Goodfella's Pepperoni Pocco

What's a Pocco? I don't know. I'm assuming it's Italian for 'mini-pizza' because it said Pocco on the box and there were mini-pizzas in the box. Seems logical enough but I thought I better check before, God forbid, I make a sweeping cultural assumption. On the Goodfella's website there isn't anything about them.* What's stranger is that if you type 'Pocco' into an Italian-English translator nothing comes out. It's almost as if they don't exist...

If they don't and I just imagined it then I have quite a tasty imagination. However, and I understand this is quite a silly criticism for a mini-pizza, it was a bit small. Now I know this is like complaining about a horror film by saying "It was good, but too scary" or jazz music by saying "it's all over the place, there's no tune" but this pizza didn't last long enough. Chicago Town have their mini-pizza size down to a T, although I do usually eat two of those at a time.

Actually scratch that, that's a perfectly acceptable criticism of jazz. I hate jazz. Jazz is rubbish. This pizza, fictional or not, was way better than jazz.

7 out of 10

*Don't worry, I've sent an e-mail to Goodfella's notifying them of this. I'll let you know how that goes down/if they send me free pizzas.

Domino's Half 'n' Half, Mighty Meaty/The Sizzler

Domino's have three different pizzas that all have 'meat' as their theme. There's the Meateor, the Meatzza Pizza and the Mighty Meaty. I'm pretty sure they're all more or less the same thing. I suspect what happened is that they came up with three meat-based names and couldn't choose between them so instead made extra pizzas. I'd like to be the guy who has the job of coming up with the names for Domino's pizzas. Some of them sound quite threatening. The extra hot Meltdown: The Revenge for example. I don't know what kind of thing a pizza would want to avenge? Maybe you ate its mother? Or perhaps disgraced its family's honour by not finishing its uncle? (This depends on whether or not pizzas consider being eaten as a good or a bad thing). Either way, being spicy is a pretty poor form of revenge. Imagine if, in the Godfather, instead of the whole horse head in the bed prank they just put a chilli in the guy's sandwich. Don't mess with the Don or he'll make your lunch too spicy.

Recently I've ordered my Domino's on the thin crust because I found the regular base too stodgy but I might revert back because sometimes I think the base of the tray has got stuck to the bottom of the pizza and I've accidently eaten it. I haven't, it just really, really tastes like cardboard.

6.5 out of 10

Cape Meat Feast

Cape's a South African restaurant in Nottingham that does 2 for 1 on all pizzas after 4pm. I don't know what's South African about it, I've never really thought of South Africa as having a regional cuisine. If racism was edible then maybe that could be the national dish, but until Nick Griffin starts selling BNPeanuts in Yorkshire pubs I don't think you can eat bigotry. In fact Cape may not even be a South African restaurant anymore, I'm pretty sure if it isn't, it used to be.

Anyway I like the pizzas at Cape because they bring them out on wooden chopping boards and you get your own pizza wheel. They're also nice and soft. Is that a really girly thing to like about a pizza? That it's got a delicate, fluffy texture? Do you think I'm a wimp for appreciating that? Do you think that when I eat a pizza that's too tough it hurts and I cry about it? Well, fuck you.

If I had one complaint it would be that my pizza was slightly deformed and my friend's had excess flour on the base. To me, this suggests that they were rush jobs. However this is a sort of double-edged criticism because we were running late for the cinema and had they taken their time I would of had to have watched Kick Ass two feet from the screen. Psychic chef, I salute you.

8.5 out 10

Pizza Vending Machines

Check this out. A pizza vending machine. That's a bit weird. I'm not too keen on vending machines because they're usually overly expensive and they're making you pay for the convenience of not having to talk to some grumpy shop owner and I like talking to grumpy shop owners. Also the kinds of places where vending machines seem appropriate are like train station platforms or shopping centres, where the idea is you're perhaps a bit bored and hungry but not so hungry that you'd go and get a sandwich, you just want something to nibble on like a packet of crisps or a Twix. Not the full sized (I'm guessing 10"-12") pizzas this thing spits out. Look at that:

Even I think that's a bit gross. Do they come ready sliced? Or are you meant to sit there outside the swimming pool changing rooms stuffing an entire pizza into your mouth? Apparently there's this one in Italy that even cooks them with fresh ingredients. In 3 minutes. Not ready frozen or anything. There's a window where you can actually see little robo-arms kneading the dough and putting on the toppings and stuff. I'm hoping it also twiddles its robo-moustache and robo-chuckles when it pinches a passing lady-vending machine's robo-bum. The Italian swine. Seriously though, "Ew" (but shamefully also "Yum").

Waitrose American Style Hawaiian

This guy was massive. It was the biggest pizza I've eaten in a while. Maybe I should put some kind of scale next to my pizzas to give an indicator of their size. Anyway this one was huge, I could of swam in it. This photo was taken from a crane, I was about 80ft in the air. Big pizza.

I got it from Waitrose and it had a little reduced sticker on so I saved a whopping 75p. Did you know that Waitrose keep files on shoplifters, and build up evidence on them over a period of months? I find that a bit scary. I always, perhaps naively, assumed CCTV in supermarkets was more of a deterrent than an actual crime-fighting implement. Like unless you went in with a large sack with a dollar sign on and a black and white stripe top how would they know to follow you around the store? Point being they have some pretty observant security guards so watch your back. 

Not enough tomato.

6 out of 10

Pizza Express Pollo Ad Astra

I ordered this guy on a Romano base which means it was meant to be bigger but when it came it was on a regular base. Needless to say I was furious. Those Pizza Express guys are lucky I was too hungry to stonebake them alive in their own oven. 

I really like peppadew peppers. You can buy them in a jar and stick them in loads of things. Bolognese, curries, scrambled egg, sandwiches, loads of stuff, but this blog isn't called All Types of Food Ever-Quest so who gives a shit?

Anyway, yeah the pizza was good, and my Dad had taken me out so I didn't have to pay for it which was a bonus but the order mess up is going to cost you a couple of points Pizza Express. I know this kind of internet slam will potentially cost you millions but I'd feel I wasn't doing my job as a pizza critic if I let that kind of slip-up go unpunished. I apologise to the hundreds of faux-Italian waiting staff that will inevitably have to get a job in Zizzi's as a result of the fall out. Please don't wank in my pizza, I know what mozzarella looks like and what it doesn't.

7 out of 10

Asda Deep Pan Meat Feast

I've already made my feelings about deep-pan pizzas clear. I'm not their biggest fan. This was probably one of the cheapest frozen pizzas you can buy, and you can tell because it's mostly air and air is pretty cheap. I'm going to make an alteration to my previous list of pizza priorities, now it goes like this: 

Toppings

Tomato

Cheese

Bread

Air

I put some rocket on it because I felt guilty about all the dead animals I was putting into my mouth. Although I'm not sure how me eating salad makes up for pigs being killed and eaten. If the pigs could choose between dying but accompanying one of my five a day or not dying, I doubt they'd be so noble as to jump headfirst into the abattoir on behalf of my cholesterol. But I guess that's the guilt known as the 'meat eater's burden'. 

There was some beef on there as well so I've got give props to my cows too. Cheers guys. Thanks for your corpses.

 5 out of 10

Goodfella's Deeply Delicious Pepperoni

I generally try to avoid deep pan pizzas because you spend most of your time eating the bread, and bread, for me, is the least important part of a pizza. Were I to rank elements of pizzas in priority it would probably go like this:

Toppings

Tomato

Cheese

Bread

That said, this was still a pretty good pizza. I generally like Goodfella's and even though this is like the most basic one they do I still enjoyed it. I think it's because they get the tomato to sort of soak into the bread so it doesn't feel like you're just eating bread, rather tomato bread. Which I guess is an improvement.

I watched a really shit film with my pizza. From Paris with Love. It was so bad. Basically John Travolta runs around Paris wearing a bald John Travolta suit being racist and awful. I usually like shit films, I have a quite high tolerance for them but this was so shit. I had a look on RottonTomatoes.com and even though overall, it got a pretty bad score, there were still a surprising amount of positive reviews for it. It made me doubt myself as a critic. "What if, because I can't appreciate From Paris with Love for the seizure-inducingly obnoxious pile of shit that it is, my taste in other things is questionable? Crucially: pizzas?!"

I was worried about this for about two seconds then I thought, "Nope, this film can fuck off, and my 75p Goodfella's Deeply Delicious Pepperoni pizza is pretty tasty."

7 out of 10

Personal & the Pizzas

This is a band called Personal & the Pizzas. I like them because they sing about pizza. Although I think I'd still like them even if they didn't sing about pizza, they just wouldn't make me as hungry. It's like the Ramones but with way more pizza.

Their Myspizza

Personal & the Pizzas - Raw Pie

From now on if you see me eating a pizza this is the soundtrack that's going on in my head. Especially the bit in the first track where the backing vocals are all "PI!! - ZZA!!'. I really like that bit.

I might have a look for some other pizza themed music. Ducktails have a good track called Pizza Time, and an there's an old Heavy Heavy Low Low song called Pizza Party. I'll put up any other relevant pizza tunes that I come across. 


I'm going to go cook a Goodfella's.

Tesco - Ham, Mushroom and Mascarpone

I had a pizza today. It was from Tesco. Tesco have a pretty decent pepperoni that I usually go for because it's on a seemingly never-ending half price offer, (retails at only £1.74). It's a solid choice, good balance of cheese and tomato, generous quantity of pepperoni. I'm usually pretty happy with it. However that was not the pizza I had today because there were none left.

That meant I had to break out of my comfort zone. They had this mushroom, mascarpone and ham guy that looked tasty. I chose it mainly because it was pretty big and and part of their "Tesco finest/special/extra/not shit" range. The box was black and the writing was in gold. The kind of thing the middle class have on special occasions. Needless to say this meant I had pretty high hopes. For £3.90 it needed be something special. I'd say overall I was pleased, the mascarpone was my favourite part. I've got a pretty good mascarpone joke.

This is it:

Q - What cheese do you use to hide a horse?

If I had one complaint it would be that the tomato wasn't tomato-y enough or there wasn't enough of it. I'm not sure which. Either way this pizza didn't completely satisfy me tomato wise. The ham was good. I liked the mushrooms too. Overall it was alright. If I had £3.90 to spend in Tescos I'd consider choosing it again. Or I might just get two of their pepperonis and make a calzone. That would be sweet.

The answer to the joke is 'Mascarpone' by the way. It's funny because it sounds like 'mask a pony'.

7.5 out of 10