to our plates at such a brisk pace, we were able to try a good amount of different varieties, and we’d definitely recommend the experience to hungry pizza-lovers. There are several Olive Hill restaurants around Tokyo, so if you come across one at lunchtime, be sure to stop by and try out their cheapo lunch deal.

Restaurant Information

Oribu No Oka /オリーブの丘 小豆沢店
Address: Tokyo-to, Itabashi-ku, Azusawa 3-10-9
東京都板橋区小豆沢3−10−9
Hours: 6 a.m. – 2 a.m. (Lunchtime 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.)

Images: ©SoraNews24
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