Event Report: Pizza Festa!

Last month, Ushiku brought back one of its yearly events after a four year hiatus. COVID either completely got rid of or canceled some events around the world. The Ushiku Pizza Festa was one of those events, and was canceled in 2020. Then, on March 9th 2024, Ushiku's Pizza Festa made a glorious comeback. The event kicked off with music and quite a lot of pizza food stalls and food trucks. There was no way Ibaraki Eats was going to miss out on that.

The Ushiku Pizza Festa at the Ushiku Chateau

The Pizza Festa was held at the Ushiku Chateau. If you have never been there, it is a nice looking chateau that sells their own wine.

Unfortunately, this was a solo adventure but I vowed to try as much pizza as I could. I arrived at Pizza Festa at around 10:00am. (Pizza for breakfast) The parking for the chateau was nearly full when I got there but I luckily found a spot. I parked and walked up to the chateau gate to check out the event map.

Pizza Festa Map

15 different pizza places were in attendance at Pizza Festa! Some I knew like Tsukuba's own Amici, and others I had never heard of. I mentally prepared myself as to what pizza places to check out and headed into the chateau.

Inside the Chateau and the Lines

The chateau had live music playing, a school cheerleading event, and lines. Lots of lines. I really wanted to try the Ushiku Chicago style deep dish pizza, but that line was incredibly long. So I went to Veg Pizza and another long line. All the lines inside the chateau were about a 30-40 minute wait. Except for Pizza La. Yes, Pizza La was there and nobody was lining up for them. I decided to give up on getting a pizza inside the chateau grounds and headed to the pizza area next to the parking lot where all the pizza food trucks were.

The Pizza Food Trucks Outside the Chateau

There were about 7 pizza food trucks to choose from and the lines were around 10 minutes. I headed to the first pizza food truck in the line up. Pizza Queen.

Pizza Queen

Pizza Queen is a Brazilian style pizza food truck from Gunma prefecture. All of their pizzas were 1000 yen which I could totally get behind.The trade off though, is that the pizza is pretty small. The size of a personal pan pizza.

The Menu

The menu brought the Frango Com Catupiry which was chicken and cream cheese. The Portuguesa which had ham, cheese, egg and onions. Calabresa Com Mussarela which brought smoked sausage and cheese. The Baiana which is a spicy pizza that brings parmesan cheese and minced cabereasea. The other pizzas are self explanatory.

I decided to order two pizzas from Pizza Queen and then line up at another pizza food truck while having my Pizza Queen.

Calabresa com Mussarela

The calabresa wasn't too bad. The sausage was good and the cheese was tasty. No tomato sauce anywhere which I didn't mind. It was a good pizza overall. Not great mind you but not bad. 1000 yen for the size may be a bit expensive though.

Frango com Catupiry

The next pizza was the frango. This pizza was...interesting. Chicken and cream cheese. I am not sure if I have ever had chicken and cream cheese before. The cream cheese was good and the chicken was good but weird. The chicken went well with the cream cheese but it didn't at the same time. I honestly am at a loss for words to explain it. It tastes like the pizza had small pieces of chicken seasoning on it with streaks of cream cheese. It was meaty, I will give it that. But it was just weird. Not sure if I will be having this pizza again.

While eating my frango and calabresa, I was in line for another pizza food truck. This food truck is from Moriya City and it comes from a pizza place called Il Nesso.

II Nesso

Let me backup a bit. I was having a delicious cocoa cappuccino a week before Pizza Festa at Coffee Bar Stove at Namiki Mujirushi. (By the way, if you haven't tried Stove's cocoa cappuccino, you should) I mentioned to the owner that I would be attending Ushiku Pizza Festa and his recommendation was Il Nesso. He told me that Il Nesso uses the freshest Ibaraki vegetables and ingredients for their pizza. They use vegetables from a lot of farmers that attend the Village Market Tsukuba and they used to attend the Village Market a while back. I trust Stove's recommendation and decided to definitely give them a try. One week later, I am placing my order at Il Nesso's food truck.

The Menu

There were only three things available at the Il Nesso pizza truck:

The margarita pizza, the mortadella pizza which brought mortadella ham and pistachio sauce, and the arancini which is a rice croquet.

White Sauce Arancini

The first thing I ordered was the arancini to hold me over while I waited for the mortadella pizza to be cooked. If you are wondering what an arancini is, it is a croquet with rice and sauce inside of it. There were two choices for the arancini. The tomato sauce arancini, or the white sauce arancini. I chose the white sauce arancini and I am happy I chose that. Biting into that rice croquet was a wonderful experience and a first time for me. The outer crispy shell was delicious but what surprised me was that the inside of the wall of that crispy shell was lined with rice. I thought all the rice would be in the middle of the croquet, but that is where the delicious creamy white sauce was. I should have ordered four more of these amazing arancinis. After waiting for a few minutes, my pizza was ready.

Mortadella Pizza

The mortadella looked fantastic and I couldn't wait to try it. The wind was strong during the festival so I decided to try the mortadella in my car. I grabbed a slice and gave it a try. Two things crossed my mind after I tried that slice of pizza.

One, I need to go to Il Nesso's restaurant in Moriya as soon as possible.

Two, I am not sure if any of the other pizza places around Pizza Festa could even come close to how awesome this pizza was.

Fresh. That is the keyword for this pizza. Fresh vegetables, fresh ham, and a fresh crust and dough. Everything in this pizza was perfect. The crust had that kind of mochi cooked texture to it which most Japanese naporitan pizzas have. The cheese was delicious and the pistachio sauce enhanced the cheese and ham. I ate about half of the pizza and saved the other half for my wife. She tried the slices later that night after work and agreed that we would have to go to Il Nesso soon.

Ushiku Gourmet Festival down the street

After trying the mortadella, I walked around the Pizza Festa a little bit more. All the lines were very long by then and I decided to end my pizza feast. As I was about to leave, I noticed a lot of people walking away from the chateau and heading to the park nearby. I followed the crowd and that is when I stumbled onto the Ushiku Gourmet Festival. 

No pizza at this festival. This festival had all the Japanese festival food like takoyaki, yaki soba, and karaage. There were crepe trucks, coffee stalls, and one of my personal favorites, Food Truck Nakazawa. One of the best washoku food trucks in Ibaraki. If you want to know more about them, check out my Ibaraki Eats post on Food Truck Nakazawa: 

https://regaladom24.wixsite.com/website/post/washoku-on-wheels

I ordered a plum soda from Nakazawa, talked with the owners for a little while, and then continued to walk around the festival. Then it dawned on me, the Pizza Festa customers who don't want to wait 40 minutes for a pizza make their way here. Very smart Ushiku City. Unfortunately, I had somewhere to be so I had to end my adventure. 

Ushiku Pizza Festa was a fun event filled with different pizzas, music, and another event down the road. I had a lot of fun and hope to attend next year. I hope you can too. For now, I plan to go to Il Nesso in Moriya and report back to you on how great it is. 

See you next year Pizza Festa!