Gyoza pizza probably isn’t something you’ve seen — or eaten — before. But it is, in a way, exactly what it sounds like: a deconstructed dumpling that uses fried gyoza dough as the crust and an assortment of traditional (and not-so-traditional) dumplings, fillings and sauces as toppings.
“People here in America love dumplings … we serve a lot of gyoza at (Daughter Thai),” said Ramintra Korkerd, the manager of Gyoza Pizza. “You guys also love pizza. So, we thought about combining (them) together. It looks like pizza, it’s the same idea.”
For instance, Spicy Tobiko Gyoza is made with a water pan-fried crispy skirt gyoza, along with a cheese blend, spicy mayo, a tobiko and seaweed sprinkle, shitake mushrooms, and pork, or chicken. It is served with sweet black soy sauce, cilantro ginger sauce and chili oil.
The concept is the brainchild of the owners of Daughter Thai, a popular four-year-old restaurant in the River North Art District. But Gyozo Pizza operates entirely, for now, out of one of the many “ghost kitchens” that sprung up during the pandemic for companies that only do delivery service. As a result, the only way to try it is through food delivery apps like Uber Eats and Doordash.
“We don’t want to serve it in-house yet,” Korkerd said. “We just want to try the market first, which is going (well), but we want to target more people to know about us first.”
Gyozo Pizza is located inside the commissary-style ghost kitchen at 810 Vallejo St. in Denver under the same roof as more than a dozen other restaurants. Now that the pandemic is over, these facilities are being used partly to help some restaurants expand business through delivery, and partly as a low-risk way to launch and test new ideas, according to Korkerd.
“It’s been going pretty good, people love it,” Korkerd said. “We’re just gonna take it day by day.”
Based on the market response over the next few months, Daughter Thai’s owners may decide to open Gyozo Pizza in its own location (the restaurant doesn’t have the kitchen space to add the pizzas to its menu), she said.
And Korkerd is optimistic. “We have something like this in Thailand,” she said. “We want people in America and Denver to try something new from Asia, and we don’t see this in any way yet.”