K! Pizzacone

I saw this store opening on Eater earlier this year and wondered the same thing everyone else was wondering: “Pizza IN A CONE? NO WAY!” and then lulz, then forgetting the place. Today, I remembered it, even though I came to this corner exclusively for Kyochon. I guess I got caught up in the cone-ness. The surprise value has gotta be what sells most of the cones here.

It’s on a great corner for recent restaurant openings, but it’s currently under some scaffolding, so it might not be off to the start they would have hoped for. Looking at this place, I can’t imagine the break-even point being too far into the future. The buildout cost practically nothing (as you can see in the pictures) and the ovens they use to cook the thing aren’t that expensive. They have the cones made somewhere else, keep toppings behind the counter, it only takes one person to operate the store if it’s not lunch or dinner, and I can’t imagine three people behind that counter unless one was support (the cone station is a one-person area).

I perused the menu:

There was another part of the menu showing custom Pizzacones that were more expensive. With these, they said you could have as many toppings as you wanted, but it didn’t mean you got more toppings like you would at a regular pizza place. The volume of the cone is finite (and can be determined by the equation Ï€*r2*h/3 – it’s true. I looked it up) so the custom Pizzacone is irrefutably NOT worth the money.

I bought three, even though I only wanted to try it and go to Kyochon – I figured I couldn’t write a sufficient blog post just trying one Pizzacone, so I suffer for you, dear readers.

Those are all regular-sized Pizzacones, and I started with the Breakfast Pizzacone.

Look at the gooeyish, processed mozz. I was expecting this to be bad, but surprisingly, it wasn’t. I was certainly irritated to spend $3.60 plus tax on this thing, but I wasn’t dissatisfied with the flavor. The egg is pre-cooked, the bacon is pre-cooked, the cone is pre-cooked. The only thing cooking in this one was the cheese. Next up was the Mushroom and Pepperoni on Wheat:

I thought it was a one-time thing with the previous Pizzacone, but this one confirmed my suspicions: the top was relatively cool while the end of the cone was mouth-scaldingly hot. I was chowing down on the first one, figured I could pop the last piece in my mouth. I bit down, and it blew up on me. I’d say “lesson learned,” but this is a defect in the system; they can probably switch their convection ovens around to fix this.

Anyway, the last one was the Steak and Cheese Pizzacone:

I feel that steak and cheese pizza is supposed to taste more steaky. Again, even on the last cone, the cone epicenter was bubbly hot. No mouth burning this time.

I was wondering what other foodstuff/shape combinations I could come up with that could be more popular. Here’s a few I came up with:

K! Sushicube
K! Burgerhombus
K! Sausageplane
K! Bagelsock

A sock is a shape, yeah? I had more, but those are the good ones. If you have any to suggest, put them in the comments section for the owners of this store to get some ideas for their next venture.

Like I said, I was expecting terrible and it came out average. Not memorable other than the shape. If I was on this corner, craving pizza, didn’t care about money, and wasn’t too much of a food connoisseur, I’d eat here. Take the last two qualifiers out and substitute “blacked out,” and I’d eat here again.

“Hey Hagan, remember that time we went to K! Pizzacone?”

No sir, I cannot recall.

K! Pizzacone – site
325 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10021
(646) 823-9318‎