I have been working on turning the café side of the #10255 LEGO Creator Assembly Square into a pizzeria, which got me looking for inspirations, and of course lots of pizza pieces. It is interesting to note that LEGO recently released several pizzeria related sets, which are definitely great resources for both design ideas and useful pieces. So let’s talk about pizza today!
There are quite a few sets that feature a pizzeria, or at least a pizza oven – not necessarily as the main model, but as part of the set. Good examples of some of the larger sets are the #60026 LEGO City Town Square and #60031 LEGO City Corner from 2013, and the #41058 LEGO Friends Heartlake Shopping Mall from 2014.
The first set with a full on pizzeria was the #6350 LEGO Town Pizza To Go set from 1994 (see first image above). This set was released in 2002 as #10036 LEGO Town Pizza To Go. It features an Italian style pizzeria with white walls, arched window, a pizza oven, and a pizza delivery truck. I would say that this is still one of the best pizzeria sets to date. The building has such a simple but pleasant design.
Not much pizza related stuff was happening again until 2014, when we got the Pizza Delivery Man in LEGO Collectible Minifigure Series 12. One of my favorite LEGO photographers, JéRôMe, got him to do some stunts in the picture above. He comes with a printed pizza box, new style printed pizza, a red baseball cap with pizza logo, and a green shirt with red and white stripes on the collar. If you want to make a pizzeria, this minifig is going to be one of your best resources for useful accessories.
While it is a small set, it is worth mentioning the #41092 LEGO Friends Stephanie’s Pizzeria from 2015, because it includes a nice little pizza oven, a red scooter, and other useful pieces that could easily be incorporated into a larger layout.
After all those years of no pizza or little pizza, in 2017 we got flooded with pizza related sets. First of all, there is the #60150 LEGO City Pizza Van, which is already a fan favorite. Then there is the #41311 LEGO Friends Heartlake Pizzeria with beautiful styling that could easily fit into any LEGO City setup with little modification needed. I really like the pizza oven and the rest of the interior as well. Both of these sets include not just regular round pizzas, but pizza slices as well.
The #70910 LEGO Batman Movie Scarecrow Delivery is another important set for pizza connoisseurs, because it comes with a new 2×2 printed tile pizza box, and a slarge pizza delivery scooter, plus a number of pizza pieces – including a monster pizza.
And while the newly released #10834 LEGO DUPLO Pizzeria is meant for younger LEGO fans, it does include three large printed pizza pieces that could be added to regular LEGO sets as giant pizzas, or as signs for a pizza restaurants.
Speaking of decorated pieces, there are a number of stickers with pizzeria logos and decorations for pizza boxes, but the most unique ones are definitely the printed elements. As I mentioned previously, there are two printed pizza boxes; one that comes with the Collectible Minifigure, and the other in The LEGO Batman Movie set. And there are five different pizza pieces (seven if you also count the DUPLO pizzas pictured below).
The first printed 2×2 round tile pizza piece was released in 1994. The tile itself is yellow, and it has two versions. The original version has an x at the bottom to create connection points, and the second version was released in 2011 with a round stud-holder as the connection point. This is important as you can make the pizza pieces connect to a surface in different ways.
The new style pizza also has two versions. The one that comes with the Collectible Minifigure is a pepperoni pizza printed on a medium-nougat color tile with x at the bottom. The second version is also a pepperoni pizza with some precut lines. It is printed on a tan 2×2 round tile. Then there is a small pizza slice piece with a veggie pizza decoration that is printed on a quarter round tile. It only comes in the LEGO City Pizza Van and the LEGO Friends Pizzeria so far, but hopefully it will be added to more set in the future.
The most important part of a pizzeria is the pizza oven, pizza pieces, pizza boxes, and pizzeria workers. Once you have those figured out, you can convert pretty much any building to a pizzeria, or even build one from scratch. If you need some starter sets for your project, you can find the currently available pizza-themed sets at the Online LEGO Shop.
And if you would like to get more inspiration for design, I recommend searching on flickr for images. One of my favorites is this beautiful LEGO Modular Building style Italian pizza restaurant by Dutch-builder (you can see more photos by clicking on his name).
What do you think? Have you ever tried building a LEGO pizzeria? Or do you have any favorites from other builders? How do you like the LEGO pizza related sets released so far? Feel free to share and discuss in the comment section below!
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And pizzas also appeared frequently in the TMNT sets…
And Toy Story!…
http://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=7598-1#T=P
Well, pizzas were a big part of the theme when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were created as a cartoon.
The Toy Story pizza fan also has printed doors, which is a nice piece. 🙂
Are we going to see the end result of your creation once it’s complete? 🙂
For sure! I’m just waiting for some parts to arrive from BL. 🙂
Pizzazz!
What other Italian food could you include in the restaurant… Spaghetti might be hard to pull off… Lasagna?…
Italian bread, maybe? 😀
Uhmm yeah, the breadsticks, “grissini”, it appears they’re called… And salads…
What an odd coincidence. I gave my grandson the City Square set with it’s pizza delivery scooter for Christmas. Then I bought used City Corner and Town Square sets online. Both the used sets have pizzerias. That’s a lot of pizza for one tiny town! (And we’ll be doubled up on the bike shops too.)
So I will be converting the pizzeria you illustrate above into something else I haven’t figured out yet — maybe a grocery shop or a sandwich store — and turning the pizzeria from the City Corner to a downstairs Bakery and an upstairs apartment.
The big 2-storey bike shop from the Town Square will become a downstairs Toy Shop and an upstairs Pet Shop, I think. We’ll see what ideas Alex has when he finds out the additional buildings will be coming throughout the coming year.
We’ll also have 2 busses but it will be easy for the yellow one to become a school bus. But why doesn’t Lego ever do schools?????
Nice conversion ideas! It’s always fun to redecorate rooms and stores, isn’t it? 😀
The LEGO Friends line has a couple of schools, which can be used for minifigs as well. One even comes with a school bus! But yeah, there should definitely be a school in regular LEGO City sets as well. I also find it strange that LEGO shies away from schools and hospitals. Also zoos! DUPLO has some wonderful zoo sets, and I’m not sure why they are not translated to regular LEGO as well. 😕
There were some school sets in the old Homemaker theme, as well…
There aren’t really any libraries, either, although the book parts might be too rare to pull it off, and you’d have to settle on printed tiles or something…
Yes, libraries are missing also. I think the fear is that a library would be very much like the Town Hall; too boring. I think a small bookstore would be more interesting. Books can be represented by tiles, as you said, and maybe have a few regular books also. 🙂
I surfed Bricklink one day not too long ago looking up the pizza sets too. It’s fun to see how many there are over the years. I have the new van waiting to be built and I’m going to be looking for that scarecrow set too. I know my daughter will get the Friends set if she hasn’t gotten it already (I honestly lose track).
You forgot City corner from 2009!
It’s the same as the #60031 LEGO City Corner from 2013, which I did mention. 😉
Personally I like the pizza delivery boy’s pizza the best, however the slices are nice might pick up a couple of those off of Bricklink. Speaking of Bricklink I just made a video about how I got LEGO parts that don’t exist! https://youtu.be/750HztY7RmE
What’s that? Test prints?
Test prints usually come in red. These are likely from LEGOLAND Parks. Especially the European LEGOLAND Park workshops can order special colors for their projects. 🙂
Most of those unusual colors actually come from LEGOLAND Park workshops, as they can order their own special colors for their projects. Some of these make it out of the workshops to BrickLink. I have a number of them as well. I like your transparent Technic pins! 😀
“…café side of the #10255 LEGO Creator Assembly Hall into a pizzeria…” don’t you mean Assembly Square???
Yeah, of course! 😀
Oh how did I miss this post? I love all the pizza options. There will definitely be Pizza competition in my city and coincidentally enough I had actually hopped on the computer to order pizza when I decided I would come over here and tell you that I secured all the 9v track I needed for my train to circle my city. I’m super excited and yes it was expensive. I had minimal track from the amount that came with my train and I had to invest $100 to complete the track but I’m happy that I was able to get it all. Now I know exactly how much space I have for the city. So things are moving along.
That’s awesome! While 9V train accessories are expensive, they will serve you very well, and on the long term it actually ends up being cheaper as you don’t have to bother with batteries. 😉
Even though the 9V system’s been scrapped, it seems like there are 3rd party companies out there specializing in the system, like ME Models… Although I’m not really familiar with the 9V scene…
http://www.me-models.com/store/
Yes, there are a number of similar companies because the 9V system is still immensely popular with LEGO and train fans. For a large LEGO train layout – and definitely for shows and other events – the 9V system is a must. You can’t run your trains at BrickWorld on batteries. 😉
I”ll hold on to that link. It’ll likely be some time before I have the space to expand my train set up and pretty likely those tracks could be $6-$8 a track for straight instead of $4 next time I want to expand.
I guess you’d be able to find other train enthusiasts with better tips, as well..
I just own a single 53400 curved track, myself… Don’t know what to do with it…
Keep it. It will be so valuable at some point that you can retire rich! 🙄