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Pizza East

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Cuisine: Italian

Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JJ

Nearest Tube: Old Street

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Phone: 020 7729 1888

Open: Open daily noon-midnight (11pm Sun). A three-course meal for two with wine, about £80 including 12.5 per cent service

 

 

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Roomy dining: the 5,000 sq ft space of Pizza East has been converted from a former tea warehouse

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Speaking of pizzas — which we are — my son the restaurateur observed that, as with a chip, everyone has their own idea of what is good. New York Times editor Sam Sifton conceived the “pizza cognition theory” which states that the first pizza you eat as a child is what you recognise as pizza for the rest of your life.

Whatever he ate during his Surrey childhood, Nick Jones at the new Soho House venture Pizza East has been mightily influenced by his admiration for Pizzeria Mozza on the corner of Melrose and Highland in LA. Some operators might have just pinched ideas from this very successful restaurant in which Mario Batali is a partner, but Jones sensibly arranged to borrow staff and attitude.

Chef Bryant Ng came to instruct the London pizzaiolos in how to replicate the wood-fired sourdough base and a foxy lady was imported to run the floor. Head chef in Shoreditch is Australian Bernie Plaisted, who previously was working at the River Café. Now that I have tried Mozza-style pizzas they have become my own idea of what is good.

Not too big with bubbled, blistered, saline, chewy, occasionally charred crusts that we must learn to call cornicione, they have become the benchmark to someone who can’t remember ever eating pizza as a child. I like the pliable but not soggy centre and the rather parsimonious amount of topping where, in the traditional assemblies, tomato sauce is never allowed to get the upper hand. There is also innovation. You might not suppose that veal meatballs, prosciutto, sage, lemon, parsley and cream would work together agreeably; they do.

If — as I did — you download Pizzeria Mozza’s menu, sections of the Pizza East list might be accused of not so petty larceny, but paraphrasing is one acknowledged route to progress. Dishes such as roasted squash with faro (they mean farro), mint and grilled chilli; cauliflower carbonara; Sicilian aubergine with orange, balsamic vinegar, chilli; and roasted Anya potatoes dressed with bottarga, shaved egg, and mascarpone don’t just titillate with novelty, they lift the notion of pizzeria into something close to a pleasure dome. Expect shaved hard-boiled egg raining down as the new garnish all over town.

Of course, giving pleasure is the underlying ethos of the Soho House group and there is little not to like about the low-lit, rugged, uncompromising conversion of what was originally a tea warehouse. Last Friday evening the 5,000 sq ft space was rammed and big tables of City boys were in full cry.

The antipasti mentioned above were excellent. Less successful as a notion was transforming mortadella into a grainy spread and serving pistachio nuts in a separate heap. Part of the pleasure of mortadella lies in the shiny texture and gleaming look of the foldable slices.

Wood-roasted mussels with fennel aioli were served worryingly undercooked. In a second attempt they were perfectly timed and almost as seductive as that French Charente-Maritime dish éclade, where mussels are opened under burning pine needles.

Instead of a pizza on the first visit I chose chicken cacciatore, a dish I do remember from my childhood when we went to live in the US.

Nowadays chicken smothered in tomato sauce strikes me as a dubious combo but this version enlivened with pancetta and glazed whole carrots is probably about as good as it gets, even if the breast meat was inevitably a bit arid.

Orchard fruit deep-dish pie made a good stab at being as wholesome as Mom’s apple pie. The salted chocolate caramel tart, with a texture that could remove fillings, was too stiff to be really
delectable.

A return visit on Monday evening was a totally different scene with only about a quarter of the space occupied. A huge central bar means this isn’t a problem and anyway, I doubt it will recur much in future. We sat at one of the communal tables with uncomfortable fixed seats and a view of the gas-reinforced wood ovens with chefs quietly working, the female kitchen staff wearing folksy kerchiefs like Amish women.

Our waitress talked the talk, stuff like: “Can I explain the Pizza East concept?” But when she asked would it be OK if the (underwhelmed) kitchen sent out dishes as they were ready, we said: “Not really.” Why would you want a pizza congealing or a main course cooling while you tackled a spread of antipasti? Pizza Margherita, the cheapest at £6, took the idea of restrained topping a bit far — it was little more than a smear — but Middle White porchetta with cannellini beans, kale and fennel apple sauce was generous and good — River Café for the masses.

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

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