menus in their more casual, laid-back eateries. Toppers Brick Oven Pizza, which was founded in 1995 and has its headquarters in Pennsylvania, is the first self-contained, totally portable authentic pizzeria system. And the brick-lined oven is designed to cook made-to-order gourmet $7 pizzas in under three minutes, according to Martin Wigg, executive vice president of Toppers Brick Oven Pizza, Inc.

The pizza ovens have been test marketed at the Southampton Princess, where hotel officials say they have sold well.

The pizzas were first tried out in the Neptune night club and Lobby Lounge.

Assistant food and beverage manager Graham Mawer said they were currently doing very well with them.

`The pizzas have been very successful,'' he said. "Right now we are offering two choices cheese or pepperoni and we may be expanding to the supreme pizza.'' Mr. Mawer added: "From our sales we have done well with the Toppers pizzas and the response from guests has been good. We serve them in our lobby lounge.

"These pizzas are very convenient because they only take a minute and a half to make and the cocktail servers can cook them.'' Toppers president Paul Esposito said the product was voted "best overall new product'' at the 1997 Ne York Restaurant and Food Service show.

He said the company decided to try the pizza out in Bermuda because "we felt the resort industry could be an important part of our business.

"We felt the pizza did well in Bermuda, it is excellent pizza and it is served quickly because it's baked in our patented brick oven in two and a half minutes. The pizza is pre-prepared, frozen and delivered to our account. The pizzas are placed in the oven by the operator.

"They are fairly popular in the US bars and taverns, hotels such as the Marriotts and Holiday Inns as well as two horse-racing tracks, and amusement parks.'' He added: "We have started it up in Bermuda and we are working through Butterfield and Vallis. They are now representing our product to the resort industry. We supply the ovens to the hotels.

"Toppers is also going to launch the pizzas in the Bahamas. Bermuda was the first of our islands.'' He said the reason why the company decided to do the testing at Southampton Princess was because representatives from the hotel had come to one of their food shows and "was impressed by our product.

"This type of food seems to be the new direction of food services in general -- quick-serve high quality products.'' Toppers is already talking about expanding locally to Marriott's Castle Harbour Resort, Flanagan's and the Hog Penny.