Piacere 横須賀

This is my first review of a pizza place and I tried to think why it took so long to talk about pizza. First thought was that Japanese pizzas are too small, or too soggy, or too sunny side egg-ish. That's all true, but actually there are no Japanese restaurants in town that that focus on pizza are there? Sure there are those "Italian" or イタリアン places, but nothing specializing in pizza. No, I'm not counting Domino's. So Piacere is a welcome addition.

Piacere is inviting

Piacere opened up at the end of January. Any place that boasts a wood fired oven has got the first step down toward good pizza. That automatically means a crispy crust - and Piacere really delivered on the crust and the rest of the meal as well. The lunchtime crowds also backup that claim.

For lunch they have good sets for 1000 Yen. Starting with a salad which was truly unique. The red daikon was the first I had ever seen here or anywhere else. Kind of looks like a fruit salad doesn't it? Almost like tiny watermelon slices.

The pizza was the real star. Below is the homemade sausage and roasted onion pizza. Crust was excellent and tasty. The size was just perfect for lunch and satisfying. The quality of the ingredients was evident.

I was taken upstairs to sit, but if you get the chance to sit at the counter please do so so - you can see the oven and the action in the kitchen.

Piacere means nice to meet you. As a noun it means pleasure. As a verb it means to please. Use it as you desire.

Piacere has a good menu with both Japanese and English - making it easy to do a comparison and maybe even learn a bit.

Piacere is located in the small alley that goes between Tori no Su and the Autoyakitori machine. And they are across from Tainan Market and Sumiyoshi. If you don't know where any of those are you can find them on the blog map. They are open every day and all seats are non-smoking.

Besides pizza, Piacere also has pasta set lunches.

Kanji sidebar.
Homemade: 自家製 is a term you'll see often on menus, so it's a good one to know.
自 means oneself and is made up of the kanji for "eye" 目with a small stroke or dot on top. So you can imagine that dot being your finger pointing between your eyes - much like we do when referring to ourselves.
家 means home or house. The squared off element on the top with a little dot is the roof with a chimney. It's best to remember that element alone as house. The element on the lower part is pig. People used to keep their pigs in the house long ago so together the meaning of house or home works and should be easy to remember. You'll see this element as the last kanji in many restaurant names.
製 is a bit more complex. It's made up of 制 on top which is system and 衣 on the bottom which means garment. System itself is made up of 牛cow, (the upside down U under cow) belt, and the two vertical stokes on the right - saber. Together, the top part is a "system" for moving cows to the butcher (which the saber represents). Now putting it ALL together we have "all garments have a system where a tag is placed on them showing where it was 'made in.'"

Lastly the three kanji together literally means one's home made in. Or Homemade.