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Pizza Express

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Cuisine: Other

335 Upper Street, Islington, N1

Nearest Tube: Angel

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Phone: 020-7226 9542

Open: meals served 11.30am-midnight daily

Payment options: AmEX, DC, JBC, MC, V

 

 

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A square meal at Pizza Express

 

Enter the Theo: served as if made by some peasant so rustic as never to have conceived of the circle

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Everybody likes Pizza Express. If you want to eat out cheaply, it’s possible to find more interesting meals at the price, in certain gastropubs, or Vietnamese places, say, if you’ve done your homework and know just where to go. But for mindless dependability, there’s no beating Pizza Express. You can have a Margherita for £5.75 with a glass of Montepulciano D’Abruzzo for £3.95 — perfectly satisfying and authentic food for under a tenner, usually in a cheerful and bustling atmosphere.

Of course, being so reliable, it’s also predictable. Nobody wants to change a winning formula but boredom can set in, as parents repeatedly steered here by their children know.

Pizza Express is now owned by the Gondola Group, having been acquired last year by the private equity group Cinven for £900 million, and de-listed from the Stock Exchange. As well as 342 Pizza Expresses, Gondola operates 90 Zizzi’s and 115 ASKs — and has recently opened Byron, the upmarket hamburger joint in Kensington, as an “early stage brand”. Under the direction of its new CEO, Harvey Smyth, who came from Pret, it has also begun carefully making little innovations in the Pizza Express menu.

“Romana” pizzas were introduced earlier this year, with thinner bases: crisper, better, more expensive. And this month, Pizza Express has launched four “Theo Randall” signature pizzas, designed by the former River Café chef, whose restaurant at the Intercontinental on Park Lane was recently voted Italian Restaurant of the Year. They are being heavily promoted, with billboards outside, Theo Randall T-shirts on the staff and on each table a colourful little Theo Randall brochure, in which he testifies that he’s always been a PE fan and exhorts the customer to “enjoy!”

So Pizza Express has gone down the road of vicarious sleb dining, Gordon-style. In one way, it makes sense, in that anybody competently trained can tip toppings on a pizza just as well as the man himself. In another, though, it’s a bit daft, because pizza should be a simple dish, not a signed, premium item.

The Theos are served not on a plate but on a strange plastic imitation of a slate palette, and they are themselves not round but oval and blobby, as though made by some peasant so rustic as never to have conceived of the circle.
Moreover, each is served with a wheel-cutter to encourage you to eat them with the fingers. These artful embellishments do not quite disguise the fact that they are a little smaller than the normal pizzas, as well as pricier.

Three are nice enough; one rather better than that. Theo’s Piemontese (£8.25) features slices of red and yellow pepper, almost raw, not previously softened, some thin sliced red onion, very sweet tasting little lilliput capers, small bits of melted anchovy (more would have been welcome), chunks of softened fontal cheese, and a few stoned olives. It’s assemblage more than cooking but none the worse for that.

Theo’s Favorita (£9.75) is a tarted- up tomato and mozzarella job. Small Santos tomatoes, marinated with oregano, are paired with cold, completely uncooked “fior di latte mozzarella”, prosciutto also added after baking, olives again, and lots of rocket leaves. So the novelty here is that most of the topping has been added after cooking, giving a more salady feel to the meal.

Theo’s Tonnara (£9.45) was the least successful — a tomato base, with tinned tuna, anchovies, garlic, those micro-capers, grana padano cheese, mounds of rocket again, and a slice of lemon on the side. Tuna never seems a great pizza topping, tending to dry out, nor is it very Italian.

However, an even less authentic pizza, Theo’s Gamberettini (at £10.95 the top dish on the whole menu) is quite an item. On a light tomato and crème fraîche base, you get a generous scattering not of tasteless prawns but of genuine North Sea shrimps, “the same tiny brown shrimps used by Theo in his restaurant”, the brochure burbles (the same kind at least, perhaps). They’ve been added at a late stage so they stay fresh and moist — and they’re quite delicious, livened up with parsley, lemon and chilli oil.

These little shrimps, so fiddly to shell yourself, are one of the intense seafood tastes but difficult to extend successfully into a main dish. Surprisingly, this pizza really works — with a glass of pinot grigio, it makes a fine meal.

After many dire years, there’s a decent all-Italian wine list here now, reasonably priced. On the other hand, there’s a tiresome water policy, never offering tap in the hope of selling you little 50cl bottles at £2.15 a time. Don’t buy. And you really don’t need to bother with the unexciting starters or industrial desserts, either, on top of a pizza, do you?

But then we all know that — just as we know that Pizza Express is about the last restaurant we’ll give up going to, however rough it gets.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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