El Grego does not sit conveniently on a main road, nor does it cater to the passing trade of day-trippers or delivery drivers. Instead, it has tucked itself into the quiet edges of Hua Hin, as if by design — a place for those who already know what they’re looking for, or for those with enough curiosity to drive a little further.
Opened by Laila, a Thai national with deep ties to Australia, and her partner Greg, an Australian expat, El Grego offers something both familiar and slightly unexpected: a handmade, thick-crust pizza with a notably Western sensibility, served not in a frenetic pizzeria but in an atmosphere of measured calm.
The pizzas here are not minimalist, fire-kissed Neapolitan affairs. Nor are they the overly engineered, frozen-in-origin pies found in supermarket freezers. What El Grego serves is something heartier: deep-pan pizzas made with deliberate generosity — dense with toppings, layered with homemade Italian-style sausage, and built on a base that is clearly intended to satisfy, not just decorate an Instagram feed.
It’s a style more reminiscent of the kind of suburban pizza joints one might find in Australia or the American Midwest — comfort food served without apology or pretension, best enjoyed with friends, and ideally followed by nothing more ambitious than an afternoon nap.
There is, on certain days, a pizza buffet — something of a novelty in these parts, and one that clearly appeals to the expat clientele who make up a large part of El Grego’s following. It’s a gesture that feels as much about community as about quantity.
Laila, who spent over a decade immersed in Australian food culture, speaks with clarity about her motivations: “I wanted to replicate the quality Western flavours I learned to love,” she says. It’s a common refrain among Thais who’ve lived abroad — the desire to bring back a version of what they experienced, refined through time and distance. What makes El Grego different is the specificity of that replication. These pizzas are not local approximations — they are, in intent and execution, true to their original form.
And while the focus is firmly on pizza for now (with a Mexican menu to follow in due course), there’s something else happening here. A rebalancing, perhaps, of work and life. The restaurant is born not just out of culinary ambition but out of personal recalibration: a move away from the noise and fast pace of tourist hotspots, toward something slower, steadier.
“We wanted to step back from the loud, party-driven environment,” Laila explains. El Grego is the result — part pizzeria, part sanctuary.
It is not a restaurant that sets out to please everyone. There is no sprawling menu, no pan-Asian confusion, no claim to fusion. Instead, the pitch is narrow but sincere: this is a place for those who miss thick pizza the way it was done back home.
So, why go? For one, the prices are strikingly fair. For another, the commitment to craft is real. But perhaps most of all, because El Grego doesn’t try to be everywhere at once. It is proudly itself — and in a town full of places that bend to trends, that’s a kind of quiet boldness worth noticing.
As the owners like to say: If you know, you know.
Author: Editorial Staff
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